flip the page (and you'll find me) - ivysaturn

Chapter 1 Chapter Text

“So, like, I guess they call it the sophom*ore slump

Always crying and always (drunk)

A few dead,

More gone,

The rest well on their way.”

-- Cigarette Ahegao, Penelope Scott

..XoX..

Harry Potter wants to live. Not in the “I genuinely enjoy my life” way or “I am dying and wish for that to cease, please” way. In the way that Harry believes that whatever THIS is -- the way he holds himself and the way his time is spent sourly and the things he does and more importantly the things he does not -- … it’s not living. He spends every waking moment wishing he was asleep and every moment asleep being haunted by the horrors of his life awake. He spends every minute starving wishing he was eating and every minute eating wishing he was starving. He is not content. He is never satisfied.

So, no. Harry Potter is not living and he ‘wants to live’ in the sense that he wants a f*cking life.

Misery loves company but Harry doesn’t. He looks at the sullen or swollen faces of classmates suffering like he does and decides the best ‘company’ his misery can get is alone. Harry does not want to watch other people feel the pain that he is okay with but not okay with sharing and decides that, yeah. He’ll have no part in it.

Sometimes Harry lies in bed at night and can almost see the appeal. He is terribly, terribly lonely, and forever unsure of his sanity. He is a bundle of nerves shot dead; agitated beyond relief because a person in pain is not a patient one. He thinks that maybe, maybe if he had friends who are just as lonely as he is, he’d feel better. They can be lonely together and is that not better than being lonely alone?

But he knows better. He knows he is not a good friend -- not a friend at all, not to anybody -- and thinks that those people, the ones like him, would not be, either.

It is the best decision he could’ve made.

..xox..

Things are harder now. Harry has been suffering from EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified, not anorexia or othorexia or bulimia or binge eating disorder, but some mangled, outcast mess of in-between) for five years. Every moment of those five years -- only five, though it feels much longer, feels like forever -- has been a strain on his body and his mind and he thinks that one day, they both might just snap. Secretly he hopes they do.

Many of those days, whether hungry or uncomfortably full, he lies in bed and thinks to himself that he is hardly more than this. He is not a writer, he tells himself when the dead of night surrounds him and puts focus on his isolation, self imposed but terrible, still ever terrible. He was never a writer and will never be and most importantly is not. He thinks in the morning he will set his quill on the paper and find no words to pair it with. He will freeze up on the starting line. But every morning he gets up and words flow out of him and sometimes they are clunky and sometimes they are beautiful but they are there, always. He thinks that he is not more than his eating disorder then proves himself wrong. For some time.

It is the start of his fifth year now. He expects it to be the exact same as the years before it. He expects he will not fail his classes but come very close. He expects he will binge and restrict until his head is fuzzy and he can no longer ignore the concerned (disgusted) glances of his classmates. He expects that while in bed he will doubt his abilities and identity as a writer and in the morning he will, despite this or maybe because of this, write. That is his cycle and there is no other and why would this year, this year, out of all of them, why would it be NOW that anything about that changes?

But it does. Change, that is. He sets his hopes high (previously, he had written short stories and poems and essays far more impressive than his peers’ but this year, this fifth year, the one that wasn’t supposed to change, he wants to do more than that. This year, he wants to write a novel) and then he spectacularly fails to meet them.

He sets his quill on the paper and he cannot put anything into words.

It is … (horrible, life shattering, a sign from the gods that he should finally, finally end it) … most disquieting. If he cannot write and is not exceptional in any of his classes and cannot ride the broom well and has no friends -- if he is not THAT, then what is he?

He’s nothing.

No. That’s not quite correct.

He is his eating disorder.

It is an ugly thought. He worries it is fact and so he pushes himself harder; he storyboards and forces himself to write, every day, which will soon dwindle down to every other day, for half an hour. The words are clunky always this time. They feel foggy and Harry ends up scraping whatever it is he writes by the end of the day more often than not.

Things are harder now.

Why now?

In this fifth year, the year that things get harder, he sits in the Great Hall one evening with his head in his hands, thinking idly of doing a tarot reading while he waits for his coffee to cool when Albus Dumbledore calls for their attention.

He smiles that warm, grandfatherly smile and Harry can see how it can fool you into thinking it's real but he also sees Albus’ nose bent differently at three points and the glimmer in his eyes whenever you ask about how he got it and it is not anything remotely warm or grandfatherly. It is a ruse. Dumbledore smiles and then, with that kind, soft voice, carefully constructed, intentional, he announces that this year they will be having the Triwizard Tournament.

(Change. This is change. Harry does not take well to change.)

“Students from Beauxbatons Academy of Magic -- lovely fellows,” Dumbledore adds, sounding fondly nostalgic but Harry thinks it is a different kind of nostalgic, the kind that veterans exhibit when telling war stories. Harry doesn’t believe Dumbledore thinks those at Beauxbatons Academy of Magic are lovely fellows in the least.

Harry, personally, knows that their fashion sense is grand and their bulimia rates matches the gandor of the country, toe to toe. It is kind of sad that the most he knows about Hogwarts’ competitors are eating disorder statistics but he shakes that thought from his head. He is so tired of being sad.

“-- and students from Durmstrang Institute will be taking residency of Hogwrats for the duration of the…” and he rambles on for quite some time, mentioning the 100 Galleon prize and some “mystery prize” that the winner will get along with it, the entry is a raffle that everyone is entered in unless you ask to be taken out of, and this and that and THIS and THAT -- Harry does not care. He can barely hear him, that liar with a dark past and crooked nose and cups of tea offered that should always be refused.

Durmstrang.

Durmstrang!

He cannot believe it. He has spent so long running from his predicament and there it is, catching up to him.

Harry lets his head fall on the table. Oh, boy.

..xox..

Harry had stood before his parents, arms folded over his chest, back when he was not insecure and could eat food like a normal person and did not know the real meaning of the word “unhappy.” “You’re joking,” he accuses, even though he knows they are not. It is in reality an offer. Take it back. You have the chance now. Take it.

They don’t. They don’t even consider it. Lily laughs -- laughs! The audacity. “It is a delightful opportunity, Harry, and Luna Lovegood is a very sweet girl, exceptionally excited to meet you, she’s already agreed to the arrangements--”

“I haven’t.”

James blinks at him and Lily gives a nervous chuckle. “You haven’t what, son?” asks James.

“Agreed to the arrangements,” says Harry, voice tight. He is trying not to cry or yell or release whatever it is that is building up in his throat. He needs this conversation to be calm, needs himself to be calm, because he needs to get his point across. He needs them to understand. “I don’t want to marry Luna Lovegood.”

“Oh,” says Lily, face turning red. “Oh. Well, if you’re -- it is fine if you’re--”

“Gay, yes,” smooths over James, wrapping one arm around her shoulders. “We love you anyway, of course. We can work with that. There’s this swell boy, Neville Longbottom, perhaps you’ve heard of him--”

“What?” Harry furrows his eyebrows, hands dropping to his side. He shakes his head. Stay calm. Get them to understand. “No. I don’t want to get married to anybody.”

When as a child he had heard that his mother and father, who are madly and deeply in love with each other so much that when talking with other children whose parents are not, it feels so alien -- are in an arranged marriage. Their parents had shoved them together and they fought it at first but then they appreciated it and still do, to this day. Harry, then five or so, it is hard to say, told them that was great for them, but he didn’t want to be in a marriage, arranged or not.

They had dismissed him and said, in tight and serious voices, no room for debate, “You will change your mind when you’re older.”

When you’re older. Yeah. Sure. He got older. And nothing changed. His parents pressured him into dating girls and let him know that dating guys, if he wanted, was okay, too. But the idea of a relationship, of having a dynamic like his mother and father have, made his nose wrinkle. He rejected ever offer made as politely as he could.

Harry assumed his parents were okay with that. Their attempts at shoving him into a relationship soon dwindled and Harry assumed they were okay with that because they acted like they were okay with that.

But here he stands, ten years old, being told he is one day to be married to Luna Lovegood.

They didn’t get it. They still won’t. James says, smile tight, like he wants to say something more but can’t, “You might be upset now, but I promise, this is a good thing--”

“I’m not you!” Harry says and he is surprised by how choked up he sounds. He clears his throat and tries, “It was a good thing for you. But I’m not like you guys.”

Lily doesn’t even falter and Harry is on the verge of sobbing and thinks that her composed demeanor is unfair, terribly unfair. She runs a hand through his hair, bending down to his level. “It is a good thing for you, too. I promise if you genuinely do not want to get married, you don’t have to. But you have to give this thing a shot, okay?” When Harry says nothing she asks again, “Okay?”

“Okay,” Harry chokes out. (Neither of them will keep this promise.)

She kisses his forehead and tells him he is a beautiful boy, never forget it, and they both love him more than life itself.

Luna Lovegood thinks he’s beautiful, too. She loves his hair and his eyes and tells him absently during the first time they meet that they remind her of the sun hitting shamrock. She shows him her embroidery and muses over his poetry with gentle hands. The word “sharp” is used.

She really is a sweet girl.

Sweet enough to marry, though?

Not even close.

Harry tells his parents he’d like to back out of the contract. They ask him to go on just one more date, just two more, just three, you might really end up liking her. Harry humours them until he doesn’t. He starts fighting. He no longer hangs onto the pretense of “calm” because now he isn’t and he has not been for a long time. He yells and smashes things and demands -- demands -- to not be made to marry Luna Lovegood.

They punish him -- lightly, though, as if they understand why he is angry, though this only serves to make him more upset -- and keep sending him on the “dates” with Lovegood. He shuts her out. She tries to talk to him and he won’t let him. “I don’t want to be here,” he says curtly. “I don’t want to marry you.”

“We could just be friends,” she suggests, “if you’d like.”

“I’d rather not,” he says and it is not because of anything Luna did or did not do, not because she was mean or crude because she was neither. She was the perfect future spouse and would have been an even better friend if Harry let her. But he didn't. Because she represents the marriage he is tied to. The freedom and control he does not have.

So he rejects her violently and rejects what she symbolizes in his mind. He knows he cannot love her so he hates her.

Harry eventually stops outwardly fighting. He stops yelling and screaming and breaking things. His parents think in relief that it is because he has finally accepted his situation. It is not. It is because he is so tired of fighting a losing battle and realizes the more effective way to make a point is not to destroy the world around him, the books and trinkets his parents hold dear, but to destroy himself.

It is a reason of many that, at ten years old, he stops eating. He starts restricting his intake and binging if the urge overtakes him and it does, all vivid and mind numbing and comforting in a way he’d probably need a therapist to understand. He locks himself in his room and writes all day. His parents knock on his door or unlock it with magic, leaving plates of food that he will not eat, even when binging, and forehead kisses he does not recuperate, even when he wants to.

He turns eleven.

He goes to Hogwarts.

He greets Luna Lovegood with a sneer and a biting remark and ponders later that night when did he get so mean? He cannot love her so, by god, he will hate her with everything he’s got. She tries to get close to him during Hogwarts but he is vile. He insults her hair and her eyes and her heritage and more things that don’t even make sense to insult -- and she is persistent. Maybe she understands his hatred of the situation. She gives him some of her embroidery and cupcakes (red velvet, his favourite, but Harry smeared it on the ground when she handed it to him) and speaks gently about her day. She tries to be his friend, truly tries, with all her heat. But she eventually gives up because it is too much to bear, Harry’s harsh words and misdirected anger. He honestly can't blame her.

She sends a letter to her parents and a week later transfers to the Durmstrang Institute. “You seem like you need space,” she tells him. It sure is a lot of space to give.

Harry asks her the day he is to leave if she finds him beautiful, even now.

She tells him always. It is not the answer he wanted to hear nor the one he expected to and he hates it, hates her.

She sends him a letter weekly and he reads it, everytime, but never responds and always throws them in the fireplace.

As he watches the fire burn he thinks loathing that he is a horrible, horrible friend. (When did he get so mean?)

His parents send him letters frequent in occurrence and these, he can’t bring himself to burn. But he doesn’t read them, either. He stuffs them in the bottom of his trunk. During the summers, his parents try desperately to reach him but he thinks absently that there is nothing left to reach. The bridge is already burned so why are they trying to cross it?

And so the rest of his years at Hogwarts go as follows: he builds a fort of self-isolation and buries himself in it. He writes and ruins his body and does good enough but just barely in school work and…

And, yeah. That’s about it.

This year, this fifth year, the one that wasn’t supposed to change, Luna Lovegood has a chance -- and however slight it is, it is there and it is ugly -- to enter the tournament and stay in Hogwarts for the year. She might retract her name, of course. She is kind, however rude Harry is to her, and she might still recognize Harry’s need for space. If she doesn’t it’s unlikely she’ll even get chosen.

The odds are not against him.

So…

Why does it feel like they are?

..XoX..

“Above and below me

United, I fall

When the swords I’ve collected

Spasm with gall

I lie down beside them,

Think sadly, This is it

But it isn’t, not really

Because the battle is over

And the war, I have won

The treaties are signed

And when I want, it is done

But above and below this

There’s a storm, steep and strong

It is coming

For me, not for all

Reversed, I stand upright

And divided, I fall.”

-- Harry Potter, “Five of Swords.”

Chapter 2 Chapter Text

“When I’m dead,

I won’t join their ranks

‘Cause they are both holy and free

And I’m in Ohio,

Satanic and

Chained up

And until the end,

That’s how it’ll be.”

-- Saint Benard, Lincoln

..XoX..

How long, Voldemort? How much longer am I to be confined here?

Not long, he had replied. Within the week you are being mailed to the Potter’s house.

The Potter’s house. Ah, yes. So you keep saying. But I find this part of your plan complicated, to say the least. There are numerous ways for this to go wrong. How can you be so sure that it will go right?

Our plan, he corrects. Was that not what we agreed on? That we would do and have done this as one?

You’re avoiding the question.

And you’re avoiding blame.

Fine. I concede: It is our plan and I find myself in doubt.

That is a slippery slope. When have we ever doubted ourself before?

Never. But is not the sign of a good leader their ability to adapt?

That there is your problem. We are not a good leader. We are a great one.

..xox..

Tom Riddle has been lost to time for fifty years. His eyes are open but there isn’t anything to see -- except, in front of him, always, an open diary and a quill, never needing ink. He can feel nothing on his skin except his stupid book and stupid quill and it’s gotten to a point where he isn’t sure he has skin at all. His certainty of personhood is fleeting.

Fifty years ago, the version of himself allowed to wander the world as it is, the version of himself that is sure of his skin and can feel and see a world that exists, damned this part of him to their diary. He is sixteen and already a murderer, already trapped in a stagnant world of nothing.

He is at first at peace with it. By existing as a separate entity, he has ensured both he and his other self’s immortality. The relief he feels is immeasurable. No longer can the weakness of the flesh be held over him.

Voldemort writes him daily. They both celebrate their victory and make plans to go forward, but Tom (and he is Tom, his other self Voldemort, they must establish some sense of distinction) finds his contributions becoming less and less of value. What he does not know of the world, a world that is in constant evolution in the way Tom is not and can no longer be, he cannot comment on.

And those plans go forward, but they do so with Voldemort (without Tom). Tom gets only a secondhand account of their accomplishments. Accomplishments that, with time, something he has far too much of… do not feel like they belong to him in the slightest.

It’s not fair. He’s the one suffering for their immortality but he reaps none of the rewards that should and do come along with it? It is not fair.

He complains about this on their seventeenth birthday and Voldemort simply tells him maybe it is best that they don’t talk as often. After all, Tom doesn’t want a constant reminder of what he cannot have, does he?

But he does. Of course he does! A secondhand life is better than no life at all and that’s exactly what this is -- this blackness and sensory deprivation, interrupted by only the diary that binds him. Why in the world would he want less than this?

Voldemort doesn’t listen. Doesn’t care. And Tom begins to wonder when it was no longer just their names that differed.

Tom tries desperately to keep conversations going. But Voldemort does not do the same.

He gets a passage only when Vodlemort wants advice from someone who is exactly like him (something he is becoming wrong to assume), and Tom realizes he’s being treated like one of their (no, no, not their: his) followers -- nothing more than a body to bounce ideas off of, picked up and dropped at Voldemort’s convenience.

Tom stops responding to the few messages Voldemort still sends. Voldemort doesn’t even seem to care about that, either.

You are worse than selfish. Selfish implies you prioritize purely yourself but calling you that would imply that you care for me, too, a part of yourself chipped but there, ever there, and still you -- but you do not care for me. You are not even selfish. You’re just mean.

He supposes he is partly to blame. After all, it was their plan, in the beginning, when they were still one person, one soul, whole; the concept and execution of Horcruxes was a flawed idea. Nothing went wrong because there was nothing right to begin with.

Voldemort speaks of a boy he is in love with and Tom, for the first time since his imprisonment (and was not what this is? Imprisonment? It feels wrong to call it anything else), shuts the diary. He is flooded with what he can only identify as jealousy. You have fallen in love. Meanwhile, what have I done? Sat here, alone and abandoned by the one person who was supposed to have cared for me? Sat here feeling close to nothing. I don’t want to read about your lover.

I don’t want a secondhand account anymore.

No.

I think there should be no account. It’s not fair, what we have now. The boy you love should die. You should die. The whole goddamned world I am not a part of can rot and die and wilt for all I care.

It’s not fair. This isn’t fair. It should be fair.

He is already dedicated to daydreams of complete and total destruction when, thirty nine years into his isolation, Voldemort writes him again. Tom glances at the text and intends to leave it unanswered, like always, when he realizes that would be the worst (second worst) decision he would have ever made.

I have a plan to assure you a vessel, he wrote. A vessel. A vessel! A vessel is a promise of life. He hasn’t been alive in so, so long.

Tom writes back, hesitant, burying his eagerness with well ingrained wariness, How? The better question is Why now? Why have you waited almost four decades to free me? What has changed?

But he doesn’t ask that. One thing at a time.

An opportunity has presented itself.

Has it?

Yes. You need only take the soul of James Potter -- a stupid man, complimented only by his Pureblood status and wiser wife, Lily Potter. Tom doesn’t know the names. He gets the sense he should. More things he has missed out on. More things fit to burn. Hardly a challenge. Then kill the spare and…

And what?

Leave the child. He is more valuable alive than dead.

Leave the child? Valuable? Voldemort has something in mind he’s not saying. What use does he have for the Potter heir? It’s fishy. It’s f*cking shady.

And yet.

And yet, Tom doesn’t care. Whatever Voldemort does is not his business. The Potter child, whose parents Tom didn’t even live to know, is not any of his business, either. So what if Voldemort’s shady? Shady is Voldemort’s middle name.

So Tom builds a plan in his mind. He will do the bare minimum to ensure himself a vessel. He will take the soul of poor, dumb, in love James Potter, and kill his wife, leave their child, none of it of any concern to him.

And then he will do everything in his power to kill his other self. Everything. To do otherwise wouldn’t be f*cking fair.

For now he must play pretend. Must act like Voldemort is one of his followers, filling him with lies made to please. It’s what Voldemort does to him anyway. What does it matter that he’s now returning the favor?

So Tom lets nothing on. Tells him After that, what do I do?

Wait at the Potter’s house. I will be there shortly after my request is fulfilled.

How will you know?

Do not ask such prudent questions. I will know because we always know. I have my ways.

Arrogance is a disgusting (worthy of burning) look. How had he not realized that before? And after we reconcile? Will I be forced to lick boot and kneel before you?

Voldemort of course acts like he had not noticed the divide between them with the growing years, as if their conversations had not been one-sided for what must be a decade now. Whyever would I allow such a disgrace? You are my soul. It is fitting that you rule with me.

That becomes a recurring theme, Voldemort’s obsession with the word ‘we.’ He realizes they are more powerful together than apart and Tom knows all about Voldemort and power.

We are a great leader. We will rule together. We are one.

But they are not. Tom says nothing, but he knows they are not. If they are one, why is he the one in here, and Voldemort the one out there? Voldemort has not experienced even a fraction of what Tom has, the pain, the suffering, the desolation. What part of them is shared? Not even their name at this point. To imply anything different just pisses Tom off more.

And as the execution date for ‘their’ plan creeps forward, so does doubt. What if James is not as stupid as Voldemort thinks he is? Hasn’t he considered that by putting Tom in close proximity to Lily, that one redeeming factor of Pureblood Prince James, is an unnecessary danger? Why can’t he just take the soul (skin, skin, skin) of some lesser wizard, then kill the Potters? Why must the tasks be combined?

Doubt is something that Voldemort doesn’t do. He dismisses Tom’s worries with assurance that is only overbearing self-importance, some deeply settled narcissistic insecurity. He… deserves to die, Tom realizes. It’s not a matter of what he does and does not want -- it’s a matter of what is now just, and what has always been.

Tom deserves to die, too. He’ll have to if he wants Voldemort dead. He’s okay with that. He’s okay with most things often.

Tom tries to talk Voldemort into sense (tries to talk sanity into the insane) and unsurprisingly, fails.

Whatever.

At least he will have a form fit for destruction soon enough.

But he is sent to the Potter’s house, has two conversations with James Potter, and then…

And then nothing. Nothing happens. Once again Voldemort’s plan is flawed at heart and in execution and Tom is left to pick up the pieces.

The fact that he had let himself hope at all hurts the most.

He begins to wonder what might’ve happened. To ponder on their -- his -- failure hurts, too, but what else is there to think about, all alone again?

In the few conversations Tom had held with James Potter, a few things quickly became very clear. James Potter was passionate. Caring, loving, and stupid, the perfect target in theory. Voldemort had read him right; a fool in love. What Voldemort did not see coming was the “in love” part being more relevant than the “fool” one. James of course would show the new, cool, talking diary to the woman he loves. And she would of course see through it. Of course. Of course -- and Voldemort’s the fool to have expected otherwise.

Where is Tom now? Where in the outside and REAL WORLD is he -- what is he to people, what is he to Voldemort? Is he sitting on a shelf, looking inconspicuous? Looking like every other book and not a person, not a sliver of a soul sent away to kill and now left to die? Is he buried under layers and layers of other items, intended not to be viewed ever again by any other soul, living or dead?

Had James and Lily already forgotten about him? Surely they had not. But they might’ve. It would be just Tom’s luck.

Voldemort… Why, it seems like he’s forgotten Tom, too. What other explanation for Tom’s renewed estrangement is there? Unless he hasn’t forgotten. Unless it is just apathy. Both options are equally unfair.

After a week, maybe a few months, of the Potter couple living when Tom should’ve killed them -- Voldemort must’ve figured out that something went wrong. He is foolish but not dumb. And then… what? Did he not send someone to retrieve him? Consider him dead already and not worth retrieving?

With bitterness and hatred for his own soul and for his own incautious and reckless actions, he waits. On a shelf, buried in a chest, left in an attic in an empty, hollow house -- wherever he is, he has nothing left to do but wait. For someone to write to him. For someone to give him their soul. For long overdue revenge.

He simmers in his bloodlust for years more, eleven since the last time he was contacted by anyone ever, and convinces himself he will simmer forever. He will wait forever. The world will destroy itself without him.

He isn’t real. He isn’t a person. He has no skin.

When someone starts writing in his diary (fifty years too late), he doesn’t think it’s real, either. But they keep writing, and writing, and their handwriting is messy and he cannot even bring himself to pay attention to the content because holy sh*t.

It is real -- they are real.

When his mind comes back to him and the shock leaves his body, he realizes something that is not as surprising as the fact he’s being written to again, but does come close.

This is a Potter. Not James or Lily. And a schoolboy, young, in his fifth year. This is their son. The very one that Voldemort intended to keep alive.

What makes you so special? Why did Voldemort find you valuable but me, not? He left me for dead. He wanted you alive.

I hate you for it.

I hate him for it.

I hate me for it, too.

Whatever makes you special… I intend to find out. And then steal it. Your skin included.

He has waited fifty years for the chance to live again. At this point, what is one year more?

..xox..

The evening Harry Potter finds an indestructible dairy starts with a cup of black coffee and a tarot reading. He dreamt that night of a caricature of himself chasing him through a maze of hedge. The Other Self’s fat had turned to sludge and was melting off his body, leaving a trail of bloody pudge in his wake.

When he awoke he realized that he was the Other Self all along. And he had so much fat to melt, didn’t he?

So yes. He started that evening with a cup of black coffee and poor body image and an on the whim decision to do a tarot reading for himself.

He clears the table in front of him of plates and dishes -- dishes of food that look so, so good right now, he’s so hungry, what is he doing -- and knocks his fist against the deck of cards and shuffles them. He is aware of his classmates giggling at him and thinks sourly oh, hasn’t that got OLD? He has been doing tarot readings ever since he started coming here. They have had all the time in the world to make fun of him for it.

That’s what he gets for being sorted in Ravenclaw, he supposes. Surrounded by hatred of the superstitious.

Harry scowls and ducks his head. Fine. They can hate him. He hates them, too. He doesn't need them or anybody.

He’s got his black coffee and cards.

The first card is meant to answer the ‘Thinking” category. What things are on your mind today, what are you going to be thinking about a lot, etc, etc. He gets an upright Seven of Wands and almost smiles.

Perseverance. (To what? His self destructive habits? He wouldn’t doubt it.) Defensive. (To what? To justify his self destructive habits? … Well, he wouldn’t doubt that, either.) Maintaining control. Self explanatory.

The second card, Ace of Wands, upright, meant to apply to his feelings (how are your emotions today? Dominant feeling, etc) says that today he will feel creative. Inspired, filled with willpower and desire.

It is… promising, he decides. Maybe he will write something very good today. (He hopes he is able to write at all.)

His final card is about what he’ll be doing today. He finishes off his cup of coffee with a grimace and stares longingly at the food, pushed out of the way for his reading.

He thinks he will do nothing today. Just like every other day, it will be exactly like the last. He will accomplish nothing. He won’t be able to focus or write and socializing isn’t even a possibility. He will spend all day hungry. That’s it.

For whatever reason despite this, he flips over the last card.

Death. Upright. Representing the end of a cycle, new beginnings, and change. Harry scoffs and puts the cards back in the deck, thinking that this is why Ravenclaws doubt tarot cards. Because they can give readings like that, like total nonsense.

Harry doesn’t take well to change. He never has. There is nothing different about today.

..xox..

That night Harry shifts through his trunk, meaning to find his other pack of tarot cards buried in there somewhere (maybe the pack he has now is nonsense because it’s faulty and if you can’t fix it, replace it) when his hand brushes across a book.

Leather. Fancy, embroidered, leather.

Harry frowns. He doesn’t own a leather book. He pulls it out from the bottom of his trunk and cannot help but marvel at it. On the middle of the front there is a crest. A name is listed in the corner.

It is beautiful.

But he knows this crest. And that name -- There is a war going on, and he knows this symbol, and that name, are a part of it. A very big part of it. The symbol is known as the Weeper’s Mark. It’s a snake wrapped around a skull and the two snake’s eyes are diamonds and Harry thinks the diary is very much like him. Seen as beautiful when it is very much ugly.

He doesn’t know how this diary ended up in his possession. He doesn’t know why it is blank despite the cover's implications.

He knows he shouldn’t keep it. Logically, the best option would be to give it to Dumbledore. He plans to in the morning. But morning comes and he stays seated at his spot at the Ravenclaw table, the diary shoved under the rest of his books.

It’s blank. So there’s nothing Dumbledore would gain from it, no harm in keeping it. Right?

And, besides, Harry’s been needing a journal.

..XoX..

“I am deluded layers deep

Convinced stockholm syndrome is a synonym of freedom

I can dance with sycophancy

Under the lumen light of survival

But under the layers and layers of puffy dresses

And gold watch covered bruises

There is a heart that will not beat

And a girl I know too well

Can I settle for this? For him?

I can gift shrouds of fasciation in way of leeway

Say that this is what I deserve

Say that the path easiest traveled

But, as I bat my eyes and breathe misplaced sympathy,

I know that even if all is insanity,

This, in particular, is madness.”

-- Harry Potter, “Eight of Cups.”

Chapter 3 Chapter Text

"If I were you,

Then I'd stop talking

'Cause soon you'll be

A dead man walking

I don't care what momma says

You'll wind me up

Or wind up dead."

-- Absinthe, I Don't Know How But They Found Me

..XoX..

Katherine’s Portraits is a novella Harry wrote, second year. It’s about a woman -- Katherine -- who paints women in various poses and forms, things from nature to fires surrounding them. The King proposes a deal; each month, she paints a new woman and gives it to the King. In exchange, she will take part in the end of the year annual feast, made and enjoyed in her honor.

Katherine is rightfully doubtful. “Just twelve paintings?” she asks.

“As long as each woman painted is beautiful,” he tells her, and so the deal is struck.

This will come easy to Katherine, she is sure. She knows beauty and paints it well. But there is just a slight problem; Katherine has an eating disorder. (Harry thinks it is tacky to do a self insert like this, but do not they say ‘write what you know’? And this, Harry knows well. So he pushes on, tacky and all.) She originally just restricted her intake but, with the promise of a great, end of the year annual feast (made and enjoyed in her honor!), she started purging, too.

It is her version, however warped, of preparedness. How else is she to reap the rewards of her labor?

Time passes. Each month, she paints a new gorgeous woman and gives it to the King. Each month, her eating disorder worsens -- as the combination of purging and restriction muddle her mind, her ‘goals’ of thinness become muddled, too. The concept of beauty, which she had formerly had some sort of grasp on, skirts out of her control.

On the twelfth month, she delivers the final painting to the King.

He narrows his eyes at it and asks, furious, “What is this?”

She blinks. “A blond woman, sir. Clad in a white dress, that of sil--”

“Not that!” he bellows. “Her body -- what is that?”

“Um. Beauty, sir?”

He shakes his head. “She is a skeleton! She looks like the poorest of peasants, with a build like that.”

“But can’t all body sizes be beautiful?” tries Katherine.

“They can. But it is life that is attractive and the woman you’ve brought to me today… she is dying.” He motions to the guards and says, “You have broken your part of the deal. You will not be invited to the feast tonight.”

The book ends with Katherine sobbing over the grotesqueness of her own body -- because it is revealed she used herself as reference for the final painting. If life is beautiful, she is disgusting. The feast was the very reason she started purging and because of it, she did not get to attend the feast.

Harry was not particularly proud of the work. It was too self-indulgent, too predictable, borderline juvenile. (He is not a writer, never is, never will be. Why did he ever think that anything he wrote could ever be good?)

When Professor McGonagall announces she’s hosting a writing competition -- in which the winner will get 5 Gallons and their submitted work published in The Prophet -- Harry considers not competing. His work will only be mocked, ridiculed, torn apart, every insecurity he holds proven to be entirely founded. He will not win. So why bother trying?

But for whatever reason, he hands McGonagall a copy of Katherine’s Portraits. Maybe it is because of the belief no one will really see it, maybe it is in spite of. Whatever it is, by the end of the week, he’d entirely forgotten he’d even entered the competition in the first place.

The end date for entry passes and after two, maybe three, weeks, the results are announced. Harry is convinced that he had not even been considered. Katherine’s Portraits wasn’t even read.

So imagine his surprise. Professor McGonagall, with a fond smile and an unreadable look in her eyes, hands him five Gallons and tells him to expect something special in the news tomorrow.

Success. Foreign, wonderful success and he starts writing a letter, bragging to his parents, before reminding himself he doesn’t do that anymore and burning it. He wonders if Luna Lovegood would mind a letter and thinks that, if its only purpose is selfish, she probably would. That wouldn’t be fair to her.

He sits on his bed with five Gallons in his hand and realizes that his success seems fickle with no one to share it with, no one else to relish in it. What is the worth of his talent if it’s just his?

The Ravenclaws seem equally unimpressed for the most part. As a whole, Harry’s noticed they have little use for fiction. Harry finds he has little use for academic books and thinks it a tragedy he was ever sorted into Ravenclaw. Also a mystery. He’d be better in Hufflepuff. Truthfully, he’d be better anywhere. The day he understands the Sorting Hat’s decision will be a miracle.

When his story is released, no longer just wisps of rumors amongst disinterested Ravens and the other participants in the writing contest, the consequences come in waves.

It marks the first time he meets his fellow disordered peers.

He’s sitting down alone, as always, to binge after a strong period of restriction when two Gryffindors sit in front of him.

They say nothing and Harry decides if they don’t want to address their princess here, then neither does he. He begins filling his plate. After loading on the third cinnamon bun, the girl Lion giggles.

Harry blinks at her. “Oh,” she says. “I was just wondering if you were actually going to eat all that.”

“Do you purge?” asks the other one.

Harry suddenly does not want to be here anymore. “No,” he says, forcefully. “No, I don’t purge.”

“Oh,” says the girl again. “So how do you… get rid of it? Laxatives? I’ve heard some people over-exercise--”

Why are they asking him this? Okay, fine, it’s not like his behaviors aren’t obvious. But he doesn’t have friends so anyone who notices, doesn’t care. Why now? Why is he just now being confronted? Harry does not take well to change. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, bitch,” he snaps. It’s not nice but when has Harry ever been nice? “I have no idea what in the world you are talking about.”

Her brows furrow and she takes out a newspaper, reads something over, then looks back at him. “Your name is Harry Potter, right?”

Harry huffs up, shoving a pastry in his mouth. “So what?” he says, muffled.

“So you should know exactly what I’m talking about.” She flips the newspaper toward him and there it is. The beacon that’s drawn them here. Katherine’s Portraits.

He chokes on his food. Holy sh*t. He’s been stupid, hasn’t he? He hadn’t even considered winning. Why would he have considered the consequences if he did?

Well. Now it is evident that he should have. Whether it was his intention or not, making an eating disorder centric story in the fashion he did? It’s basically telling whoever the reader is that the author struggles like this, too. Something in the words tattles on him.

He is sure the whole wizarding world knows he has an eating disorder now. What does he do with that?

… And his parents, too. They’re avid readers of The Prophet.

They know now, too. And that he doesn’t know what to do with.

Of course, it is not like they probably hadn’t known before. When you are so blatant with your behaviors, the only way it goes overlooked is purposeful. But he’s never said the words “eating disorder” in their presence. “EDNOS” and “OSFED” and every thought related stays close to his chest.

Katherine’s Portraits is a borderline confession. The idea that he’s talked about his problems to an audience before his own parents… it hurts. For James and Lily, it must hurt like hell. Harry almost feels bad but then he remembers he’s done feeling bad for Lily and James.

Before the Lions leave his table, the girl notes, looking at his body, that he really isn’t anything like Katherine. It’s meant to be an insult and Harry can tell, because it works.

The Lions do not visit him again and Harry convinces himself that it’s over. The effects of poor old Katherine are over and everything can go back to normal.

That is, until the letters arrive.

They come in trickles then in hordes. Some are not lined with a butterfly crest but most are. The unity is terrifying. In it, girls and guys (of all ages, but most seem pretty young, perhaps just a bit older than he) praise him for Katherine’s Portraits. It is not the scathing reviews every author wants to hear. Rather, they praise all aspects of the book meant to be demonized.

They’d… all missed the points completely. Intentionally or not, Harry has given the Butterflies their own personal Bible.

His motives while writing -- they were just. He wanted to deter and educate people on the reality -- the sore, ugly reality of eating disorders. This is not on him, this misconstrusion of his work.

But…

But maybe that’s not true. Did he really need to describe the jut of her bones so clearly? Her habits need only be explained to the point where they are grasped, not put in the focus. He includes too much deluded monologue without acknowledging it is deluded.

Somewhere along the line Katherine’s Portraits became motivation for him, too.

His work is making sick people sicker. In the letters, there are brags about how long they are into their newest burst of restriction. There is envy for Katherine, who Harry tried and failed not to make enviable.

A few weeks pass. Sooner or later, Harry keeps telling himself, his novella will fade into obscurity. It is one accidentally pro-ed book of thousands. It will pass.

A month now, since it's been published. Two. Then three.

And the letters… they keep coming. He gets one that says she has a very special gift for him, from Beauxbatons. It’ll help him on his weight loss goals, it says. As it turns out, Harry isn’t the only one helping sick people get sicker.

Harry feels the rush of a spell run over him, but he can’t tell its effects. Is he cursed? Blessed? Is he going to die in 72 hours? He doesn’t know. But he does note from then on that he is a little more durable.

He tries to write to the sender and figure out what it is they inflicted upon him, but when he checks the letter again, there’s no return address.

Harry snaps and writes The Prophet. He begs them to remove his book from the edition of The Prophet it was published -- to make that edition no longer available to the public, something, anything. He has hurt people when he never meant to do anything. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone else. He recognizes his mistake and he wants to undo it and The Prophet?

The Prophet tells him no. It’d be bad for profit. Apparently, his short story sells really well.

The letters eventually dwindled until they ceased to be sent entirely. It is the guilt that never leaves him. It is like Luna Lovegood all over again.

..xox..

The Tournament is not safe, Harry writes in the journal. The post came today. There was an attack. The largest number of Muggle slaughters at once to date. It is impossible to tell if they are Gellert’s forces or Voldemort’s or a mix of the two.

The Ministry still keeps its stance of neutrality. I am somewhat grateful. If they acted, it would be with the lives of its citizens. I am like my mother and father in that regard; I do not want to fight in a war, even if I agree it needs to be fought.

But I am also upset at their cowardness. When they prioritize wizard lives, Muggle ones become second class.

The Muggle world is dying. And we’re having a multinational competition in exchange for Gallons. I keep asking myself if we are idiots, but I don’t like that’s quite right.

I think the wizarding world is like me. We are apathetic. We are careless. And so, people get hurt. It’s just on a wider scale, sometimes it’s a bit more than hurt.

..xox..

Most writers are also readers. Harry used to be. His favorite book series was the Muggle The Hunger Games. It is a Gryffindor favorite. Surprisingly, it is also popular in Ravenclaw.

“Dystopian fiction,” explains one eager first year, “is more than tales made up; they are a comment on the present, or what may happen in the future. They speak on the importance of certain social issues to government control.”

During parties, where everyone is a little too loose, sometimes a little too drunk, someone will quietly make a connection to the Trifecta War. Harry remembers vividly the Headboy, red in the face, unable to remember his words come morning, saying that to kill Muggleborn and half blood wizards to remove Muggle influence is not a calculated decision, but a dumb one. “When we kill enough of our men, we will have no one. What is the point of segregation and superiority if the ‘better’ side is dead? When they burn, we burn with them.”

A first year whispers that they know that quote, even if it is altered a little bit -- and the Headboy promptly throws up in the fireplace. There's laughs and cheers but for Harry, that quote sticks. He asks the first year where they know it from and they blush deeply but answer, “The Hunger Games.”

With all the fuss, Harry cannot resist checking it out. But when he checks the Muggle fiction bookshelves, he cannot for the life of him locate it. He brings the first year to the library and asks them to find it for him, since they’d know where it would be.

They furrow their brows and tell them it is gone.

As it turns out, that first year can talk. By the end of the week, over two hundred and sixty students had questioned the librarian where the books were -- and some did more than question. Some sent howlers and threw hands.

Dumbledore stands in the Great Hall and clears his throat, saying loudly, “Good evening students. Given the recent inquiries about the location of some of Hogwarts’ books, I feel compelled to tell you that many of our books have been banned. So sorry. And please enjoy your meal.”

There is of course outrage. Harry doesn't fall to rage but suspicion. Why did Dumbledore not say who it was who said the books must be banned? Why did he not say why?

And then there is that twinkle in his eyes. It gives away the fact that something is amiss here but not what.

Harry figures it out on his own, though. He sees many Ravenclaws with The Hunger Games -- and other, dystopian Muggle novels he recognizes by title though not by content. “Hey. You. How’d you get a hold of that?” he asks one of his Housemates.

They tilt their head toward a Muggleborn third year curled up in an armchair. “Marcy. She’s trading them for whatever. You’re the weirdo into tarot cards, right? She’s been asking around for a deck. Get yourself a copy.”

Harry ignores the insult. “But how’d she get them?”

“Her parents are Muggle. They just send them to her, I think.”

Harry nods and laughs to himself. He’s learned two things: Entrepreneurship is innovative and banned books always find a way.

But…

But the Ravens aren’t being subtle. They are practically flaunting their disobedience -- and the staff is doing nothing about it. Is it because it is a Ministry regulation and they don’t care? Harry checks the records and sees that no. The Ministry hasn’t done sh*t to Hogwarts books.

So…

So why? Harry assumes from here that the only place powerful enough to trump Hogwarts’ book selection other than the Ministry is Hogwarts itself. They have banned their books and yet do not enforce it? What is the purpose of that?

Harry sees Huffs circulate the banned books -- and soon enough the Slytherins. It is perhaps the grandest display of house unity in centuries.

Harry makes a list of each banned book -- and this one takes a while because Dumbledore had just said “some books” and only the staff actually had a comprehensive list, none of them keen on sharing.

But he got his list and got a summary of each book, and that is when Harry puts it together.

The Hunger Games. 1984. The Giver. Fahrenheit 451. All Muggle. All dystopian. All banned. Harry is looking at what Dumbledore considers the newest generation of revolutionary texts.

Forbidden fruit is the sweetest. He’s made popular book series infamous.

Harry trades an old deck of tarot cards for The Hunger Games. He reads it and he loves it but all the while he is thinking solemnly that Dumbledore is training his army young.

..xox..

Harry lies with his head on his mother’s lap, back when he still talks to his mother. Before they told him he is in an arranged marriage to a girl that would’ve been his friend otherwise. Before the nights of alternating starving and indulgence.

Before. Before, he lies with his mother and they both watch as James snores, his head on her shoulder.

Harry wrinkles his nose. “He’s loud.”

Lily smiles fondly. “Of course he is. He’s your father. He can’t even sleep quietly. That’s why I get to know everything, Harry. Take that one to heart.” She runs gently fingers through his hair.

“You know everything? Really? What kind of everything?”

“Oh, loads.”

Harry whispers, conspiratorial, “You know any… secrets?”

Lily laughs. “Do I know any secrets? Harry, I know so many secrets, you wouldn’t even believe.”

“Tell me one!”

“Okay,” she says, grinning. “I’ll tell you one. As a treat, okay? And… and when you’re older, I’ll tell you more.” Harry nods rapidly. “In the year 1985, the year me and your father graduated, we were approached by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore--”

Harry clapped. “Dumbledore! I know that name. I know him!”

“Yes,” says Lily endearingly. “You’ve heard his name, right? He’s the leader of the army against the bad guys.”

“A gen-er-al,” Harry says, pronouncing each letter very carefully.

“Mhm. That’s quite right. Albus Dumbledore is a general.” There is a dark tone in her words that is then too young to notice. “But to me and your father, he was a Headmaster.”

“What’d he want?”

“He wanted us to fight, too. Well, he wanted your father to fight and me to strategize. He saw the good parts of each of us and put ‘em together. ‘We’ve got some good people out there,’ he said. ‘We would like some more, if you’d join us.’”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“What?” Harry yelps. “Why?”

Lily twirls his hair in her fingers. “We were children. Seventeen, fresh out of school--”

“Seventeen’s old.”

Lily chuckles. “It sure is, kiddo. But it doesn’t feel like it. You feel young when you’re seventeen. The wizarding world tells you that now you’re an adult and it’s time to get on with things -- get a job, raise a child. Most families start when the wife is of age 19 nowdays. But me and your father… we didn’t feel like starting a family, not just yet. And we didn’t feel like fighting a war.”

“So… what’d you tell him?”

“We told him that, although his cause is noble,” she rolls her eyes a little bit, “and that we would always be supporting him on the sidelines, the cause wasn’t ours.”

Harry stares at her, expecting her to say more. When she doesn’t, Harry frowns. “Anddd?”

“And, nothing. That’s it. We took our time to raise a family and we enjoyed the lives we preserved.”

“But that’s..!” Harry huffed. “That’s not much of a secret!”

Lily sighed lightly. “Yes. You’re right. I got cold feet, I guess.”

“So! Come on! Tell me!”

“Alright, mister. Alright.” She looks at James and says nothing. After a moment, she continues, “We told Dumbledore we wouldn’t be fighting for him. He took it well. Didn’t take it personally, I mean. We exchanged mail and kept each other in the know. Throughout the years, he drops tips here and there. To keep us safe.”

“Tips about what?”

“Voldemort,” she says. “The Weepers. He gave me many secrets to keep.”

“Can I keep them with you?”

“...Yes,” she says. “I’ve got to keep you safe, too. And ignorance is dangerous. But one at a time. When you’re older, you can have them all.”

“Okay. When I’m older. But right now?”

“Right now,” she leans down, presses a kiss to his forehead and says, quietly, “you can know that Voldemort’s real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle. Now go to bed. It’s time to sleep.”

..XoX..

“What other people think of you IS your business

You must be loved,

Mocked,

Insane!

All fallacy

Unconditional

For the capacity for holding contradictory emotions,

For complexly alloyed affections,

For bottomless malice--

All the things anyone had ever said,

Both good and bad,

There is no way I would ever understand.”

-- Harry Potter, “The Tower.”

Chapter 4 Chapter Text

“I'm in the business of misery

Let's take it from the top

She's got a body like an hourglass, it's ticking like a clock

It's a matter of time before we all run out."

-- Misery Business, Paramore

..XoX..

Harry makes a list of pros and cons. That’s a way he deals with uncertainties in his life -- by writing them out.

The ‘cons’ column of joining the tournament is short and sweet. - He might die. And even then, he hasn’t much problem with the idea of dying so, really, this is actually a pro.

The ‘pros’ column is a bit longer as is. - Money, if he wins. - Publicity, even if he doesn’t. - Will force him to get better at practical magic. And, just for kicks, - Possibility of dying.

Harry nods, reading over his list one last time, making sure he’s listed everything he wants to consider. The deadline for entry is by the end of the week, so if he wants to pull out, now’s the best time.

Harry sips on his black coffee and almost spits it out when, at the bottom of the ‘pros’ column, the words - Emancipation appear.

Harry coughs, choking, kicking the journal across the floor, getting it the f*ck away from him. He considers burning it. He’s from a magical family and one thing, always particularly and oddly stressed, was that when sentient, magical, objects talk to you, you do not talk back. On second thought, maybe that’s not a normal ‘magical family’ warning, but it’s still good advice.

He’d be sad to lose his journal, of course. He’d been using it as dairy and storyboarding for his novel -- which, admitting, was not going well. What else could he expect from a magical, Dark Lord journal if not that it had to be destroyed at one point or another? It was foolish to keep it to himself in the first place.

Of course, he’d do all that after figuring out whatever they meant by emancipation. Because whether or not a Dark Lord suggested it… it’s an attractive idea.

He scoots back over to the journal, wand in a shaky hand, and writes, What do you mean?

The response is swift: You want to get away from your parents, don’t you? In your entries, you do not speak fondly of them.

That’s right, Harry says. He is worried. Hesitant to confirm anything. Knowledge is power. That’s been stressed in his household, too.

So get away. Use this tournament to get away.

How would that work?

The requirements of magical emancipation are, to the best of my knowledge, as follows: 1, the minor in question must have reliable financial income / financial stability. 2, the minor in question must own or rent real estate or have an interest in doing so. And 3, these things can be achieved WITHOUT depdeance on their family / parents and real estate / vaults owned by them. Those are the requirements, though you might think to double check them, given that my information is outdated by… oh, fifty years or so.

It’s… a genius idea, actually. With the tournament money alone, he could purchase real estate. With the publicity, he could kick start his writing career into something financially viable. Harry’s surprised whomever he’s writing to was able to staple that together with what bits and pieces they know of Harry’s life.

It is impressive. Also creepy. Thanks, Harry writes. Bye, though.

Wait! Wait, Harry. Let’s think about this, whatever you’re about to do. Alright? I am smart. I am intuitive. You must be able to tell. I can be useful.

Yeah, says Harry. You could also be evil. You probably are. So.

There is silence on the other side and Harry rolls his eyes, getting ready to close the journal, when it writes back, Yeah. Yeah, Harry. You’re right. I’m evil. I’m evil as all get out. But I do not want to hurt you.

Harry is bewildered by the honesty. If shock is their way to keep Harry talking, then it’s working. Then who do you want to hurt?

Myself.

There’s therapy for that, you know.

No, I mean. Harry, I am one half of a man much worse than me.

The f*ck does that mean? Harry asks, And who are you? You both, apparently. Harry’s running theory is that he’s talking to a current and/or former Weeper, given the… ah, look of the journal.

I am Voldemort. He is Voldemort.

Wow. Wow, okay then. It’s a bit more than a mere Weeper, huh? It’s the mother f*cking king of Weepers.

Tom Riddle… yeah, the name Tom Riddle being on it makes sense now, doesn’t it?

He is a Ravenclaw. The Hat decided that for a reason. Harry knows that the smartest thing to do would be to give the Dark Lord journal to Albus DUmbledore, say It’s your problem, not mind, good luck, and be on his merry way.

That is the smartest thing to do. That is the Ravenclaw thing to do. But he has never been sure why he was sorted here. He’s never been all that smart so he does not hand it over to Dumbledore. He writes, How are there two of you?

To ensure his immortality, he split his soul in two. And he split it many times over, so I’ve heard. And I? I am the first. As long as any one of us are still alive and kicking, Voldemort, in his main form, gets to live.

So you want to, what? Kill Voldemort? You’d have to die yourself, from the sound of it.

I’m well aware and well prepared. Voldemort has hurt many people but it is himself he has hurt the most.

Truthfully, I doubt that.

Yeah, okay, you’re right. That’s fair.

And you’re a diary. How the hell are you supposed to kill anything? My mom… And it hurts to think of her but he says anyway, My mom warned me about these things. It doesn’t help your case that you’re one half of a Dark Lord.

My case?

Yeah, your case. Build a pretty good one, ‘cause if you don’t, you’re dead.

That’s rather rude, you know.

Oh, suck my dick, Voldemort. I’m not nice. You should know that by now.

You’re right. I do. And, please. Call me Tom.

Alright, Tom, whatever. Tell me why I should trust you. No. No, before that, tell me how you plan to kill Voldemort while you’re stuck in a book.

I’d need to steal a wizard’s magic -- turning them, effectively, into a Squib -- and use it to acquire a form of my own--

You’re cappin’.

Cappin’?

Sorry, lying. You’ve already got magic. Why do you need more?

Because, Harry--

No.

No, what?

No, you can’t call me Harry. It feels slimy. Feels like you’re trying to manipulate me.

Okay. I won’t call you Harry. Potter, then?

No. No Harry, no Potter. Refer to me never.

Alright. You’re in charge. The reason I need someone else’s magic is simple; given that I have no current form, my magic is, in a sense, ‘dead’. To revive it, I need ‘alive’ magic.

Okay. I’m not so sure the science behind that. Are wizards able to live without their magic?

Of course. Physically, Squibs are BUILT the same as wizards -- they retain the same extended life expectancy and general durability. The only difference is that they do not have a magical core. So, in theory, if a wizard were to lose their magical core, they should be fine.

I’m gunna have to read up on that one.

You do that. In the meantime, any more questions?

A few. How do I know you won’t steal my magic?

You’d notice. The progression from wizard to Squib is not one done without physical consequences -- loss of time, your magic would weaken, of course, nausea and vomiting as well as body soreness might occur, according to my predictions.

Not so sure I’d notice, actually.

No?

Half of those things I already have going on.

Yes, well, destroying your body does that.

Yeah.

I promise, though, that it’s more notable than you’d think. I do find something interesting, though.

Yeah? And what’s that?

You do not seem to have a problem with someone being turned into a Squib, as long as that person isn’t you.

Is that really so surprising? I know so many people who don’t deserve the gift of magic. And in turn, there’s the possibility that the now immortal Dark Lord Voldemort gets murdered. What’s not to love?

I don’t know. I assumed you’d find problems with the cruelty of it. Do unto others what you’d what done to yourself, wasn’t it?

Oh, shut the f*ck up. Don’t try and lecture me on ethics, Dark Lord.

One half of a Dark Lord, actually.

I really want you to read that over and ask yourself if that matters in the slightest.

Okay, yeah. You’re right. My apologies.

Don’t be a suck up.

I’m not trying to--

Shut the f*ck up. Why do you A, want Voldemort dead and B, want him dead so bad you’re willing to die for it?

I made a very poorly planned decision. Voldemort and I did. When we split our soul, I went into the diary with expectations not then met. Tell me. Tell me what life is to you. What makes it worth living. What makes it life?

That’s a difficult proposition--

You only think that because you are seeped deep in self inflicted misery. You know what I think? I think there are good parts of your life and you choose not to see them. You think you do not deserve them. You think that if you indulge in the good parts of life, you’ll lose the bad parts. And without those parts, you don’t know who you are. And you know what I think? I think that’s stupid.

Wow, so helpful, I’ll use that to cure my mental illness, thank you very much.

I have not enjoyed a cup of tea with milk and sugar while sitting in the sun for fifty years. I have not felt soft pillows of a well made bed. I have not been snuggled by a cat. Do you know what that is like? I am trapped and I am trapped with nothing. And there’s someone to blame. Myself and my other not-exactly-half and I cannot feel anything physically but mentally, I feel angry. I am enraged. I want revenge for every lonely moment, for every missed opportunity. Wouldn’t you?

Alright, Angst Lord.

Do not dismiss what I’m saying. You want the truth? This is it. This is what you’re getting. I want to burn the world. I want to f*cking die. Surely that, at least, you understand.

Once you get a physical form, who’s to say these feelings won't change? That when given the option of life, you won’t choose it?

I am a hateful person. If I live, that means Voldemort gets to, too. And that… that would make my life not worth living. Unsatisfactory.

Oh, boo hoo. Weren’t you just going on about not focusing on the misery?

I… admit I am prone to hypocrisy.

No kidding.

But you get it? Don’t you?

Yeah. I get it.

So trust me. Give me to some kid you don’t like. Let me steal their magic and then let me kill myself with all that entails. Do not destroy me.

Stop whining. I’ll do whatever. I’ve got some asshole in mind. Gunna need some time, though, so don’t steal my magic in the meantime.

I wouldn’t dream of it.

..xox..

Tom did dream of it. In fact, it was already happening and had been happening the moment Harry started writing in his journal.

For a Ravenclaw, he really is stupid. Of course, the sentiment is a bit unfair. He saw through quite a few of Tom’s lies, so much so that the majority of what Tom admitted was the truth.

The majority. But not enough. Not the important parts.

Tom is glad that Harry was not giving him away immediately -- Tom still had a mystery to unravel and if Harry didn’t have a reason, Tom would've had to make one up and if Harry’s reaction to him has proved anything, it’s that he’s no longer the stellar liar he once was. Or that Harry is much harder to deceive than your average fellow.

Tom had suggested emancipation to Harry for reasons that appeared kind hearted in nature -- or a desperate bid to prove his usefulness, prove that he should not just be destroyed, wrecked, discarded, handed off without preempt. In reality, it was to undermine Voldemort. It was him being petty and, hey, if that benefits Harry, too, then two birds, one stone, right?

Harry wrote frequently about his arranged marriage with one Luna Lovegood. Mostly, he spoke about his own inadequacy, of anger both at himself and his parents. Tom finds his ramblings that of a child -- mostly because they are -- but when Harry mentioned that, apparently, this marriage had been in place since he was four, Tom put two and two together.

Tom was unsure why Voldemort had decided to send him off to the Potters. Unsure why he was to spare the child, or why the child was worth sparing -- most of his predicament, Tom could not find reason for.

But this. This, Harry’s marriage, arranged eleven years ago? This is a clue. Because, really, who does that! Tom had integrated himself into packs upon packs of pretentious, stereotypical Purebloods, and tried to make himself just as similar to them as he could. So he knows a thing or two about Pureblood arranged marriages.

For the most part, they are set up ages 10-16, as is Pureblood custom. That way they can be made to attend school together or already do -- and so there is not a surplus of “wait time” before the marriage, where tensions may still remain high.

So why, why in the world, would Harry Potter be decided to wed Luna Lovegood when they were both only four? And it is not like there is, from what Harry’s wrote, any tension between the Potters and the wholly uncontroversial, if not insane, Lovegoods.

Tom assumes that Harry’s parents want him to be in an arranged marriage because that’s what worked for them and they want their son to have the same success -- but if that was the case, or if anything, really, was the case then they would not have hidden it from him for, what? Six years? Something like that?

And if it was to amend something between the Lovegoods and the Potters -- which, again, Tom doubt is the case -- then they would not have offered to put him with Neville Longbottom once they thought he was gay!

Something is fishy here. Lily and James… just want Harry to be married, to be unavailable, and have since he was four. Since Harry was four, around the time that Tom’s attempt to murder Lily and James failed.

Voldemort has something to do with it. And Tom hates Voldemort. So even though he does know what Voldemort is up to, Tom wants to interfere with it.

If Harry is no longer under the ward of the Potters, the arranged marriage they put him in no longer stands. And any marriage they try to shove him in after that, well, that won’t work, either, will it?

Tom Riddle is petty. He is vengeful. He is one half of a Dark Lord and though he no longer aligns himself with Voldemort and has not for a long time, he will never forget his roots, never change from them. Just because he is not Voldemort does not mean he is a good person.

..xox..

“Have you pulled your name out of the running yet, Potter?”

Harry blinks at them. They are a seventh year Ravenclaw sitting at the table beside him in the library. Harry can’t remember their name, but they have never been cruel to him. Nor kind. He clears his throat, turning back to his journal, where he wants to write but does not want Tom to see, for some reason. “No,” he says.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning on competing?” they say, laughing a little.

“Only if my name is drawn,” he snaps.

“Oh, why -- I didn’t mean to be rude,” they put their hands up, still smiling. “I was just thinking, with your condition, and all--”

“Yeah, well,” he says, standing up, tucking his book under his arm. “Maybe it’s best if you stop thinking.” It’s so much to ask, sometimes, he realizes. To have people ignore his problems. He does not like being known as that crazy bitch who won’t eat, or eats too much. It is not fun. It is embarrassing.

It is… dehumanizing, in a way.

“Aren’t you worried that your heart might stop?” asks the Ravenclaw, apparently not knowing how to take that hint. “Not just in general, but, I mean, out in the tournament, while facing big, life threatening sh*t? Aren’t you worried you might… just die?”

Is he worried about dying? Oh, what kind of stupid question is that? Of course he is. Every moment of every day he deals with the side effects of a body far from healthy. He is worried he might die and, sometimes, glad that he soon will.

But to ask someone that -- someone who obviously does not want to talk to you, who does not know you well enough to even remember your name -- is that not f*cked? Is that not invasive?

And Harry opens his mouth to tell them off when the Ravenclaw continues, “I’m worried. I mean, about the possibility that I will, duh, but… you, too.”

Harry blinks at them, books crushed tightly against his side. “What?”

“I know you don’t know me -- but I’m a Teacher’s Assistant to Professor Severus when I’m not in class. Your essays are amazing, dude -- you’re my favorite author. You’ve got talent. So… don’t squander it by dying.”

He’s… someone’s favorite author? And suddenly Harry interprets their words under a very different tone -- someone who does not know a writer very well, but would like to, who knows about their health issues and relates and is worried, who wants to preserve this stranger because they know no one else will.

It makes their concern almost sweet, if not for the boundaries crossed.

And to that… Harry does not know what to say.

The Ravenclaw seems flustered, noticing that they’ve stumped him. “Uh -- yeah, so I’m pulling my name out of the running. You should, too. And if you ever want to talk -- about your issues, or just as friends -- I’m… I’m free whenever.”

To that, Harry does know what to say. “Go to Hell,” he spits, turning on his tail and speed walking out of the library. Go to Hell? he thinks. He realizes he is sobbing. Go to Hell. That’s what he tells the first offer of friendship since his first year?

He laughs at himself. Of course it is. He doesn’t want friends. He does not need them. And he would be a terrible one, that’s for sure.

It… It is better, every time, to have shut that door before it could even open.

That’s what he tells himself, at any rate. It is what he needs to believe.

..XoX..

“Halloween is never over

Hug your witch hats past October

Paint witches in November

And carve pumpkins in December

Hang on tight, and you’ll remember

That Halloween is never over.”

-- Harry Potter, “Death.”

Chapter 5 Chapter Text

“But someone loved me, someone f*cking loved me

Someone f*cking loved me and I f*ckin' loved them too

Goddamn it, I was worth something,

I f*ckin' learned something

I had my cake (I ate it, it ate me too and, God, no.)"

-- Feel Better, Penelope Scott

..XoX..

When Harry overhears his peers talk about heartbreak and romance, the dreaded yet entirely realistic prospect of dying without ever having loved -- Harry gets it. Harry gets it because he is a writer and it is his job to get it, to put words to emotions and emotions to words. He writes heartbreak with metaphors and pretty synonyms about people that aren’t real and scenarios that didn’t happen so, yeah, Harry understands it.

That is not to say, however, that he relates to it.

Harry does not want a romantic lover. He is not worried about dying without one. He can see the appeal but, in his own words, he is just not the target audience for it.

Luna Lovegood speaks about it sometimes, in her letters. “I worry sometimes that the silence between us will never end. I worry that if you cannot or do not love me in the way I want to be loved -- in the way that most people want to be loved; with dignity and grace, flaws accepted and mistakes forgiven -- then I will free myself up to other possibilities… and find even them lacking.

“If love is not what I have cracked it up to be, then what is it?”

It’s nonsense. That’s Harry’s answer -- it’s nonsense and Harry does not want any part in it. Just as Harry does not want any part of Luna’s life, her rambling, her openness and honesty that Harry will not return nor does deserve.

He understands she shares these thoughts with him because she wants them to be friends. They do not have to be lovers. She is not asking for that. She’s not asking for anything. But she should. There’s no give or take here. An equilibrium should be in order.

Harry, though, is in no position to tell anyone how to live their lives -- least of all Luna Lovegood. So she can do whatever the f*ck she wants, as far as Harry’s concerned.

While reading her letters, Harry can't help but take inspiration. In their past meetings together, she’s never expressed any interest in poetry or storytelling -- but it has been years. Perhaps that’s changed, for the simple letters Harry reads weekly are beautiful.

He steals phrases and words from them and slips them into his writing, whenever motivation sweeps him into its arms.

She pushes Harry’s perspective of love and moves it from a story concept into something tangible.

And it -- alongside, admittedly, thoughts of his mother and father who did not love him enough to accept him but did love each other, oh, very much so -- makes Harry reevaluate. Changing labels, even the prospect of it, is not a neat thing. It is messy and depressing but it is made easier, he supposes, by the fact that nothing outwardly will change with it. He is out to no one. Ergo, no one to be un-out to.

Harry’s idea of “reevaluate” is not as straightforward as other people’s might be. Harry’s idea of questioning his sexuality has little to do with those he might be attracted to and more to do with Harry himself.

He takes out his deck of tarot cards and puts a little bit of his magic into the shuffle. He places down three cards and sets the rest of the deck aside.

The first question he asks is, “Do I need love?” It is not an easy question to answer -- and he knows that, regardless of the card that he flips over, he will want the answer to be no. To love is to hurt. With pleasure comes pain and he’s had quite enough of the latter.

The answer is more complex than yes or no, though -- one of the reasons he loves tarot; it tells you what you need to hear, whether you want to hear it or not -- because the answer is The Empress. Upright.

She is a card usually associated with fertility, creativity, appreciation of beautiful things, an overall spring of good comings, good fortune -- but it is also associated with femininity, with motherhood. Nurturing.

Lily. Lily is and/or was a great mother. Wasn’t she? Harry does not like to linger on the good parts, mainly because the bad… in his eyes, is inexcusable. But now, compelled by the cards and compelled by himself, he thinks of those sacred moments with his head on her lap and her fingers running through his hair -- and the fact that they would accept him and love him even if he was gay, which is something that not many wizarding families can say. They listen and adapt to him and his emotions and they do not fight. The Potter house is a gentle one. A warm one. There are no screaming, furious arguments not perpetuated only by Harry himself. There are no holes punched in the wall. No slamming doors or explosive rage or breaking glass--

The Potter house is more than a house. At one point in time, it was a home.

At one point in time, because it’s not anymore. It’s torn at the edges, those memories, those sacred moments, because Lily and James decided that their success will be his, too. Over the summers, he casts charms so that when they try to talk to him, reach out to him -- and they are always trying, aren’t they -- Harry is unable to hear a word they say.

Harry Potter does not need Lily Potter -- not in his life, not in his heart.

But… that’s not really true, is it? Harry needs Lily in the way that most children need their mothers. As something instinctual and hard to ignore. He wants those soft moments on the couch again. He wants to hear his mother’s voice again. He wants it so bad it tears his heart apart. He is a child and, f*ck you, he has a right to act like it, doesn’t he?

So that is what that first card is telling him. Do I need love? Oh, Harry. Of course you do. You will say you don’t but some things, Harry. Some things people just say.

For the next card, Harry asks, “Do I need her?” Do I need Luna Lovegood, who is good at embroidery and might be good at writing and sends me a letter, every week, even though I never send one back?

The card reveals itself to be Nine of Wands, upright. And that’s… largely associated with grit, isn’t that right? Grit and resilience, some sort of last stand.

Harry takes this as his decade long fight against Luna Lovegood, against the two sides of himself, ever at war. Against the part of him that wants a friend -- needs one, needs someone -- and the part of him that doesn’t need anybody. Grit and resilience means that the effort against Luna Lovegood… is a good one. Is a battle well fought.

That is of course if he takes the side of willing ignorance.

“Last stand” implies a lot of things. It implies that Harry’s heart has come upon a wall and now, now he has a choice. He can keep fighting. He can reject her and everything she stands for, everything he has made her stand for and sit at the base of that wall forever. Or he can climb the wall. He can realize that he’s fighting Luna Lovegood but when has Luna Lovegood ever fought him back?

His hatred of Luna is his last stand, because it’s a hill he will die on. It is a death he might regret.

Do I need Luna Lovegood? I don’t think it’s a matter of need -- you want her around even though, for all intents and purposes, she shouldn’t be. You would be devastated if she decided to stop sending letters. You would be devastated if she hated you like you hate her.

Can you hate someone you cherish so dearly? Harry thinks so. That’s half of his relationships. Maybe, though, Harry’s been kidding himself. He knows that relationships are three demonetional, complicated, and some are a vat of emotions too muddled to make out. He knows this. Maybe he’s been kidding himself by thinking he’s been applying that vita concept to his life, too.

For the third and final card, Harry doesn’t know how to voice his question. How do I fix me? Do I need fixing? What path should I take? Is this sustainable? Am I broken or bent or destroyed, beyond repair?

Harry does not know what he wants to ask, so he just flips the card and hopes it understands what he wants to know regardless.

Eight of Swords, reversed.

… Self-acceptance, new perspective. Freedom.

Love, for Harry, is not difficult to understand. But it is difficult to put into practice. With an all or nothing mindset that started with food and continued to everything else, gray areas are hard to come by.

Here, he is invited to take on a new perspective. It is not the kind of love he wanted to know about. Self love. Disgusting. Impossible. Unreachable. He is terrible. He is rude and snaps at people who don’t deserve it and published a novella that was used as motivation for people’s disordered eating -- he does not need a new perspective. The one he has now shows everything well enough; Harry Potter is not a good person. Harry Potter has no reason to like himself. To even accept himself.

But, maybe, he needs that gray area. He needs more than all or nothing. He has helped people, surely, as well as hurt. He was that Ravenclaw’s favorite author… probably before he told them to go to hell, though. Not all letters in response to Katherine's Portraits were so terrible.

The Eight of Swords, reversed, tells Harry that it is time to stop hating himself for his moments of terribleness -- because hating himself, for the record, has never stopped him from being terrible.

Of course, Harry thinks, putting the three cards back into the deck, this is easier said than done.

All in all, he leaves the session sure of many things and conflicted about more. He is also sure that he is aromantic, asexual.

The cards all related -- or he made them relate -- to aspects of love outside of the romantic ones. It is a sign, he supposes. There is nothing left to question in that department.

But in others, he stays haunted. He slouches over Tom’s journal and writes and rewrites his first letter to Luna Lovegood. It is a difficult task, to say the least.

Luna,

~~I’m sorry~~ No. He’s not ready to apologize yet. Or maybe he’s just not ready for such an intense conversation right now. Not yet.

~~Are you a writer now? We both know that’s my specialty~~ Harry scribbles that line out hard. He means it as a joke but what if she doesn’t take it as one? They are not very well on friendly terms.

You are rather bad at this, remarks Tom.

No sh*t, writes Harry.

I can give you some tips. You do need them, says Tom, both unkind and not untrue.

No. Let me work this out on my own. Writing’s a process. You’ve got to trust the process.

Tom does not respond and Harry continues trying to write the letter once more:

Your Ravenclaw peers miss you. Does that include himself? No? Yes? Maybe? No. But it is kinder to let her take it as she will. I know that Drumstrang has less restrictions on their uniforms than Hogwarts did. I was wondering if you’d ever thought of embroidering your uniform? You’d make it look good, I think, if you’re still into that.

Talking about her is easier than talking about himself. He does that, too, though. I became certain recently that I’m aromantic and asexual. This is an invitation, in a way. It’s telling her that she may find love elsewhere. It’s telling her that he still does not want to get married.

It is also the first time Harry has ever “came out” to anyone, so to speak. It feels good. And bad. And like nothing at all.

Hogwarts kids are split on their Drumstrang opinions -- mainly because of their rumored Dark Arts curriculum. I’m not one to care, though. I’ve got my thumbs in my fair share of Dark Arts pies, too.

Harry, warns Tom.

Oh, shut it, writes Harry. I won’t spill your dirty little secret. Just let me do this.

To his credit, Tom does.

The Triwizard Tournament is coming up. I’ve left my name in the drawing. I was wondering if you did as well. It would be awful to have to compete with you. This.. this, honestly, is a little vindictive to leave in. Nothing is explicitly stated but Harry’s sure that Luna is a little bit like him; rather skilled at reading in between the lines. It says, I do not want to see you. If you end up at Hogwarts for this, I will not hesitate to make my displeasure known.

You asked what love is if it isn’t what you’ve built it up to be. It is the backdrop of a really good book; it is the rightful subject of countless poems; it is nonsense; it is hard to come by; it is hard to let go. Love is whatever you want it to be, Luna. If it is not what you’ve built it up to be, then keep building.

Rewording his earlier statement, he finishes with I read your letters weekly. They’re very craftily worded. Are you a writer? You should be. You’d be good at that, too.

Cheers,

Harry.

It is too gloomy? Too much? Too little? It’s hardly an impressive first step. But Harry sends it anyway, because it is, at least, a first step.

On his way to the owlery, Harry feels someone’s eyes on him. He tenses, wand out, because someone following this late of the hour is never a good sign, only when he turns around, there is no one there.

..xox..

Harry is sometimes rude to those who did nothing wrong, a byproduct of his messy mental state and inability to regulate his emotions in a healthy manner -- but, sometimes, Harry is rude because people deserve it.

Three years ago, an organization known as the Butterflies contacted Harry. It was not a pleasant first impression, the misguided fawning over his work, the mysterious gift with no return address.

Harry had wanted to…

Well. He had wanted to do a lot of things. Like curl up and die and drown in the guilt of becoming somehow akin to these people. Like report them and bring a sense of justice back into the world. The latter of which was impossible -- because all he had was a crest to go off of. No names, no numbers. And, of course, no return address.

If he had been rude, they would deserve it. If he is rude now, would the sentiment still stand?

In harry’s humble opinion, there is no statute of limitations on the punishment for a crime in which the crime’s aftereffects has none, either. Wracked with guilt and confusion, his eating disorder at an all time high and mental state at an all time low -- his second year is a blur to him now, but then it was miserable. Partly it was his own fault. Partly it was the flood of letters tearing his work to shreds and making a caricature of it from paper mache.

That summer, with his parents essentially on mute, he retreats to the Potter library instead of his room. He grabs Lily’s editions of Crests & Who and/or What They Represent and scousers it until he can put an image to a word and puts a name to his tormentors.

The Butterflies. It is an organization established in 1977, originally an Austrian establishment but now a British one. This much Harry finds from hours upon hours spent in the book stacks. Beyond this, though, not much is known.

For three years, Harry has intermittently hated them and hated himself in equal quantities. He has never forgotten. He thinks he never will.

So Harry’s brilliant plan is more vengeful than brilliant. He wants to steal the magic from whoever runs the Butterflies. He wants to think that he’s had to suffer, and now they have, too.

In all honesty, it wouldn’t be a fair trade. To blame one person to the acts of what must have been hundreds is obscene.

But feelings are beyond thought, reason, and, in this plan, sanity.

Tom, Harry asks one evening, have you ever heard of an organization called the Butterflies? They’re eating disorder based. Real f*cked group of people. Butterfly crest.

I’m afraid they must be beyond my time.

Damn, says Harry. I’d have thought you might’ve been there for their origin story but… I guess not.

What do you want to know about them?

I wanna find their CEO. Send you to them. But nothing about them is public knowledge and it’s frustrating.

Perhaps I can help figure out where to look. Or who. Describe them.

Harry sums up the incident in second year and, halfway through, Tom interrupts. Oh. Yes, that’s a cult.

Huh, say Harry. That makes sense. I guess.

Lucky thing, though, I happen to know a lot about cults.

Really worried about why that is,

Don’t be. My first suggestion is to look for the outliner. Cult leaders are often fond of attention. They will inevitably slip up. They will do something to stick out.

… Harry has an idea about who that might be. And once I’ve located them?

Do you still have the letter they sent you?

Yeah.

Good. It would be quite problematic if you didn’t. Give it to an owl. Tell them to send this back to its owner and set a tracking charm. If it fails to do this, I suggest getting a more intelligent owl. From there, you’ll have coordinates. Plop those on a map. If the Butterflies have no footprint, it means that they are being funded and housed through someone or something else’s finances. On those coordinates, you’ll likely find some property not owned by the Butterflies. You will want to doubt yourself. I implore you not to. Whoever owns the property -- that’s your fellow. That’s your lead. And likely, your leader, or someone who would know them. Got it?

Yeah… He is impressed and terrified. That’s probably how most people feel around Voldemort, though. He wants to ask why Tom is being so helpful. But that is a rude way to say thank you. I appreciate this.

Of course, Harry, writes Tom. Anytime.

..XoX..

“I know you;

I hope not

I love you;

Will you rot?

That is my mantra,

A silly silicon tantrum

Breathing only smoke and sickness

From sins I did bear witness

For all the children hurt

Here, I leave my bridges burnt.”

-- Harry Potter, “Judgment.”

Chapter 6 Chapter Text

“Buried under dying homes

Hands tied in golden thorns

I’m defined by guesswork analogies

Documenting daily life

Tell me I’ll be alright

Open-eyed, entangled in absentees

Stories of a child’s past

Autopsied broken glass.”

-- Aura / Solaria, GHOST

..XoX..

Sometimes Harry thinks he is psychic. Of course, it is not meant in the literal sense. He is no Seer and though he dabbles now in the Arts, he is not Dark enough to dare read minds.

Harry is psychic in the way that Muggles are magic. In dabbles and in drops, a little sliver of something more fitting between the cracks. Harry can see it, believes in it, even if his Raven peers would mock him if they knew. He was sorted into Ravenclaw for a reason but, honestly, he remains unsure what that reason is. If it exists at all. He might be the result of a quota to fill -- each House must have XX amount of entries per year, per seven years. It is the best excuse Harry can conjure up.

So Harry is psychic in the way that Muggles are magic; naturally. A result of the world doing what the world does. When a baker tastes the batter and knows exactly what to add, there is Herbology magic. When a little girl can catch unruly chickens ages before any of the grownups could manage, there is Magical Creature magic.

Look for it. There is magic in everything. Can’t you see it?

A ballerina twirls in the air for a second too long. She is flying. Can’t you see it? A song you listen to for hours on repeat with no end in sight, and you don’t want one. It has encaptured you. Entranced. Can’t you see it? A locket rescued from the rubbles of a house fire with a photo that should have long ago degraded. It is protected against all odds, against everything that says it shouldn’t be. Can’t you see it?

There is magic in everything. Just a little bit.

Harry’s “psychic” abilities are like that. Natural and maybe not real but there, if you think to look for it. You can see it if you believe it.

Before Katherine’s Portraits, there was only a graphic image of Cate, a 32 year old woman, autopsied. After that there was a dream. A girl, deathly thin because she is dead, is a stain of Cate, imprinted onto his mind, painting canvas after canvas for a King.

And after that there was a story, grossly popular. Katherine’s Portraits was more handed to him than written. It was a gift. Hardly his at all.

Harry thinks to himself -- not at all a Raven -- that he is psychic, and that is what he means. Sometimes images -- and most of the time, they are just and only that; a powerpoint of ideas flashing by him, slammed quickly onto parchment the moment he rises so he may not forget them -- visit him in his sleep and give life to novellas and poems.

There is magic in everything. Harry thinks that includes this.

Tonight -- the evening that Harry sent out a letter with an attached tracking charm, waiting and willing, like a snake poised in the brush -- Harry becomes an oracle once again. He dreams of a sickness that turns your bones to wood and is transferred by touching the bark of the eldest tree. It is an infection. It is rot. You die and you do not die painlessly.

Harry wakes not in a cold sweat but with a smile, stretched so wide it hurts. He has been visited by a mystical force and it is telling him that this is the idea for a novel and he best start writing. So he sits up and casts a lumos and brings out Tom’s journal, not minding, just this once, that Tom is able to see everything he writes.

Of course, writing is a process. It does not end with that dream or image -- and sometimes, it hardly begins with it. He takes the idea of Rot and he transforms it, molds it in his hands like clay.

That is the plan, at least.

When he sets his quill on the parchment, he cannot move it. His mind goes blank. He is used to this, to failure, and he pushes himself further. He has to do that with everything he does now. If not he will get nothing done.

Lore, he thinks. He can decide the focus of the story later -- the character arcs and plot and whatever -- but now, it is best to start with lore.

Lore.

Okay.

He can do lore.

Except he can’t. It does not come to him. There’s a tree and it infects people, yes, sure, but from there, then what?

Then what..?

That’s a question. He can work with questions. Okay. So. What makes this tree different from other trees? Why does it curse people? That’s good. He can work with that.

He writes the questions down and wonders what it looks like without context to Tom. Funny? Weird? Is he being weird right now? Does it matter? Doesn’t it?

Is Tom using him? Of course he is. He’s admitted that. So doesn’t Harry have a right to use him, too, to fill his journal without explanation? Is it rude? It is a form of rubbing salt in the wound, insult to injury, annoying a boy trapped and close to death for half a decade?

He is being annoying. He should stop writing now, stop right here, right now -- it is not like anything he’d create would be worth anything anyway. What is the point? Why be weird when you can go back to sleep?

Harry frowns. This… it is not something he cares about, Tom’s opinion. If you are weird to a Dark Lord (or half a Dark Lord), you’re probably doing something right. It is not something he cares about, so it must be something else, some other reason he is fixating on it now, of all the times.

And then he gets it. It is because he is fixating on it now, of all times -- the moment he wants to work, his brain fights against him. He wants to write. Why can’t he just write? Why must he make it so hard on himself?

He sees the tear stains on the page before he realizes he is crying.

Harry? writes Tom. What troubles you?

Not an ‘are you okay,’ but an assumption he is not. Smart. Tom’s clever like that. He would have been a great Raven if he was not a Snake. At this rate, Harry’s robes do not fit him in more ways than one.

A lot is wrong. It is a hard question to answer normally. Right now, it is at least a bit easier. Writing’s hard, he writes. It shouldn’t be. At a time, it wasn’t.

But he supposes this year a lot is due to change.

Can I be of assistance?

The presumption is hilarious. Like I’d want writing advice from a Dark Lord.

It is a much harder occupation to acquire than you’d think. If I am not good at something, I must pretend to be. Though that does not happen often,

Harry is angry. At Tom’s arrogance, yes, but. But as his own inferiority as well. It is not fair. Nothing about the situation is fair. Go to hell, Harry writes, and he starts to close the book, content to forget he’d ever wanted to write in the first place. Happy, even, to forget he’d cried.

Tom writes, before he can do so, My point is, I am a good writer. And that’s not fair, either, is it? That it is only the worst people that things come easy for? So if you need help writing, I am here.

Harry is genuinely bewildered by the offer. Why? he asks. What do you stand to gain?

Why, I have been alone for quite some time. Am I not allowed to enjoy your company, to further conversations we have?

You are, says Harry. I just don’t see why you would.

A world in which all actions people take are logical is not a world I want to live in.

Oh, come off it. You’re a--

Half of a Dark Lord, yes, I’m aware, so you keep saying.

Yeah! So I do! It’s a harder position to achieve than one would assume, ain’t it? So every action you take is, and has to be, logical. That’s how you got where you are now.

And where am I now? I am trapped in a prison of my own creation. I am lost and the idea that there is a way home still, even now, seems far off to me. You want to talk Dark Lord? You want to assume things about Voldemort? Sure. You do that. But I’m not him. If you’re against him, I am with you.

… That’s fair, Harry thinks. But not enough. How do I know you’re not against me?

Because though their late night talks are fun, and Tom’s suggestion for emancipation was and is brilliant, and the idea that it is part of Voldemort that will end up killing Voldemort is hilarious and wonderful -- it explains nothing about Tom’s patience with him.

For Tom’s plan to work, he just needs to be nice enough to either A, keep Harry around long enough to zap the magic from his body (which Harry does not believe the case, given that Tom has agreed to take the magic from a person of Harry’s choice), or B, be nice enough to Harry that he agrees to give him to someone else.

Nice enough. But not so nice as to offer to help Harry write.

You have no reason to be kind to me, writes Harry . People like you are not kind without gain.

So, Tom.

What do you have to gain?

And Harry thinks that’s stumped him. He has no response and Harry does not really need one, so he plans to go back to just go back to sleep.

But Tom, Tom is full of surprises.

Voldemort said, writes Tom, before he abandoned me… that you were special.

He said that?

Yes. And no. He didn’t have to.

Yeah, well, writes Harry. I bet he feels pretty stupid right now, huh?

Maybe, says Tom. I’m still trying to figure that out.

Harry gets it. Tom’s kindness is not out of the goodness of his heart. He wants to know him not because he is interested in Harry, as a person, but because he is interested in Harry, as a concept.

How could he ever expect otherwise?

Harry closes the journal and tucks it back into his trunk. He puts out his light and lifts the blankets to his shoulders. It is time to go to bed. He is tired.

..xox..

Luna’s weekly letter arrives through the post during breakfast. Surprisingly, it is normal. There Is no reaction whatsoever to the fact that Harry -- for the first time ever -- sent a response.

It is disheartening. Yet understandable. Harry’s running theory is shock. Harry wants to be angry at her. I opened my heart to you and you do not even reject it, you -- you ignore it. In what world is that fair? Harry wants so badly to be angry… but he can’t. In what world is he a hypocrite?

Not this one. Not this time.

So Harry reads her letter and does not rip it up and buries his rage with logic. He does that because she has earned that much. Because Harry has not even apologized.

She speaks about how the drawing of the names for the Tournament will go down on her end. The Headmaster at Beauxbatons Academy did not, for whatever reason, want to bring any more students than necessary for the event, and so proposed a different format; each school gets its own Goblet. Beauxbatons and Drumstrang both collect their champions at their respective locations and then send them over to Hogwarts, the hosting school, where then Hogwarts’ champions will be selected.

She is sad not to see the events in person, she says. She will be viewing them likely by buying someone’s memory of it. Just like Harry, she says a lot with so little. She says here that she has taken her name out of the raffle -- and for that, Harry's anger at his letter being ignored fades, because it was not ignored at all. Not really.

The more he looks for it, her subtle acknowledgment, the more of it there is. She offers to embroider his uniform. She knows that he asked if she still did that, and she answered. She speaks of a Dark Arts spell she learned that week -- supposedly to help their future champions bring home the gold. She speaks about her days almost like she always has.

Almost.

Luna Lovegood is far more forgiving than Harry Potter ever could be. A part of him still resents her, but it is not her fault and he knows this. Of course he does. He always has. But today, with this letter, with this kindness he is undeserving of… that part of himself, feeling strongly forgien, is quiet. He tries to hate her and finds that he can’t.

His marriage to her has never mattered less.

Then she says that she has tried writing, but is no good at it. Not like him. His works in recent years have been insightful. She is not sure should could do the same thing.

And with this, his heart drops.

Because with this, he is reminded once again of the past he has tried desperately to bury. He is reminded of Katherine’s Portraits. What other ‘recent works’ made public could she be referring to? Is her remark on what must obviously distress him intentional? If this was meant to sting, it is working.

He…

He could not even blame her, if her intentions were not pure, if she meant to hurt him like he had been hurting her for years. You treat people how you want to be treated. Doesn’t he know that? What is he, an idiot?

Yeah.

He is.

So he tells himself not to be angry at her for using Katherine’s Portraits against him but rather, mad at those who made it available for use at all. Himself. The Prophet. Himself again.

He basks in loathing and then continues reading her letter. It is the least he owes her.

Love’s weird, I think. When we fight against our hearts, our bodies fight against us. I deny or force feelings and am haunted in my dreams, waking in cold sweats and tears. I learned then something very simple. The most important aspect of health is self acceptance.

She is right. But what does Harry know about health? About f*cking feelings? About love? The most important aspect of Harry’s health is his ability to ignore it. Ignore the creeping behind you in the hallways of a dark, shadowy figure making itself an omen. Ignore your tired head. Ignore your aching body, aching heart.

Ignore it and it is like it’s not there at all and boom -- suddenly it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re at peace with yourself.

But Harry does get, like, and relate to her line about his mind haunting him. She is psychic in the way Harry is; in ways that aren’t magical but aren’t any less spectacular, any less relevant to the future. You deny feelings, you force them, and your mind reads the future and tells you, very adamantly, that you f*cking shouldn’t. Is not magic graceful? Is not your mind merciful?

It is a good note to end on. It is a good letter. Harry writes a response, replying to parts of her letter and talking about his life independently, too. It is not as good as a letter, but he is trying. He really is trying.

He hopes that is worth something.

..xox..

The letter sent to the head of the Butterflies is not sent back, nor given a response. It is odd. Suspicious, out of place, but, maybe, she recognizes him. The author of Katherine’s Portraits? Why, he is sure he is hard to forget.

Regardless of her intent, if she has one, and she might not, Harry has a name. Mouton Vicieux. CEO of Season’s Greetings, a “factory” on the plotted land the letter ended up at. They are an innocuous company that does nothing more than sell products catering to festivities.

On the surface, it is that easy. It is that innocent.

If you look closely, and in the right place, you will find exactly what you’re looking for. Proof. Proof that Season’s Greetings, as fun, as f*cking festive as they sound is the cover of a cult.

Look for it. Can’t you see it?

Donations, starting from 1985 and onward, to the Butterflies organization. That much is expected. It is the donations alongside that that is not.

Gellert Grindelwald. Gellert Grindelwald. What in the hell are the Butterflies doing funding a war criminal? Well. Now that he puts it like that, it is not all that unlikely. They are not the only people helping sick people get sicker. They are not even the only people getting others sick in the first place.

But it is strange. It is not unlikely, not close to impossible, but it is strange. There are layers to the oddness; Mouton Viciuex is an obviously French name. Season’s Greeting is located in Britain -- along with the Butterflies -- and Gellert’s operations are run in Austria.

And Harry knows that name. It is familiar, even if, now, he cannot place it. Harry is not exceptional in academics, nor popular enough to be in the know of minor celebrities, so whoever it is? They must be big.

But Harry does not know enough or cannot infer enough to piece together this puzzle -- and though it might be a riddle fit for a Riddle, Harry does not tell Tom any more than he needs to know. Tom is friendly at times. Is kind, intelligent, a useful asset -- but that is it.

Tom is not his friend and, quite frankly, Harry needs to stop kidding himself otherwise.

So Harry has a name. A strange one, a one he recognizes but can’t quite place. Above all that, it is Harry’s target. Harry, before wrapping up Tom’s journal and sending it with the label Your favorite author, tells Tom that he’ll be sent off that evening.

Be prepared to get your life back, Tom. I do hope you follow through on your word.

Of killing Voldemort, yes, but--

But? What about this confuses you?

… You…

I what?

You don’t want me to stick around? Harry does not comprehend what exactly Tom means by this and he does not have to. Everything about Tom is shady, even if it is buried by moments of genuine and helpfulness. This is no exception.

Why would he want Tom to stick around? They are not friends. Tom has made his sole interest very clear.

No, writes Harry curtly. Now go steal someone else’s magic. You cannot have mine.

And then Tom is sent away to Mouton Vicieux and Harry is alone again.

Of course, they will not be away for long. For better and for worse.

..XoX..

“Depression is thematic

(Stupid,

Self-absorbed,

Undeniably dreary)

Someone

(Or anyone,

Or everyone)

Will bother to understand

To comprehend

To relate

(To debate

The severity,

The sovereignty

Of what you’re going through)

So, yeah

Depression is thematic,

Spawned of children

One of each dramatic.”

-- Harry Potter, “The Sun.”

Chapter 7 Chapter Text

“My teeth are yellow

(hello world!)

Would you like me a little better if they were white like yours?

I need to purge my urges,

(shame, shame, shame)

I need an alibi to justify, somebody to blame.”

-- Alien Blues, Vundabar

..XoX..

Hogwarts has an ambient vibe to it. It is not overtly decorated -- only cleaned up, polished, shined. Harry gets the idea that they are trying to make a good impression.

He sits, tired, holding a warm cup of coffee between cold fingers, counting down the seconds. Today, there will be no classes. Today, the champions of the Triwizard Tournament will be selected. Today, Harry will figure out if he can get emancipated, or if he will need to find a different method of getting out of the marriage that traps him.

The event will occur during lunch -- enough time for the other schools to select their champions and send them over here -- so until then Harry will drink his warm coffee, warm his cold fingers. He thinks about Tom and Luna and futiley tries to avoid doing the same with his parents.

The first part of the day is peaceful. It is calm. Well spent. He sits in on the other Houses’ conversations, their gambles and bets -- because Ravens are not typically into that sort of thing; too analytical to get to bet in the first place, let alone win against -- and he hears whispers of names of people he doesn’t know. The Hufflepuffs seem most excited for the drawing, certain that they’ll win and if they don’t then that they will, at least, have fun. They have enough school pride for the bulk of them. The Slytherins are more anxious.

“I’m sending my child to the winning school,” says a sixth year, “And I really like it here. So if you make it in… don’t lose, alright? And that goes for you, too, Potter.”

Harry, surprised that his presence was even noticed, sputters, “Uh. Duh. That -- that goes for you, too, you know.”

“If I make it in, we won’t have anything to worry about.”

“Sure,” says Harry. He is unreasonably upset at the arrogance. He could have stopped there. Could have kept his mouth shut in this one moment of House Unity displayed by his peer -- because, to them, it doesn't matter if a Snake, Lion, Raven, or Badger wins. Just that Hogwarts does. Harry should have left it at that. But he has never been good at being nice. “Though you’ve heard about overestimating oneself, I’m sure.”

Harry tenses up immediately, regretting and hating the words as soon as they’ve left his lips. This is why we hate each other, thinks Harry, bitterly. This is why Houses will always divide us -- because we let them. He expects sneers and frowns and subtly rude remarks to match his own--

But there is just laughter. He throws an arm around his shoulder, smiling, “Damn straight! You heard him, guys! Estimate nothing in isolation! Let’s win this sh*t!”

And the Slytherins cheer, more arms thrown around his shoulders, and Harry realizes he is the arrogant one here -- why does he think their compassion is so fragile that Harry’s words could break it? Harry cheers with them.

When the spirit dies down, Harry stands to leave, see what the Gryffindors are thinking, when the sixth year asks if he’d like to stick around for coffee. “You’re a funky man, Harry Potter. Join us.”

“...Alright.” He sits down and cradles a cup of coffee once again. He clears his throat, suddenly aware that he is sitting a group of students older than him, each of them looking at him like he is a child. Like he is a pet. A “f*cky man.” “So,” he tries, “you know my name -- so, I guess, what’s yours?”

One of the guys rolls his eyes. “To act as if you don’t already know us, Potter, is insulting--”

The sixth year holds up his hand. “Don’t be a jerk, Malfoy.”

The boy, Malfoy, scoffs.

“I’m serious. Watch yoself. Potter doesn’t know us -- it’s chill. Whatever. Got it?” To Malfoy’s silence, he repeats, “Got it?”

Malfoy all but spits, “Yeah. I got it.”

He nods his head. “Alright then.” Turning back to Harry, who is confused by their understanding, confused by their nature of which Harry could never try to replicate. “That’s Draco Malfoy, as you’ve heard. There’s Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, Tracey Davis… and me.” He holds out his hand. “I’m Cedric Diggory.”

Harry hesitates. But he shakes the hand anyway. He is thinking too much, presuming too much. The shake of a hand is not an admission of friendship. There is no commitment in greetings. (And if there was, would that be such a bad thing? His resistance to change is forever tiring.) “How many of you guys are in the raffle?”

“Oh, only the seventh years.”

“Really?” Harry asks.

“We wanted our chances to be the best, so we agreed only the most experienced and most likely to win to enter.”

“That’s--” Harry laughs. “Smart. Really smart. I dunno why us Ravens didn’t think of that.”

“Hm. Well. Housemembers are not always clearly defined by their Houses, so speak.”

“I’d say,” says Harry. “You’re the least Slytherin Snake I’ve ever met.” You’re like me.

“I get that a lot,” says Cedric.

“An understatement,” mutters Malfoy. Harry buries his smile in his cup.

Cedric rolls his eyes. “I used to wonder why I was even Sorted here -- but now I believe Salazar chose me for a reason. To better his House? Something significant. Important. I don’t know.”

Malfoy laughs and says something about “the ways people cope” but Harry isn’t laughing. Harry gets it.

Salazar chose him for a reason and it is a good one. He is the reins on Malfoy. He has said something not demonizing Lions and was not only not shamed for it but cheered for it. He is the least Slytherin Snake Harry’s ever met. If there are more like him, there’s a reason. And it’s Cedric Diggory.

Salazar Slytherin chose him for a reason. Harry hopes something similar applies to him.

“Did you pull your name out of the running, Potter? I know my friend had asked you not to, and you didn’t seem very, hah… Agreeable with the idea, and all--”

“Wait,” says Harry and the joy in him dies a little. If he is talking about who he thinks he is… “Who’s your friend?”

“Julian Jackson -- you probably don’t know his name. Uh. Seventh year? Ravenclaw? Teaching Assistant? He’s only mentioned you once or twice, but, dude, you’ve clearly made an impression--”

Go to Hell rings in Harry’s head again. There is guilt with it. And confusion. Someone who Harry outwardly insulted, dismissed, treated with not even an ounce of respect… still likes him, in the arbitrary way one likes a stranger. “No,” says Harry. His voice does not sound like his own. That’s why I'm pulling out. Relating to his condition... Oh, god. When will he stop tearing vulnerable people? “Listen, I’ve got to go--”

“Oh, geez, I’m sorry if I’ve said some--”

Here, Harry wants to reassure him. No. It is not your fault. You have nothing to apologize for. It is alright. I am alright. Thank you for the coffee. Thank you for the kindles. Thank you for inviting me to sit with you. And thank you, really. For everything.

He wants to. But the words don’t match his tongue and the hunger gnawing at him is not kind to his psych so he stands and says, for no real reason at all, “Whatever. Join your friend in Hell for all I care.”

Walking away, he hears laughter and he knows that even his insults have not dulled their joy around today. He is like a kitten, clawing furiously at nothing he can break. His efforts to do otherwise are just cute.

For that, he supposes he is glad. It is better they remain unaffected than to be affected negatively.

He still has some time to burn, so he lays in the grass, content to soak up some sun. He will treasure this small gift of life. He thinks many times that beside him, another figure lies. When he opens his eyes back up, there is never anybody there. His mind is playing tricks on him.

His mind is telling him he is lonely and he almost wants to listen, almost does, when a half hour before noon a letter arrives. Harry pets the owl -- recognizing it, as he does, as Luna’s. It’s weird. She already sent her weekly letter.

It is short, this out of the schedule, out of the ordinary letter… but not sweet.

Harry,

Something has gone terribly wrong. I am not sure how or why but I do not ask much of you, okay? I don’t ask a lot. I don’t ask for anything. But I really, really need you to believe me when I say that I never wanted this to happen. I did everything right, everything in my power to make sure it didn’t.

But it did. And I want you to know I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I ask that you don’t hold it against me.

Okay?

Okay.

-- Luna.

Its implications are terrifying. His mind goes to how today is a special day, how Hogwarts is filled with more school pride than at any given moment in the last century… how the Beauxbatons’ champions will be drawn before theirs.

Luna, thinks Harry, breathless, worried. You promised. You said you didn’t.

You didn’t.

You wouldn’t.

You didn’t.

He has no time to think more about it, to make any more suspicions before they are confirmed. ‘Luna would not do this’ is on constant repeat in his head as he checks the time again. It is noon. Time for lunch, time for the drawing of the names. Life is quick. It gives you no time for insecurity.

He steps foot into the Great Hall slightly late. The foreign students have already arrived. The staff table is crowded with what must be the Headmasters (or mistress, or whatever) of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, as well as their selected plus ones.

Beauxbatons leader is a woman. She is tall and thin (so very thin) with sleek black hair. She is pretty. Also reserved. She sits the furthest away from Dumbledore and seems happy to do so. Beside her, her plus one, is a short man with a large smile and ugly eyes.

The Durmstrang Headmaster is a drunk and happy old man. He is not pretty, but he speaks in a way that he doesn't have to be. His plus one is a short woman who is obviously his wife and is more so obviously in love with him.

Harry is reminded of his parents and then tears his eyes away. f*ck his parents. He must keep reminding himself of that.

Their champions, already chosen, are scattered throughout the lunch tables. Harry sits with his Ravenclaws, listening to the chatter around him but not really, trying to spot the foreign robes among them. It is a hard thing to do. He notices one of the Durmstrang candidates -- someone Harry does not know with the build of a Quidditch player -- among the Badgers.

That is as far as he gets before Dumbledore rises from his seat, lazy smile on his face. He claps once and the Hall falls silent. “Students of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, and Durmstrang Institute! It is my and Hogwarts’ humble pleasure to be the HOST of the 124th and official reinstatement of the Triwizard Tournament!” Rounds of applause wrack the Great Hall. He waits for silence with a patient look. What he says next, and the next ten minutes in general, is more of a punch in the gut than slap of the face to Harry's mental state. Dumbledore continues: “Throughout the year, the foreign champions will be attending class with us -- schedules to be arranged very soon, I assure you -- so, please, though you may be tempted to be rude to them because of the competition, bear in mind that they are your new peers for the year and residents of Hogwarts and will be treated as such!

“To first welcome the Headmaster and Mistress! Of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic we have the joy,” and joy is said lightly, is said as lie, “of accommodating Madame Mouton Vicieux!”

She, the tall woman with black hair rises, rises and bows to much applause and that’s great and all but Harry is busy feeling nauseous.

Mouton Vicieux.

Oh. My. f*ckING god. Mouton Vicieux! CEO of the Butterflies, eating disorder cult! Here! In Hogwarts! And it makes sense then, why Harry recognized the name despite his inability to place it. She is the Headmistress of one of the most popular wizarding schools in Europe.

And now she is here, within reach. To be sitting so close to someone so disgusting…

If that has him in shock what Dumbledore says later will have him dead.

“And from Durmstrang Institute, we have Sir Lapo!” Another rise, applause, sit. Harry can barely process it. He isn’t sure he claps and isn’t sure he didn’t. He cannot see anything other than her face, imprinting itself onto his mind. As a gift. It will help you achieve your goals. Harry reminds himself to breathe. She has Tom now, thinks Harry. She’ll be a Squib soon and Tom’ll get his stupid ass form from it so whatever. It is fine. I am fine. It doesn’t matter.

“To welcome the foreign champions, we first have, from Durmstrang, Vixen Shallows!” There is loud applause and cheering, whooping and screams. Vixen rises from the Hufflepuff table and flexes, grinning.

Apparently, he is popular.

Dumbeldore says, endearing tone in his voice once Vixen’s stood himself in front of the staff table, where the champions are to gather before they’re taken out back and talked to, “Thank you, Vixen. Also from Durmstrang, we welcome,” not Luna not Luna not Luna she wouldn’t, “Luna Lovegood!”

She rises from the Gryffindor table. Her uniform is entirely embroidered with flowers and birds and it is beautiful, she is beautiful, with dragonfly clips in her hair and a sheepishly and small smile on her face and she is beautiful, really, she is… but her presence here, somewhere Harry hoped sacred, forbidden. Well. It makes her ugly.

She joins Vixen at the head of the Great Hall.

“From Beauxbatons, we first have Sally Peick!” A short girl at the Ravenclaw table with dreads and soft brown eyes. She walks with confidence and pride. She grins like a winner. “Also from Beauxbatons,” and here, Dumbledore does something he has done already twice this evening; surprise him, “Tom Riddle!”

At the Slytherin table. Tall, dark brown hair, sharp gray eyes. Tom Riddle.

Tom f*ckING Riddle. The Dark Lord Voldemort’s son. Of course. Of course. Of course! This is the fifth year, the year of change! The year of f*ck you, Harry, f*ck you in particular! He’s in a room with the son of a war criminal who’s other half Harry’s been in contact with, the leader of a cult who Harry hopes to help Squib-ify, and the girl he is in an arranged marriage to. Great. Just f*cking great.

Dumbledore, like life, does not wait for him to gather his composure. He summons the goblet in front of him. “And now, for the moment of truth, we will draw for Hogwarts’ own champions!” There is screaming and pride so loud Harry thinks the deaf could hear it and Harry is only sad that he’s too f*cked up to join in. The first name, scribbled across a slip of paper, pops out in a burst of flame. Dumbledore grabs him and reads off something that would have shocked him five minutes ago but now only shakes him slightly, “Harry Potter!”

The Ravens, for the first time in a long time, are beyond happy to have him in their House. As Harry walks, shell shocked, slow, to the front of the table, they chant his name. He looks at Luna Lovegood, who won’t meet his eyes, and Tom Riddle… who will.

He looks out into a sea of people, almost half now chanting his name, and laughs with no feeling. This should feel good. But right now, he feels nothing.

“And, finally,” he grabs the slip of paper from the air, “we welcome Julian Jackson!”

TWO Ravens, aren’t the birds just overjoyed, it’s their lucky f*cking DAY --they’re so god damn HONORED and they’re YELLING WHWHWHWWOO!!!!!

Except Harry thinks f*ck that. Except Harry thinks that he could not have shoved himself into a worse set of circ*mstances.

… And all things considered, he doesn't think it’s luck. Yeah. yeah, looking around? Looking around, it doesn't feel like luck.

You know what it feels like?

It feels rigged.

..xox..

The hint for the first task is Mockingjay. Harry has some ideas, but they’re all distant. Julian keeps trying to catch his eyes and Harry keeps not letting him. The room is stuffy and stiff and quite honestly suffocating.

He remembers wanting to thank Tom for giving him the nail in the coffin, the final reason Harry kept his name in the drawing. Emancipation. It’s a great idea, right? A great idea in theory, right?

Yeah. Right. In theory. In execution, it feels like what it was: a terrible idea spawned by half a Dark Lord with only himself on the mind.

In execution, it has Harry Potter trapped in a room with the four people he’d never like to be in a room with again.

And you know the worst part? Well. Not the worst part, but it’s up there. It definitely ties for first.

The worst part is as Harry leaves the backroom with the other champions, who all seem happy with the situation, who find it ideal, Mouton Viciuex grabs him lightly by the shoulder. He looks at her with wide eyes and swallows breaths and she just smiles. Sweet and pretty, she just smiles. It is not fair. “Hey,” she says, gently, her voice soft. “You forgot something.”

“I did?” he says, quiet. He didn’t. He knows he didn’t.

He knows he did not forget anything. But he did send something, and that’s just as bad. That’s worse.

“You did,” she affirms. She reaches into her robes and holds out the letter he resent her. And, on top of that, Tom’s journal. “These are yours,” she tells him.

And he can’t say no, can he? He can’t do jack sh*t. She’s won here, won so far, and she knows it. “Yeah,” he says, taking them. “They are.”

“I’m glad they are back to their rightful owner,” she says.

“Me too.”

“I’m excited to see how you’ll do in the Tournament,” she says.

“Me too,” he says again.

She smiles. “I look forward to working with you in the future, if conditions permit it.”

Working with. No. There is no ‘with’ here. There is only against. He is not her friend. He is not even her acquaintance.

He’s her f*cking victim.

So no, Harry’s not looking forward to anything regarding her other than watching her f*cking DIE.

But Harry doesn’t say that. His fight has drained of him over the day and now there is only a reluctant, dull acceptance to do what must be done, do what he knows deep down he wants and needs to do. So he doesn’t say that. He doesn't say any of that. He parrots, one last time, “Me too.”

..XoX..

“Unimportant, unremarkable,

Unworthy of discussion

A concussion

Caused by faltered grace

I am flattered

Kneecaps shattered

By a baseball bat of fate.”

-- Harry Potter, “The Moon.”

Chapter 8 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Trapped,

No more time,

No more freedom

No more weeks,

No more months,

No more seasons.”

-- Hit The Snooze, The Living Tombstone.

.XoX.

Raven Tower has never been so crowded. Members of every House flood the area. sh*tty pop songs are blasting. There are banners and streamers and a buffet, fit with probably spiked punch and red solo cups. Blue bleeds into red and green merges with yellow and, though Harry’s unsure how many foreign champions are partying with Hogwarts, even they are uncaring about who they’re dancing with.

Oh, yes. Bigotry is dead tonight. In the morning, no longer caught in the high of adrenaline, alcohol, victory, they will hate each other off of the color of their robes or the color of their face or blood.

Tonight, though, bigotry is dead.

This includes everyone except, for the record, Harry Potter. He sits in the corner, glaring at everyone who comes to talk to him, large bottle of vodka in his hand. He occasionally sips from it. Mostly he watches.

There have been many instances in his life in which he related to The Hunger Games. This is one of them.

Katniss Everdeen mentions the “hollow days” in book one. No matter how much you eat, you remain hungry. You could eat all day and never reach ‘stuffed,’ never be full. It is a result of famine. On days like that, you are to indulge yourself, even if you will never be satiated.

Harry’s had his fair share of days like that -- when no food is enough food and he can skip class to eat more and still feel like he is starving. The hollow days are not good days. Harry’s days, in general, rarely are.

Today is a hollow day in a different way. Today was supposed to be a good day but it’s not. He has not had a day this bad in a long, long while, and that separates this hollow day from the rest; it was almost the best day of his life.

Today’s emptiness also has little to do with food. When he binges, he knows there is danger there. His stomach could tear or his heart could stop, etc, etc, whatever, whatever. But it is the danger that exists normally, in his day to day life, heightened only slightly.

This danger, caused by this good day turned hollow, has to do with alcohol; no matter how drunk he gets, it’s not enough to drown out the thunder of his shaky thoughts.

Every once in a while someone will yell, over the music and to cheers in return, that the Ravens are lucky bastards. Harry will huff and keep drinking.

(This is not lucky. This is rigged.)

Cedric Diggory approaches him an hour and a half into the party. Harry is steadily working his way through his second bottle. “If it ain’t the man of the hour!” Cedric greets. He kneels in front of him. His smile wanes when he picks up the empty bottle. “You seem, ah, cheerful.”

“Actually,” says Harry, swishing the bottle in his hand, “I’m hoping to die of alcohol poisoning.”

“Would be great for the competition.”

“A great thing to consider when making future bets.”

“Not likely,” says Diggoy, settling himself on the ground. “I have the right potions with me, if things go south. So I’m sticking around, party pooper.”

“I’m hardly a party pooper,” says Harry. “Hell, it’s partly my party.” He furrows his brows. “Why do you carry around potions for alcohol poisoning?”

He smiles nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “Happens when you’re besties with the TA to the Potions Professor.”

Harry drinks again. “Julian. The other king of the party. Haven’t seen him around.” He is glad for that, but it also confuses him. He’s gotten seven offers to ride upon someone’s shoulders and many string bead necklaces thrown around him. He is wearing a flower crown and has been asked to dance with over twenty times. Harry is not partying, not talking to anyone outside of his isolated corner, but he is not mistaken; He very much is the heart of the party. Given that he is not the sole Hogwarts champion, he can guess he is not alone in the attention.

But Julian is not upon anyone’s shoulders, and there are no overt signs of obsession elsewhere among the masses.

So where is he?

“Julian’s,” Cedric says slowly, not meeting his eyes, “sitting this one out.”

“You say that oddly, Cedric, dear,” notes Harry dully. “Like he’s not just sitting this one out.”

Cedric sighs. “Do you remember your conversation with him? At the library?”

“Somewhat,” says Harry. “Enough of it.” Enough to know that I have a lot in relation to someone I want none to.

“He didn’t seem weird, did he? He didn’t seem to be lying about anything he said?”

“What would he be lyi--” Then it hits him. “That bastard.”

“He’s not a bastard--”

Notes:

hi! so i don't usually do end notes (& i might delete this one later) but i'd like to talk abt some things i guess!
i would rly love some comments on this!! they give me motivation & will lessen time between updates. & speaking of, i am SO sorry this one took like two weeks or something to write. i've been working on this chapter for over a week & it just never seemed to get done, or i never seemed to find the time. i am sorry but i hope you enjoyed it! & i am sorry that not much happened here
so yeah!!!! i also bought my first pack of tarot cards & i love them & might share a reading of mine w/ you guys in the future if any of you are interested!!

Chapter 9 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Oh why,

Oh are we so in denial,

When we know we’re not happy here?”

-- Hey Ya!, OutKast

.XoX.

Harry is skipping class on the floor and prepping a needle when Tom Riddle rises from the diary and joins him. Harry blinks at him. “Tom?” he asks. “What…”

“I was able to gather enough magic from Mouton to have a form,” he answers. It is, as Harry might write it, a soggy form. It is ghostly and only barely not transparent and a thin line of something connects him to the diary. He does not so much as walk across the floor as glide. He is, besides this, the spitting image of a younger looking Marvolo.

The fact, though, that Tom has a form at all is impressive. And weird. “But she had you for, like, two days. And she still has magic. I thought you were gonna make her a Squib.”

Tom winces. And then he starts lying. He will never outgrow that part of him. “Admittedly, I needed more time. More magic. She snuffed me out fairly quickly and, I presume, returned me to you. Since she is not drained completely, I am attached still the diary. In more ways than one. If it dies, I believe I will as well.”

“You’re still able to do magic or whatever, right?” asks Harry absently.

Tom frowns. “I suppose.”

“Great. Grab your diary and get out of here. Our business is done, right? So shoo.” He wraps a cord around his arm, tightening it. He takes the needle out of its case and fills it.

“What is that?” inquires Tom, leaning over him.

Harry makes sure the needle is free of air. “It’s called the eating disorder to drug abuse pipeline. Ever heard of it?”

“No,” says Tom.

“Guess your knowledge is a little outdated, Tom.”

Voldemort would have been affronted at that. Voldemort does not want to know but needs to -- and the idea that his arsenal of knowledge is somehow lacking would surely send him spiraling.

If he was Voldemort, Harry Potter would be dead where he stands.

But Tom Riddle is not Voldemort. Most importantly, he does not want to be. So instead Tom rolls his eyes and kneels beside him and does what Voldemort would never do without ulterior motive: show concern. “I was gone for less than a week and you’ve turned to drugs? What happened, Harry?”

“They drawed the champion names for the Tournament.” The needle sinks into his skin and Tom can see his shoulders relax as the cold liquid flitters through his flood.

Tom’s frown deepens. He clears his throat and asks, “Yes? Did you get picked?”

“Yup.”

Tom stares at him a moment more. “Yup? That’s it? That’s what got you here? What?”

“God,” moans Harry. “I wish.”

Tom grabs Harry’s wrists in his hands. “What happened?”

“You,“ snarls Harry, pulling his arms away from Tom. “You happened, Tom, you and your ridiculous other half.”

Other less than half, but yes. “Voldemort?” says Tom. He feels anger and bloodlust -- of course he’s around to mess this up -- but he knows that Voldemort feels that, too. It is the application of that that matters. So Tom jumps to nothing. Not to anger or insanity because what good is power without patience?

When Tom burns Voldemort he will burn himself, too, and he will deserve it. It is all the more reason not to act like it. “What,” asks Tom, “did he do?”

“He had a son, that’s what he did. The bastard. And then Luna Lovegood’s here -- and Julian, the guy I told who go to hell -- and Mouton, the woman I sent you to, yeah, she’s the Headmaster of Beauxbatons!” He breaks down into a fit of hysterical giggles. “Everything’s gone to sh*t.”

“That… That is SO MUCH information, I don’t even know where to begin.” Tom knows where he wants to begin, though. “Voldemort has a son?”

It is unlikely. Tom had been sure, as a 16 year old, that he was not one for sexual relations. He was barely one for romantic relations. Even so, he is gay. What business does Voldemort have with a woman? And Voldemort said himself, all those years ago, that he is in love with a man.

Tom speculates there might be a strategic, perhaps political, reason to sire a heir. It is not impossible. (But it is unlikely.)

And… and there is something else troubling about it, too. “How old is he?” Eleven years ago, Voldemort had contacted him. Had sent him off with a mission, a task, and then abandoned him upon failure.

Eleven years ago, and no mention of a child.

“They’re saying seventeen. Didn’t you know?” asks Harry, but there is not as much unfriendliness as usual.

“No,” says Tom, furrowing his brows. “What did you inject yourself with?”

“Liquid dopamine.”

“Oh,” says Tom. “Isn’t that highly addictive?”

“Yup! Are you leaving now, or what?”

He’s not. Tom instead sits on the floor beside Harry, who scoots away from him. “I intend to kill Voldemort,” answers Tom. “But you must be aware of my second objective--”

Harry’s not aware of any of his objectives, actually. He has tried to steal Harry’s skin, his magic, and though it is a task partly accomplished… something is stopping him.

Harry Potter is special. Tom wants to know what makes it so and he wants it for himself -- but he realizes now, upon the inability to, he cannot take it. And maybe that is for the better.

Voldemort’s not one for asking. And there must be some distinction, mustn’t there?

The objective Harry is aware of is different, though, partly a lie, and much simpler: Voldemort seems something in him, and Tom wants to see it, too. “I am aware,” says Harry. He sets a journal -- not Tom’s -- on his lap. “I also do not care.”

Urgency overtakes him. “I’m not him.”

“So you say. Regardless, that’s not of the question.”

“Then what is?” Tell me so I can fix it. Tell me so I can stay. And he wants to. Stay, that is. He couldn’t say why.

Harry blinks at him like he’s being stupid, and Tom’s prepared to admit he might be. He is better off stupid than arrogant. Arrogance splits your soul and later burns it. “Uh. Tom. We’re not friends.”

Tom blanks. That’s not the response he was expecting. “What?”

Harry rolls his eyes and starts writing. “You only want me around for whatever Voldemort sees in me. That’s not friendship.”

Like you would know anything about friendship. But that’s a mean thought. Voldemort is known for his cruelty (and so there must be some distinction) (and Tom Riddle is not Voldemort) so he doesn’t say that. “I am not around just for that.”

It might be a lie. It might not be, though. He will not find himself egotistical enough to be sure either way.

Harry continues on like he doesn’t believe him, like he didn’t even hear. That’s fair. Tom deserves that, this distrust. He deserves a lot of things. “And he’s wrong, by the way.”

“Who?”

“Voldemort. He’s wrong. Whatever he thinks I am, I’m not. Okay? I’m not special.”

You have no idea how wrong you are. But he might. Enhanced surety is a Voldemort thing. (And Tom is not Voldemort.) “I am open,” says Tom, “to disagreement.”

Harry rolls his eyes. His quill scratches against the parchment. “So you’re still on this.”

“On what?”

“This act. This lie -- you’re not him, that’s what you keep saying, right?” Harry laughs. “You keep acting like you’re so different. You act like wanting to die is revolutionary to your character. Let’s face it, Tom,” he locks eyes with Tom, “You’re still Voldemort.”

“I’m -- I’m not.” This, he is not open to being wrong about. He has no idea why, but… he needs Harry to understand this. Just this. At the very least. (He refuses to be mistaken as someone that hurt him so.) “Voldemort has staked everything -- his entire identity -- upon power and living forever. I don’t want power. I don’t want to live forever.”

“Then what are you still doing here?” He throws his arms down. Tom glances at the page he’d been working on and notes that all words written have been promptly scratched out.

“What do you mean?”

“I asked you to leave and you won’t -- and Voldemort listens to no one but himself. You wanna be different? You wanna say again that you’re ‘not him’? Then act like it!” Harry snaps. “Leave! Kill Voldemort and yourself like you said you would and leave me the Hell alone!”

Tom could.

And he wants to. Heaven knows Harry Potter is not easy company. For all he knows, Voldemort was once again wrong and there is nothing else to get out of him. As for the magic connecting them… well, he has enough in the reserves to find someone else before they dwindle.

He does not need Harry Potter to kill Voldemort. Doing so on his own was the plan all along.

So Tom almost leaves. It is a close thing. But Tom doesn’t. Can’t. Because he doesn’t need Harry Potter -- not for his mission with Voldemort, not with his magic and skin snatching needs, not for Tom’s own companionship, not for anything -- … Harry Potter needs him.

Well. Harry Potter needs somebody and Tom, Tom can do that. He knows Voldemort never would and spite’s as good a reason as any.

Spite’s not the only reason for staying, though.

Tom can see himself in Harry’s anger. It is the attempted isolation of someone who has been hurt and refuses to be hurt again. I do not want friends. I may need them but I will work to ignore that until I don’t need to work anymore. This situation is familiar.

Harry’s like him. But not enough so -- and that’s the main issue. When Tom needed help and was refused it -- or rejected it himself -- he lived on. It is a horrid life, filled with regrets and remorse and detestment and a finishing dream of fire. But it is a life. He lived on.

Harry’s not like him here. Tom’s worked to destroy the things he hates and that has historically included everything but him. Harry’s worked to destroy only the thing he hates the most so, no. Harry is not like him. Harry won’t just live on.

So Harry’s wrong; leaving would be the most Voldemort thing to do. And you know what? He is not Voldemort! He is Tom Riddle!

And it is time to start acting like it. “What else did you take?” Tom asks.

Harry blinks at him. He’s ripped out the soiled page of the other journal and holds it, bundled, in his hand. It is shaking. “Did you hear a word I just said?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m asking.” He leans over and gently grabs Harry’s arm, turning it over. “You mentioned an eating disorder to drug abuse pipeline -- one shot of extra dopamine is not what you were talking about, were you?”

Harry reddens. “What’s it to you? Do the words snod off mean nothing to you?”

“I worry,” says Tom, ignoring the slight because he understands where it is coming from.

“You -- what?”

“Well,” he says, quietly, “You are not the only one who wants friends… regardless of if I think I need them or not.” A lie. Close enough to the truth that it doesn’t matter. And close enough that it might be true soon enough.

Harry watches as Tom looks his arm over with a stoic expression. “You want friends?”

“Mhm.”

“Voldemort… doesn’t want friends.”

“That’s right. He doesn't.” He wants followers. He wants soldiers. Maybe even a lover. But not friends.

“You want me to be friends with you?” He sounds bewildered. Hopeful, even. “I’m -- I’m an asshole, dude.”

That didn’t stop Julian, or Luna. The only difference here is that though they were not stopped, they were pushed away. And though they can’t be blamed for that, Tom refuses to have the same happen to him. “I know,” syas Tom. “So am I. We can work on that. Both of us. Together.”

Harry says, smally, “Okay.”

Tom asks, because he knows Harry wants to answer, “What have you been writing about?”

Harry huffs and hugs the journal close to his chest. “The Rot. The uh -- the story we talked about.”

“How’s it coming along?”

“It’s not. I mean,” he chuckles, “it’s not like I’m in the best contention to focus or anything, but damn.”

“Oh,” says Tom. “Writing block?”

“I don’t get writer’s block,” says Harry, defensive.

Sure. I think you’ve been pushing yourself for years because you latch onto the things you do -- the few things you are able -- and make them a part of you. ‘If I am not my eating disorder, who am I? If I am not a writer, who am I?’ You push even when you are doing horribly, mentally, because that fact doesn’t matter to you. And I think now you can’t push anymore. But he is a friend not a therapist so he just asks, “Why aren’t you in the best condition to focus right now?”

“I guess -- drugs. I guess.” It is like a wall breaking inside him, finally allowing himself to talk about it, and the words spill out of him. “Uh. Been drinking on and off for a while, vanishing the trash -- oh, and I took some pills. Don’t know what kind.”

Tom considers this. “Where’d you get them?”

Harry has the decency to look sheepish. “Snuck into the dorms and stole some. The bottles are magic, though, so they replace themselves.”

“You snuck in?” He looks around. “And then returned here, wherever here is? How’d you not get caught?”

Harry grabs what seems to be the air beside him and drapes it over his arm. It disappears entirely. Tom gapes and Harry laughs a little. “The family cloak. Nifty thing, isn’t it? We’re in the hallway by the Divination room. Have hardly had any visitors in the time I’ve been here.”

An Invisibility Cloak is impressive. But not what Tom wants to ask about. “And how long is that? The time you’ve been here?”

“A week.” It’s said tensely.

Something in his voice prompts Tom to take a good look at him. He is pale and his lips have cracked around the edges -- his hair is greasy and eyebags heavy. “Have you… had anything to drink? Other than vodka? Or eat?”

Harry rubs an oily piece of hair between his fingers. He tries not to meet his eyes. “No,” he admits.

“You should be dead.”

“I am more durable than the average person,” he says with a shrug, but there is nothing casual about it.

And…

And Tom thinks of his neverending fountain of magic, his sustained living that should have needed long ago -- and he thinks Harry is right. He is unsure of why. But they’ll figure that out together. That’s what friends are for.

“You should talk to the mediwitch,” says Tom. “The body is not always kind to continued neglect. Unless you want me to take care of you? I am experienced in healing magic to some extent.”

Harry hauls himself up with a huff. “No, that’s alright. Madam Pomfrey, ah, knows me well.”

Harry gathers his scattered things in his arms with Tom’s help. “Is that so?” asks Tom.

They begin walking. “Yeah,” laughs Harry. “So that’ll be fine. Can’t say I’m happy to be heading out into the world, though.”

“Because of Luna Lovegood’s arrival?”

“And Marvolo. And Mouton. And Julian.”

“That’s quite the circ*mstance.”

“Oh, I know. And you know what your other half’s son has been saying?”

“Do tell.”

“He’s been straight up cappin--”

“Cappin?’ Tom asks.

Harry rolls his eyes but clarifies anyway, “Lying. Been telling people me and him are in a marriage contract.”

Tom feels something similar to shock. “You and Marvolo? He’s lying -- is that what he said?”

“Well, he’s doing that weird little back and forth thing, you know? ‘I might have lied, who says I’m lying,’ you get the idea,” Harry rolls his eyes.

“Did he tell you why?”

“He wanted to. I didn’t let him.”

“Huh,” says Tom. “Interesting.”

“Not really.”

Harry might believe that but Tom doesn’t. Puzzle pieces are lining up in his head. Something is clicking and it is wonderful. It is the sound of opportunity. “Could you do me something, Harry?”

“You’ve got a weird tone of voice there, Tom, so maybe.”

Tom was not aware his voice was doing anything different than normal. He supposes it can’t be helped. It is not everyday something like this happens. “A maybe will do. Can you give me to Marvolo?”

Harry frowns. “You’re still caught up on that?”

“He’s my main self’s child. By extension, he’s mine, too. Of course I’m still caught up on that.” Tom can tell Harry is still not convinced, so he says, “He might also know about the current location of the other Horcruxes, or how many there are now.”

“Horcruxes?”

“Things like me. Like the diary.”

Harry sighs, ruffling his hair. “Alright. But if he doesn’t return you in a couple of days, I’ll kill him myself.”

Tom knows he is exaggerating his protectiveness. But it is nice. Having a friend is nice. “I’ll hold you to that, Harry.”

Harry is checked into the Hospital Wing. Once he’s settled through the many worried comments of Pomfrey, he owls Tom’s diary with Tom inside to Marvolo.

Tom, in the meanwhile, thinks. Stews is a better word for it.

Eleven years ago, he thinks, and no mention of a child.

And maybe there is a reasonable, matching explanation for not telling Tom about their(?) child. f*cked up and not a real reason -- but that’s all of Voldemort’s logic. Something along the lines of apathy. Cruelty, if he is lucky.

There are many ways in which Voldemort would ignore telling him of Marvolo.

But you know what Tom thinks?

Tom thinks there wasn’t any child to tell about.

.XoX.

“I am made of forgiveness

I am forged of fire and hatred

I am a product of time and time passed

Give me your heart and I will give you mine

I am made of forgiveness

But I was not born this way.”

-- Harry Potter, “Strength.”

Notes:

thanks to everyone for all the lovely comments on the last chapter!!!!! please consider checking out my other story Harry Potter & the Hand God for a lighter read!! i'm so glad i got this update out at a good rate (1 week exactly!) compared to other times lol!! comments help! again thank you all!!!

Chapter 10 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Though resolute you may

Pretend to be inside your walls,

The people will soon realize

That your feeble body can’t forestall,

The evitable end that we all will one day meet.

You are human, you are dying.

Yes, I know,

It’s bittersweet.”

-- The Court Jester, thquib.

.XoX.

Tom arrives in the hands of Marvolo that evening. There is lots to think about. Lots to do. And lots to hide.

He begins the conversation with a handful of goals in mind. First; figure out the location of the other horcruxes and how many, exactly, exist as of this moment. His knowledge of that is expired. It is time to renew it.

He wishes also to confirm an aching suspicion he has of Marvolo himself. (There is no child to tell about.) This will be the easiest. This answer is inherent.

And… For Harry, he will figure out the source of Marvolo’s fascination with him. Voldemort does not lie for no reason.

Tom begins: Hello there, Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Why, Marvolo writes, I could say the same to you.

You know what I am, then?

I’d be stupid not to. Tom thinks he’d be stupid either way. But he is aware that he was not asking for an opinion, so he doesn’t say that.

I live, writes Tom. It is the wrong word for the state he is in now -- a life for a life and he has yet to take one -- but he also does not know the right one. Did you know that, too?

We were unaware of the condition of the first horcrux, answers Marvolo. We had assumed you worse for wear. But it is apparent you are fine.

We? asks Tom, but he recognizes the wording. The handwriting, the arrogance, the magic. There is nothing unfamiliar here.

Voldemort and I. You know what I am, then?

I, writes Tom, have had some theories. And right now, they are all being confirmed.

I am the locket.

Not the ring, which Voldemort had told Tom of. There are at least three in total. Tom suspects there are more. When someone goes that far… why, there is hardly any going back, let alone stopping.

Going by Marvolo, huh? Not Tom or Voldemort. I suppose we have always liked that distinction. Tom continues, A horcrux in far better condition than I, I hope. He doesn’t, actually. But it is better to lie when you want information. Some things he will never outgrow.

Of course. Voldemort has held me close over the years and wherever a plot presented itself in which I was needed, we took the opportunity.

Something similar happened to me. This situation is familiar. These days, Tom is living in a partial state of deja vu.

Similar, yes. But not the same.

Yeah? What was the difference, Marvolo?

I succeeded, says Marvolo simply. You did not.

Yes, writes Tom. And succeeding matters SOOO much -- more than anything, more than one of the ties to your immortality. What good is one diary when you have a locket, a ring? Of what VALUE is it?

Tom remembers what he said to Harry and feels it sink deeper into his bones. This is a small sin tacked onto a long list of many. There is no use to his anger if he wields it like Voldemort.

He seals himself in sanity (because he knows what insanity can do to you) (because he is not Voldemort), and continues, Upon my failure, you did not retrieve me from the Potter household. I only wonder why.

Your failure -- Tom notes he loves to speak as if he and Voldemort are one and loves to forget that he and Tom are, too. This failure is not singular. This failure was shared -- was not predicted. Things were considered and plan Bs were made and under well. There was no room to retrieve you.

There was no room to retrieve him? His own soul? No. VHe means they did not make room, did not see the reason to. It means it was Voldemort’s specialties, all wrapped up in one. It was apathy and it was cruelty. From a man like him, it is not at all unexpected.

They (and here and only here is Tom okay with the plurality of the situation, does Tom celebrate it) will burn for this. The locket, the ring, the diary, the main self. Those undiscovered. Every. Last. One.

Self and collective destruction is soothing so when Marvolo notes, Your magic seems stronger. Who are you draining? Tom is able to reply to him instead of insult him.

I got myself sent to the Headmaster of Beauxbatons, says Tom. It was not a fruitful endeavor, truth be told. I was snuffed out rather quickly. In less than two conversations, actually. He got her name and then he got sent home.

Ah, yes, writes Marvolo. Mouton. She is quite the character. Connected to the right people, too. It is a pity you chose so incorrectly.

Things slip together for Tom. He knows that Harry was investigating the Butterflies’ cult leader, their pseudo CEO. And Tom knows that not long afterwards, he was sent to Mouton. She, then, or her organization, are connected to the right people -- the few that would know about the horcruxes.

Though the list he draws up of who those people could be is short, it is also outdated. Tom will not be so arrogant to assume otherwise.

So, writes Tom, is apparent.

And yet… and now Tom does not as much sense suspicion as he is drowning in it. She sent you back. You must have got out of the Potter’s house somehow -- and whoever that is had sent you to her, and, now, to me. Or am I incorrect to assume that?

You’re smart, you know that? And Tom’s f*cked.

Of course. The flippantry is repulsive. So someone sent you to her and she sent you back. That’s curious, Tom.

Curious. The word rings a bell. As a boy, young, eleven, setting his first step into the world of magic. He is purchasing a wand. “Curious,” the wandmaker had said, “that you should share a wand core with someone so close in age with you, yes. A little boy came in here only a moment ago and matched with a phoenix feather of the same bird, yes, yes, how curious…”

The word rings a bell for Tom and so it must as well for Marvolo, even if he does not realize it. Tom and Voldemort are not the same but (they are similar) you cannot separate the chicken from the egg.

Unlike Tom, Marvolo is not one to dwell on it: Curious that you weren’t destroyed the moment she saw you and, subsequently, knew what you were.

Yes, well. The person who sent me here is connected to all the right people, too. Harry and the Butterflies’ letters, their gifts, their admiration. If Mouton saw it was sent by Harry -- and Tom has every reason to believe it was -- then of course. Of course she would not be so quick to destroy it.

To send it back to Harry, knowing that horcruxes do nothing but hurt people, is in character. She is not the only person helping sick people get sicker.

‘The person who sent you here’, notes Marvolo. I admit, your vagueness is intriguing. Why are you hesitant to say their name?

I’m not hesitant, says Tom. I am wary.

That is the same thing, Tom.

One is born of cowardliness. The other, wisdom. Try again and tell me that those are not different.

What do you have to be wary of? We are one.

Tom tries to act like that is not the stupidest f*cking thing he was ever heard. Like that means anything to him. Like being one stopped him from years of self isolation and unnerving solitude. I know that, throughout the years, we have killed in things other than necessity. Power plays. Control. To insight fear. I am wary because we -- and it hurts to write that, to put we instead of YOU -- might do it again.

Marvolo does not deny it. And if we did? If because they disgrace you or you overvalue them? What hurry do you have to get back to them?

Mouton was lackluster in gathering magic, answers Tom, because he knows an answer like ‘needlessly killing people is wrong’ would not work with him. It never has before. I was with her less than 48 hours before I was sent away. But getting her magic was not in my original plan.

I see. You’re draining magic from the unnamed fellow? The one that sent you to her and to me?

I have been. Since the moment I met them. A few weeks now. He is sad to say he is not lying. He is still not truthful with harry. But he is working on it. Change is a process and he cannot rush through it.

Then I fear I am confused, says Marvolo. They should be dead. There should be nothing to hurry back to.

It is a funny thing. They have so much magic, it is difficult to drain it all. They must be kept alive for a while longer. I need the rest of their magic and that takes, Marvolo, time. Privately, Tom doesn’t think this will happen. In order to have a form of his own, an official life, he needs to take someone else’s. To do this, he needs ALL of their magic. But Harry has a seemingly infinite amount of that. Tom will never take his life and, at this point, he does not want to. It requires, also, for you not to kill them.

Marvolo considers this. How long do you suspect it will take?

A few weeks more. Voldemort does not lie for no reason (and Tom is not Voldemort) (but they are similar) (but you cannot separate the chicken from the egg.)

When you are finished, find me. The password to Slytherin is Twenty Eight.

As in the sacred twenty-eight. Of course. Bigotry is sometimes engraved in even the most basic of way. Alright.

Did you have any reason to ask to be sent to me? Or did you just wish to inform our main self that you live on?

I need to be updated on our plans. He needs to work to change them. He would ask that Voldemort remove his horcruxes from their vessels, their enteral imprisonment, everlasting torture -- but he plans to do that himself in a different way. My owner mentioned in passing a war. Are we the cause of it? Are we progressing well?

War is too strong a word. Since… oh, 1966 or so, after years of gathering our forces and fighting for our means peacefully, we started using violence as a tool for our cause.

1966… Twelve years, then, since he was sentenced to the diary. Twelve years of being politically violent before getting violent violent. Tom can only be surprised he waited so long. Who are our enemies? My owner mentioned, too, a man named Gellert, also using violent means to achieve an end.

Perhaps we should wait to disclose information when you have a physical form, Tom. This is a way of closing down the conversation, and it is far from subtle. Gellert is a sore spot. He will keep that in mind. Perhaps he’ll even tell Harry, let him use that as he will. Any other questions?

I suppose, he writes. I worry for Voldemort's safety. How many horcruxes has he created? Three, yes, but how many more? How long will his hit list be?

He tries to be careful here, but there is no avoiding landmines when the topic at hand is paved with them.

The creation of horcruxes has not been detrimental to Voldemort’s health. It is said defensively.

Not what I was asking. But also telling. A wraith of himself is what Voldemort be now, from the sound of it. What a wonderful image. It would be beneficial for me to know about them in order to protect them.

It will be, writes Marvolo. It is not now.

Alright. Alright. Damn it. Damn it! Okay. Fine. Whatever. He can figure this out on his own -- that was the plan from the start, anyway. The location of the horcruxes are not out of reach. They are just pushed back. It is okay. He can get other, somewhat less vital information from Marvolo. One last question.

I am not sure how helpful I can be for you, with your current state, but do ask away. Oh, and now he is being condescending? Now he is being bitter, like he has any right to?

I’ve heard you've been cappin’ at Hogwarts.

Pardon?

Lying. Curse Harry for his infectious Muggle slang.

About what? asks Marvolo, insinuating there is not one lie circulating but many. Impressive, considering he’s only been here a little over a week.

A marriage contract.

Oh. I see. It’s true I am telling people I am engaged to one Harry Potter, if that is what you’re referring to.

May I ask why? For Harry. So he can undermine you while I undermine you. So I can further ruin your f*cking life.

The better question is; why do you know that?

It’s not the better question. It’s not even a f*cking question. You’ve not exactly been subtle about it, Marvolo. The whole school has heard about your engagement at this rate, I’m sure.

Not that, says Marvolo. Why do you know I’m lying?

Tom catches onto his suspicion. Harry Potter reportedly had an outburst during the--

And you believe him over me?

Yes, actually. Every time. We are not big on romantic attraction.

So your assumption is that I would not get married at all? Not that, if I did, it would be for alternative reasons?

I did not think of it like that, Tom tries but he knows it is already too late. He put one foot out of line and now his whole body is over.

The owner of the diary, then, is Harry Potter.

You really are sharp, aren’t you. God f*cking damnit. What worth is it denying it? Marvolo speaks like a man who has it all figured out and the real f*cked up thing is that, sometimes, he does.

It seems also you’ve dulled over time, Tom. You’ve lost your edge.

So it seems. Over time, Marvolo will lose his presumed everlasting life, but you don’t see Tom gloating about it, do you?

Worry not, though, Tom. I have no plans to harm our dearest Harry. He is to be my hubby, after all. The instant change in tone is both nauseating and insulting.

Why do you insist on lying?

Well, Tom. Who says I am lying?

Literally you.

Touche.

So, writes Tom, do you WANT to marry him? Is that it? To engage in a romance with a 15 year old is not the likely reason Voldemort would pull the locket from its slumber. Not likely, but not impossible. And also incredibly f*cked up. Tom would put nothing past him.

Something like that. Even more so f*cked up is that he did not deny it. But he did not confirm it, either. And Tom thinks this is only to belittle him. Tom wouldn’t put that past him, either. Why? Hasn’t Voldemort mentioned?

No, Marvolo, snarls Tom. You KNOW it’s a no. It is a nod to the fact that they left Tom, abandoned, trapped, alone for decades. It is a nod to the fact that Tom failed. And this offensive front is not without purpose; this, too, has struck a chord. You are just being mean.

Maybe, Marvolo admits.

It doesn't matter whether or not you want to marry Harry -- Harry doesn’t want to marry you. Though Tom doubts what Harry wants is exactly relevant. The dates of Tom getting sent off and Harry’s arranged marriages are too close. And here, another suspicion is being born. Marvolo wanting to marry Harry and Marvolo not being able to. There’s a connection here. Somewhere. And Tom intends to find it. Harry’s set to be wed to Luna Lovegood. And, at any rate, he’s to be emancipated. So even if you plan to get into even an arranged marriage with him, it would be wise to think again.

He’s to be emancipated? Writes Marvolo. It comes off as mocking and Tom... Tom does not like that. Not at any rate I know of.

Whatever do you mean?

I hear a lot about our dearest Harry, if I care to ask. And I do.

Tom doesn’t doubt it. It is insane what being supposedly related to a Dark Lord can do for you. A lot? Such as?

Such as the fact that he is not the most mentally nor physically healthy boy on the planet.

Ah, yes. His ENDOS. Harry hasn’t been exactly subtle about that, either. Tom’s heart aches for him. Your point?

My point is that the criteria for emancipation have changed drastically since your time. This is mocking, too. Your information is expired. You are outdated. You have failed and therefore are a failure.

Changed to what? he asks but… a part of Tom already knows. A part of Tom thinks it is a stupid question to ask.

Changed to include that you must prove you are of right mind and able to take care of yourself on your own, physically and mentally. As he is, he can’t do that.

Marvolo could be lying. For any reason, really, even if it’s stupid. He has lied before and is currently lying about Harry -- so why, pray tell, would he not be lying again, now?

But.

And, yes. There is always a but. Because something about this screams the way Tom tells the truth. (You cannot separate the chicken from the egg.) Something about this tells Tom that Marvolo lies. He lies a lot. But not now. Not about this.

Send me back to him, Tom writes. Will you?

Now? Why, our conversation was just getting good.

It wasn’t. He knows it wasn’t. Is that a no?

Alright, alright. I’ll send you off. But do keep one thing in mind, Tom?

What is that, Marvolo?

Don’t get attached.

Of course, lies Tom. We are better than that.

.XoX.

“Oh, I’m in love with Venus

Yeah, I’m over the moon

When the rain is pelting you,

And the static tends to deafen

Raise your voice and raise your heart

Cause our healing; that’s our weapon.”

-- Harry Potter, “Four of Wands.”

Notes:

starting an official update schedule: Every Thursday! if i'm late, i'm sorry, but i will be trying my best! i also have a 2k-3k weekly update fic alongside this so we can only hope for consistency.
this chapter was fun to write! i feel so many emotions abt it so tell me yours, too! hope you enjoyed it!

Chapter 11 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“I want, I want

To be a machine

And I want to be shiny,

Chrome,

And clean.

There’s something

(something, something)

Wrong with me.”

-- I Wanna Be A Machine, The Living Tombstone.

.XoX.

Time is a slow sludge over Harry’s too pale, too ragged body. Madame Pomfrey checks on him once every hour, her lips pulled taut in an expression that is not quite worry and is not quite disappointment.

He wonders what she thinks of him. He is not special, and she has seen boys and girls like him before. Are they a lost cause to her? A sinking ship, a car wreck? She can deal with only the physical side effects of an eating disorder. Despite everything she can do, she is no mind healer. Their conditions, the ability to help them… all of it is just out of her control, just out of reach.

He wonders, too, how that must feel. He is reminded of Cedric Diggory, another case of damage control. It hurts. The guilt of it all makes his already throbbing head ache.

He wonders how Luna Lovegood is dealing with this. All of this. Being here against Harry’s wishes. Being a candidate, hearing that Harry is hospitalized. He wonders if she blames herself. If she’s assumed the two are connected. Drunk and stupid, he’d told everyone he was in an arranged marriage with her. How idiotic can he be? How much more will he hurt her? It seems some days he will never stop.

He wonders how his parents are taking this.

Then he reminds himself Luna betrayed him and he does not (want to) care for his parents, and pulls his blanket higher up to his chin.

.xox.

After sending Tom off, there is no buffer for his destructive mind. With his friend (and is that not lovely? That for the first time in what seems like forever, he can say that in earnest?) not around, with no personified voice of reason, left all to himself, he realizes that even he does not want to be around him.

He has not been keen on living for a while. Among the many reasons for starvation is a slow suicidal tendency, a whisper that if he keeps doing this, he will die, and he is more than okay with that. One step of disordered eating after another, he imagines a slipknot slowly wrapping its way around his neck.

The night he sends Tom off, the first night alone in the infirmary, he questions what business he was doing here, healing. What business does he have getting better? A few days more of his drug-hazed, dehydrated shenanigans outside would have killed him, surely. Tom says he should have already been dead. Pomfrey echoes the sentiment.

So with the knowledge that he could have died -- something he has ached for for a long, long while now -- why the f*ck did he allow himself to get talked out of it?

And he knows that if he left while Tom took the time and energy to help him, then nothing he had done before would prove him to be a bad person like this would. And he knows he let himself get talked into help because he wanted a friend, wanted someone to listen to him, to listen to them. Because he needs people even if he does not want them. Tom wanted Harry to heal, and Harry wanted Tom to be his friend… so he acted, and that’s that.

It is that simple.

But Tom Riddle is not here right now. Doubt creeps him and Harry lets it. He rips the IVs out of his arm -- one to rehydrate him, the other tube feed -- and starts staggering his way out of the infirmary.

He tries to open the door, but it is warded. With other patients, it’s not. When you are known for your suicidal tendencies, though…

Harry lets his hand drop and laughs, softly, to himself. He wonders if this was what Tom meant when Voldemort said he was special.

Pomfrey exits from her office, hair still undone, bathrobes on. The light from her room illuminates her, highlighting the creases in her wrinkled face. Her kind expression, her concern, her inability to do anything with it, is displayed so openly. She is the opposite of Marvolo Riddle, of the many supposed liars he’s been in contact with recently. The contrast is startling.

“Did I wake you?” asks Harry.

“You did,” she says, quietly. “The wards alert me when someone tries to exit them.”

“Oh,” says Harry. He knows he should say sorry, and he is, at least partly. But the words catch in his throat and the line badpersonbadpersonbadperson runs like a record in his brain.

“Go back to bed.” She moves toward his bed and picks up the discarded IVs, hastily thrown. Harry should apologize for that, too, but the ever unhelpful words continue in its place; bad person. (When you feel guilty and do nothing to fix it, your guilt is less than worthless. Stop feeling bad and start doing something. And Harry knows this. But the actions, too, get caught in his mind and the most he can muster is weak resentment.)

“You can’t keep me here forever. You have to release me sometime,” he snaps, head held high. Badperson. Badperson. I should not stand my ground. This hill is not worth dying on. Is not worth being rude to her for. But when you want to die, any hill will do.

“I know. But not now.”

Something in her voice is familiar. Compelling, too, and he allows himself to be walked back to bed, IVs replaced, blankets tucked in around him.

Only in the morning, forehead kiss still lingering on his skin, will he realize who she sounded like. She sounded like his mother.

(Harry rubs his fingers gently across his forehead, yearning still, and thinks, sadly, that there are some things he will never outgrow.)

.xox.

Harry awakes to a mountain of letters at the end of his bed. He hasn’t gained this much traction since the Butterflies incident. When he was announced one of Hogwarts champions, he received nothing other than the ignored letter from his parents, a few teachers wondering where he was. Less than a dozen over the course of a week.

Word, now, though, has got out. The reason why he disappeared for a week was supposed to keep on the DL, but people, Madame Pomfrey says, talk. “Someone at the infirmary when you came in must’ve overheard,” she’d muttered. “I’ll find them, dear, I swear…”

At the moment, she is more concerned with the content of the letters. “I should take these,” she tells him, voice tight, lips pulled taut.

“Why?” asks Harry, brows furrowed, pulling himself closer to them, blocking her path.

“A club has formed,” she says simply, but Harry can hear the tone, buried and hidden, in her voice. She is not like Marvolo. She is not so good at lying.

(Something infectious has wriggled its way into Hogwarts. There is rampant and constant refusal to die.)

Harry takes one of the letters out of the pile, ignoring Pomfrey’s wince. It is a soft orange color, almost beige, with a star shaped seal. “The Chrysalis,” he reads, turning over the letter in his hands. “This the club?”

“The Headmasters of the other schools had a meeting, while you were out.”

Already Harry can see where this is going. “What’d they say?”

“They wanted something to do, since they wouldn't be teaching or running their own schools.”

He is hospitalized, partly because of ED related reasons. Word gets out about it. Mouton is here. Then in the morning, he wakes to letters. It is obvious what has happened here and Harry feels rage bubble up in his chest. Chrysalis. Butterflies. Cults start fast and spread faster, huh? “So they were allowed to start clubs,” Harry mutters, throwing the letter to his side.

“This is from Moutons. A health and fitness group.” She pauses, “It was not without pushback.” Like that is any reassurance. The letters remain on his bed regardless. Mouton has a club regardless.

“Not pushback enough, huh?” he snaps. Her face goes still and Harry clears his throat. “Erm…” Just say it. Just say sorry. “I didn’t me--”

“No,” she says. “It’s alright. This all must seem like a lot to you.”

Harry feels nostalgic, his mouth going dry. He remembers his own mother, punishing him, but lightly, because she understands his anger. It is kind but… But Harry does not want the people around him to tolerate him in spite of. He does not need this misconstructed air of forgiveness. Does not want it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

Pomfrey smiles gently. “Like I said, it’s okay. I should advise against reading these letters, though, dear.”

“Cause the Chrysalis is an eating disorder cult?”

She shrugs, stiff. “It appears so.”

Harry looks at the pile one last time. Part of him wants to trigger himself. Wants to have his mind fall back into that oblivion of don’t eat don’t binge don’t even think about it, and all he needs is a push. But he remembers Tom. Tom, who turned against the old version of himself, embracing the new. Doubt creeps in and Harry lets it. “Alright. But I’d like to sort out my friends’ letters first, if you don’t mind.” Cedric might have contacted him. Or Luna. And maybe Tom has been returned already.

Though her face betrays no emotion, Harry can sense her surprise. Throughout his many visits to the Medical Wing, he’s never received letters or had any visitors. Harry having friends must come as a shock to her. That’s fair. It is a shock to Harry, too.

“Okay,” she says. “But I will be with other patients. If you need me, do call.”

Harry allows himself a smile. It feels warm and odd-fitting on his face. But it is a nice ‘odd’. “Will do,” he says and he’s not lying.

Pomfrey wanders off, attending to the other few students and sorting potions for the day, and Harry begins the honestly fascinating task of sorting through his mail.

What strikes his attention first is that he did not only get letters -- yes, hidden toward the bottom of the pile are parcels. From the cult-now-club itself. Though Harry will not open their letters, he is too curious to resist opening their packages.

There’s vodka. A vodka bottle with a pink bow on it, a butterfly pattern covering it. Celebratory. Harry salivates over the idea of getting blasted -- even if not here, then when he’s released (she cannot keep him here forever) -- and then he remembers Tom. He remembers Cedric. Cedric, who carries around sobering potions.

He says it is because Julian is Severus’ Teaching Assistant, but…

But Harry thinks it is more than that. He thinks of the eating disorder to drug abuse pipeline and decides he will not fall down it. He will dig his heels in and refuses to.

(He thinks of Cedric and thinks of Tom and guilt creeps it. He slips the bottle back into its package.)

There’s chocolate, too. Harry is almost surprised at the absolute boldness of an eating disorder club sending someone chocolate, but then reads the low cal label and the word laxative, and realizes this is not bold but stereotypical.

There is no word from Tom or Cedric.

Julian, though.

There’s word from Julian.

A plain white envelope containing a single slip of paper. One sentence. Very simple, straight, and to the point.

Do not join the Chrysalis.

Harry reads it again. And again. Then blinks rapidly and begins looking frantically through the remaining letter because he knows what this means. He knows what a message like that is means. It means Julian somehow overheard something -- it means Julian is issuing a preemptive warning.

It means Harry has received an invitation.

Harry finds it easy. Unlike the normal light orange, this one is decorated with swirls of white, curling around each other in a warm hug. A small angel is depicted on the front.

Harry wonders if the irony is intentional.

With hesitant but curious hands -- he is a true Raven, if only right then -- he opens the letter.

Dear Mister Potter,

We, the Chrysalis club, a health and fitness group, officially invite you to join. We have seen your work in writing and are infinitely impressed. We believe you can be of great support to the cause -- though you’ve definitely already done so.

Glad to see you are putting Mouton V.’s gift to good use.

Eagerly awaiting your reply,

T.C.C.

Harry just stares.

(His family and thoughts of them trail him; a loose thread of his brain sticking out. But Katherine. Katherine, with her features described far too much, with her bones and starvation and purging and sick in a way that is unrealistic. Harry will never escape his parents. But it is Katherine’s Portraits that he is trapped by.

And gift? The years old unknown spell? If he’s putting it to any kind of use, then it is news to him.)

Harry balls up the letter. It’s a stupid offer and she must know it. And because she sent it anyway, Harry suspects that this will haunt him, too. She has something up her sleeve, some way to push or shove. To manipulate. To control. To coerce.

It, Harry, thinks, is all so f*cking stupid.

Harry glances through the last of the letters. Orange, orange, Chrysalis. Nothing new. Nothing much.

And then the orange stops. At the very bottom of the pile, there is a pastel blue envelope. Flowers and bees and the like are drawn in what Harry assumes is gel pen.

From: Luna Lovegood.

He didn’t know why he had thought she wouldn’t contact him after her arrival in Hogwarts, but he is enraged at his own arrogance. She’d tried to seal the gap between them before -- a letter sent, hurried, filled with borderline begs for Harry to understand, to forgive, to forget -- and now she wants to try again.

Her message, printed in neat, small handwriting, is simple. I’m coming to talk during visiting hours. Please keep an open mind.

Harry vanishes it. He vanishes it and the orange letters and the parcels and then he lies down, wand cradled to his chest. She knows better, he thinks, than to bother.

What does she see in him? What does anyone? Heaven knows he is not easy company.

And Luna betrayed him. He opened up, just a little, and she f*cked it all up. Why would he want to talk to her? Why would he keep an open mind?

But when Pomfrey informs him, half past noon, that he has a visitor, he does not send her away. He has been cruel to her for years and she has been cruel once.

He owes her, at the very least, this. He will listen. It is only fair.

.xox.

“I took my name out of the Cup,” is her strong start.

“Then how are you here?” He keeps his voice neutral, though he wants to be angry, righteous. He owes her an open mind. He owes her no snapped remarks, no bitter looks. (It is only fair.)

“I don’t know,” she says, exasperated. Harry notes that she’s received her own Hogwarts uniform. She has already started embroidering it; the cuffs and collars a work in progress. Hogwarts students are not allowed to make such modifications, but he supposes this does not apply to the newcomers.

She is taller than first year, but not by much. Harry begins to worry that she’s gotten taller than him before reminding himself that he has more important things to worry about right now.

“Julian Jackson said that, too,” he states blankly. “But there’s no way--”

“He said that?”

Harry raises his eyebrows. “Yes,” he says. “I don’t believe him, either.”

“It’s weird, though. Isn’t it?” Luna sits on the edge of his bed, hands folded on top of each other. Her voice is soft; demeanor a soft walk on omniscient ice. “Is what weird?” He tries to keep his voice restrained but is sure he fails.

“That two of the six champions,” she says, “claim they didn’t enter.”

Not weird. People lie all the time.

(A part of him whispers Cedric’s words about Julian and his own about Luna. The two very least likely people to lie. A part of him has thought this was rigged since the beginning, and that part is not any less loud because Luna agrees.)

“I wonder, if we asked around,” she says, voice barely audible, “who else we would find?”

Harry swallows. You’re trying to get in my head. “That’s nonsense,” he snaps, defensive.

“Tom Riddle’s here.”

Harry is flustered by the sudden change of topic. “He prefers Marvolo,” says Harry. “And what of him?”

“I just think it’s really convenient--”

He resists the urge to snap Oh, put a sock in it, because that’s rude. Luna’s a liar (maybe) and betrayed him (maybe) but she does not deserve Harry’s cruelty. “It is unlikely,” says Harry, slowly, calmly. “But not impossible.”

Luna’s will is not shaken. “I ask you, then; Why am I here?”

“Because you decided not to withdr--”

“No,” corrects Luna. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

Patience, he reminds himself, is a virtue. “What are you asking?”

“What good does being here bring me?” Harry must’ve made a face because she adds, “I mean, just really thinking about it. Why would I want my name in the Cup?”

Harry clears his throat. He gets it, or is starting to. But he doesn’t want to. “The same reason as everyone else. The prize money, the mystery prize. The fame. Pick one.”

“What use do I have for money? My career is paved by blood,” she says. “I will never have to work a day in my life, if I don’t want to. I have no need for money, and no want for fame. For that, would I risk my life? Would I risk coming here, endangering the fragile relationship we were just now starting to build? What am I doing here, Harry?”

“I…” says Harry. He comes up short. She’s… right. She’s right and Harry does not want her to be. She always has been eloquently spoken. But that means Harry has to forgive her, has nothing to forgive, and he has never been good at that.

He wants to fix things. Wants to open his mouth and speak so easily like her, so pretty like her, the way that Harry normally is able to write, but his throat contracts and he is stuck gaping aimlessly at the pretty girl in embroidery.

She stands, wiping the dust off her skirt. “Think about what I said,” she says, turning around. “And then… send me a letter.”

She leaves with those words and the very heavy implication that if Harry does not communicate with her, she will no longer communicate with him. Relationships work both ways. If they don’t work, they break, and Luna tires of simply bending.

Work with her or she won’t work at all. It is only fair.

.XoX.

“My hands sweat in your palms,

My heart splattered among your veins.

My breath is lost in the wind,

Torn from my lungs in the dead of night.

I melt your waxed eyes and hold them,

Mold them,

And wrap them around my fragile ears.

A stronghold; protection from the wind.

It has taken enough. And It will take more.

But never will it take this.”

-- Harry Potter, “Eight of Wands.”

Notes:

thank you all for the comments. this chapter was sure something!! will not be updating next week fyi!

Chapter 12 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“I’m asking but don’t answer

Cause I don’t want to know.”

-- Don’t Wanna Know, Bo Burnham

.XoX.

Harry is discharged reluctantly from the hospital wing. “Do not hesitate to contact me if you need anything,” Pomfrey tells him, face still painted with concern. She does not want him to leave. What is outside her hospital is outside her control -- and for people with eating disorders? Oh, control is a strong thing. “Anything at all, alright? Anything.”

“Okay,” Harry tells her. And because he never says it enough: “Thank you.”

She runs a hand through his hair, cupping his cheek with calloused hands. “It is my job,” she says. “Do one thing for me, though?”

“What’s that?”

“Try not to visit me again anytime soon.”

There is pain in her voice. It is familiar. Cedric Diggory comes to mind. The hurt of an eating disorder is all consuming, but he cannot imagine what he would do if someone he loved had one, too. There is hurt there, too.

And Pomfrey.

Pomfrey is hurting. Because of him. Because of people like him. He knows, of course he knows, that feeling bad for being bad does not stop the bad, but he sees her eyes and wonders how he could not feel guilty?

“I’ll try,” he says, voice breaking. It is a lie. Harry can only ever hurt the people that care for him. He knows this very well. And knows enough to change it.

He has Tom now. Tom, the asshole. Maybe, like Tom had said, they will change each other. For Pomfrey’s sake, he hopes so.

.xox.

“Think about what I said,” Luna had said. “And then send me a letter.” Harry does not send her a letter. Not within the day, or the week, or the one following it. But he does think about what she said.

He thinks a lot. Finds it hard, only at times, to think about anything else.

She is right. She’s right because the hard chunk of the sentiments she echos are not unique to her. They are thoughts Harry had shared when the champions were called and are thoughts he shared now.

This was rigged. He knows that, doesn’t he? Of course he knows that.

And he does not know Cedric all that well, but Cedric knows Julian well. Knows that Julian has no reason to lie. Knows that Julian doesn’t and, here, didn’t. And Harry knows, like he knows this was rigged, like Cedric knows Julian, that Cedric has no reason to lie to him.

He knows that. Of course he knows that.

Julian… took his name out of the running. Despite his drunken rantings, his hot, resentful anger, this is true. Harry cannot conjure a reason for it not to be. His absence from the party; his confession to Harry. However could Harry turn on someone so blatant in their intent? It is ridiculous. Harry is ridiculous. (This, too, Harry knows.)

And because Julian took his name out of the running… because it is not that he might’ve but that he must’ve; Luna Lovegood must have done the same. Maybe Harry knew this the moment he stood in that Great Hall on the day that should have been the best but did not even come close, feeling all the while like he did not stand freely. Like he was not a spider in this entwined web of coincidences.

He knew. And was angry regardless. Was vicious regardless. But his anger and hurt -- while valid -- were completely misguided. He was not and should not have been mad at her -- her, who was just as much as a victim as Harry in this situation, if not tenfold more so -- but the circ*mstances.

It… Harry realizes, it does not stop there. Harry is not mad at Luna Lovegood for their marriage; he is just mad at their marriage and those who made it possible. Luna did not consent to their situation, either, even if she went with it. She was a child. What else would she do?

Harry Potter is mad at Luna Lovegood for no good real reason and he almost always has been.

So, yes. Harry thinks about what she said. And he thinks and writes, and in two weeks’ time, he will break. He will break and tire of deserved silence and deal with the guilt in a way he is not used to; by doing something about it.

But that is in two weeks’ time. It is not now.

.xox.

Tom is returned to him via owl during fifth period. The Professor sours at the sight of it, telling his owl to adhere to the schedule like anyone else. “Being a champion does not exempt you from the rules,” she adds.

“Sure,” he says, not really caring. “My bad.” Tom’s bad, actually, and maybe Marvolo’s.

He unwraps carefully the packaging from the diary, holding the smooth leather in his hands. A sudden burst of fulfillment overcomes him, though Harry cannot tell why. He uncaps his ink pen, abandoning his sour attempts at paying attention to his schoolwork.

Tom, he writes. I didn’t expect you back so soon.

He’s not good company, writes Tom. (Like father, like son.) Harry can feel, like the diary is emitting it, his bitterness through the pages. And fear. There is so much fear.

Did you learn anything?

Tom wants to lie. He supposes his first instinct, always and forever (you cannot separate the chicken from the egg), is to give information at a price, and to give as little, and as vague, of it as possible.

But that’s not fair. That’s something you do to followers; to your armies, your generals; to people your head visualizes as pawns. It is not something you do to friends. And although Harry Potter is an ally, he is also more.

So Tom warns him with no notice later than literally necessary: Stay away from him. He’s like me. A horcrux. And he’s not rogue or self destructive -- and so what he is dangerous.

What -- are you serious? That’s…

He’s the locket.

Just “the” locket? Not all that descriptive, if you ask me. Do you have any idea of where it is?

Every horcrux, as far as Tom was told, had some sort of ancestral, if not personal, connection. The diary was one of his most prized possessions, even if it was hidden, cast away for fear of ridicule. Purebloods are not known for their kindness to anyone and children acting like children are not exceptions. The ring was his father’s -- a part of his legacy, frozen in time with him through shared blood and now soul.

Marvolo and his locket do not deviate from this rule. I don’t know, says Tom. But I have some ideas I will be looking into in the future.

Alright, writes Harry. For the most part, Voldemort and the atrocities he commits -- and the wizarding war that has been hanging steadily over their heads for over forty years that everyone refuses to actually call a war -- are far away. The joy of being a halfblood, at least where Voldemort is concerned. But that, by no means, means that Harry will not do something to stop it if he could. If you need anything from me, then ask away. I’m all ears. (Harry thinks of Julian Jackson and Cedric Diggory and believes, wholeheartedly, that that’s what friends are for.)

Actually, there are a few things he mentioned that I need modern word on.

Glad to be of service. What is it?

Mouton -- that Headmaster I was sent to; the CEO, I infer, of the Butterflies -- … what is her connection to Voldemort? She knows too many things she shouldn’t. Knew about me. What I am. And that should be impossible, writes Tom. So, tell me. What am I missing?

Mouton and Voldemort? It’s an easy question. I suppose her connection to Voldemort is her connection to Grindelwald. Given that the Dark Lord Gellert’s intentions are close to Voldemort’s--

Wait, wait. She is connected to Grindelwald? News to him. Everything is news to him. Voldemort would be angry. But Tom is just confused.

Oh, yeah, writes Harry, sheepishly. I forgot to mention. So, I looked into the companies funding the Butterflies, right? To find their pseudo CEO. And the company is Season’s Greetings. Alongside their donations to the Butterflies are donations to our main man, you guessed it, Gellert Grindelwald.

Fascinating. A fascinating answer that gives him more questions: Why would Grindelwald know about the horcruxes?

… Did Marvolo not explain? I mean, it’s pretty crucial to modern wizarding society across Europe, as well as Voldemort’s current self, so I had just assumed that he might have mentioned--

But information freely given is information lost. Marvolo knows this because Tom knows this. We’re not on the best of terms. They are hardly on any terms at all. Tom’s blood burns with anger. He told me little. And… And, Tom thinks, a lot of it will hurt you. I will tell you regardless because (that’s what friends are for) you deserve it. But, I will tell you more of it on a later date. But he had a sore spot. A few, really. One of them is Gellert. And now, Mouton is connected to him. The connection is… Curious, Tom thinks, young again. It is all so curious.

Tom has given Harry information before. It is time for him to return the favor.

Alright, says Harry, before breaking down the years long conflict of the three sided wizarding war.

.xox.

It’s 1966. Voldemort has long since graduated. He is more dangerous as an adult because there is no need for subtly; no such thing as the Trace for adults. And the Ministry is as fragile as it is afraid.

He has free reign and general psychopathy and generations of the bigoted on his side. He is not afraid to use it.

He’d swapped through names of his group for the years during and after Hogwarts, but the name he settles on and the name that sticks is the Weepers. “For the fall of society, the fall of proper men, women and children, we weep. For the death of our fallen, we weep. For the fall of tradition, we weep. We weep so others may not.”

And they say this to each other, this little group, like some sort of self soothing mantra. We are doing good things. We are repairing society. We are not evil; we are merely mourners, and how can you hate the grieving?

But people do. Hate the grieving, I mean. Because if your pain causes other people pain, suddenly, people stop caring.

Voldemort and the Weepers brand themselves and through slogans with one goal in mind. Voldemort is a politician at heart, so he never says it. The fun part is that they don’t have to; people know anyway. Really, it is a tough thing to hide.

Their goal is simple. Magical domination. Magical nationalism. He calls for the complete and total annihilation of Muggles. Muggleborns and halfbloods are fine. He has no business in ruining the magical world (but the two are conjoined at the hip; how can ruining one not ruin the other? Guns are just as equal opportunity killers as wands.)

After years of trying to push this ideology politically, and failing, continually, the Weepers do what Voldemort knows best. They start killing. Murder is how Voldemort knows to do things.

And this, he wants to do badly.

The next three years are the Dark Days. No wizard lives in fear -- except those pressured and scrutinized for not submitting to the cause; except those who know there are things far worse than death -- but Muggles die. And not just a few, just a handful, but almost four million of them.

Harry has looked through old newspaper clippings. He has seen the textbooks, learned about it through word of mouth and in class. It is horrifying. Harry has never felt more grateful for his privilege and guilty for having it.

Those three years are the Dark Days. Dark f*cking red.

The Ministry is hesitant to act. Their fear is not the Muggle dying, but the magic. They are a small society, unable to withstand the same losses as Muggles do. They fear the outbreak of outright war. What fear is ever truly unfounded?

So they do nothing. They try, of course, to do damage control. It is minor and never sufficient; tiptoeing around and about the major factors and influences. Months upon months of back and forth and with the back and forth of equally stubborn, not even wrong politicians? It is hard for anything to get done.

There is argument that this is not a wizarding fight. This is not their war; their genocide. There is no need, no necessity, to sacrifice their small enough as it is population for a cause that has nothing with them.

There is argument that the Muggles are defenseless against so many forces with such overwhelming strength. With magic. This, they both can agree on, is a genocide. It has nothing to do with them. But that is why it’s so important to step in -- if they do not stand up for those incapable of standing up for themselves, then who will?

And the truth is, they are both wrong. They are both right. War is immoral and genocide is immoral and Harry cannot imagine the turmoil of having to choose between two evils.

Even now, when the days are not dark red but a light and faint pink, Harry is wracked with guilt because he is glad the Ministry refuses to do something. He is no soldier. Luna and the people around him are not soldiers. He turns his back because he knows it is his people or theirs. Us or them. And Harry knows which he’d choose.

For three years, the Ministry sends out Aurors sparingly. If wizards are hurt in the process of Muggle beings murdered, they will send them out. If magical property is damaged, if magical people are harassed by the Weepers. Magical, magical. As for the Muggles, they are left to their inferior devices. They are left for dead. The Ministry does this careful dance between inaction and just enough action to prevent war and although they receive a lot of scrutiny for this time period, Harry can hardly blame them.

It’s 1970. Ablus Dumbledore is not fragile or afraid. He does not care to avoid war. They call themselves the Order of the Pheonix and they fight like all lives matter -- they fight like they know every Muggle and are angry not just on their behalf but like they are them.

And Dumbledore is powerful. He’s powerful like Voldemort is powerful and he is much older, much more experienced. Dumbledore is a horse that people want to back.

They are good soldiers. Good people. They know which side is good and which side is bad and root for good; fight for it.

Harry thinks, despite his self preservation, despite his gut feelings about Albus, that they are heroes.

They are an equal or greater force and subdue the Weepers. Monthly Muggle death counts dwindle, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Voldemort’s forces are on the verge of submission, everyone can just tell, everyone just knows.

And then it is 1975. It’s 1975 and after five long years of constant clashing between two forces, someone steps up.

His Gellert Grindelwald. He is charismatic. Tells Purebloods lies they cannot help but agree with about what his cause is; what he and his people stand for.

He is similar to Voldemort. In a lot of ways that matter and some that don’t -- and some people say that they could be close enough to be lovers -- but the core of Gellert’s cause is altered. He calls not for magical domination, but magical/muggle segregation. Total and violent segregation; no halfbloods, no muggleborns. These are two entirely separate worlds -- hasn’t the government proven that for years now? -- and Gellert believes it is time to start treating them like it.

Muggles who know of the magical world are murdered. Muggles with magical relatives are murdered. When the Ministry shows up to alter the memory of those exposed to accidental magic, Grindelwald’s forces declare it is not that simple. It’s not enough.

And so they die. They die because Gellert doesn't dislike Muggles as long as they are Muggles over there. He fears their influence on Pureblood culture and that’s what these Dark Lords rattle on and on about, don’t they? About tradition. About how Muggles ruin it. Gellert tries his best to sell the lie that this is not a bloodthirsty, irrational campaign but what most Purebloods believe in anyway. That Muggles and their kind do not belong at Hogwarts. That they do not belong in the government.

It is a lie only somewhat well sold. Some people are fooled. But most people are just afraid.

It’s 1977. The Butterflies pop up. They are not feared because they are not known of. And they like it that way. Of course they do.

It’s 2004. Now, it’s 2004. The cycle started years ago has not changed much. Gellert and Voldemort almost get along. The Order fights because they think their cause is just. Because someone has to. There are attempts at claiming land; at overthrowing and taking over the government; all thwarted, each time, sooner or later.

And death. So much death -- from both sides, from all sides. Harry reads The Prophet every week and the headlines are all copies of each other. Muggles slaughtered. Halfbloods rounded up and killed. Every week, all week.

The Ministry sits back. Harry does, too. This is not his fight. But he hopes, still, that it is one his side wins.

.XoX.

“My no is never taken as a no because it is never said as it

Like how my yes’s are I’m sorry’s and my thank you’s are tearful

I yearn for acceptance you cannot give;

I hate outcomes already predicted

I am sorry and resentful and do not forget and never forgive

I am happy and sad and on top of the world

I want you to join me

I am happy that you can’t.

This is madness. Contradictory phrases spoken and yelled and whispered.

And I ask you though I already know,

If madness is human?”

-- Harry Potter, “Six of Cups.”

Notes:

please comment!! hope you enjoy the chapter!!!

Chapter 13 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Where, oh where is my trust fund?

Why can’t I get ahead?”

-- Titanic Sinclair, Trust Fund.

.XoX.

Harry plans, like any sane child with the knowledge he has, to avoid Marvolo. He plans to avoid the Chrysalis club. There are certain things, certain groups of people, that Harry just knows are none of his business.

Some people are venomous. Most who are do not try to be, but, for some people… For some people, it is a life goal.

The Chrysalis Club advertises itself as a fitness and heath group and the Chrysalis Club is a lie. It is thinspo posts and body shaming and eating disordered individuals, all wrapped up with a little bow, tossed around in circles that do not know better. These people are not getting ‘fit.’ There is nothing healthy here.

It is, of course, not the first of its kind. Even the Butterflies did not coin pro-ana groups.

The truth is that eating disorders are lonely. Harry knows this more than anybody and he has been tempted, time and time again, to give in to the loneliness in the way that many people like him to.

But he doesn’t. In Harry’s first year, he finds himself fixated on other people’s plates. Those who eat normally. Those who eat a lot. Those who eat like him. And especially the ones who don’t -- the ones who are better at disordered eating.

(Though Harry’s sure these things are not a race, if they were, he’d be losing.)

These people form circles. They gravitate toward those who can relate to them; those who can, against all the odds, understand them. They gravitate toward these people like they would one day gravitate toward Harry’s book; every bit of eating disordered content is clung to.

And Harry avoids them. For a number of reasons. He is at first afraid that he is incapable of friendship. That, like with Luna, he will tear down an already vulnerable person. He will make sick people get sicker, and although he would do a lot of things later, never would he act with that intention.

Figured out later is that these friendships, filled with people who are too much like Harry, are… not just friendships. That the similarities between them and him do not stop at their intake.

Talking about their eating disorders starts as a way to relieve stress, to feel less lonely when experiencing something that is, at its core, isolating. It goes from talking to sharing tips to encouragement -- and in most of these circles, this change is not noticed nor intentional.

Concern is a way to feed -- no pun intended -- into this obsession. Concern is attention; it is telling you that, no matter how miserable you are, and because of how miserable you are, you are doing something right.

Normalization. When you have two people who share an experience, they believe it is more common, even just but a bit. And things that are common are expected; what is expected is good.

Harry knows these circles are not and would not be friendly towards him. He is not a woman, not skinny, not purely ‘ana’ or ‘mia’ or some sort of mix. He has EDNOS, but the wrong kind. He would be shamed and ignored because of his eating disorder in groups that are meant for people with eating disorders -- he is not the picture-perfect image conjured up when people think of ‘sick,’ and though Harry tries not to be ashamed of it, it is something that can always be helped.

Binge Eating Disorders --and, in a way, binge eating in general -- are not praised. Their suffering is similar, is on par, but they are not treated with teh same level of sympathy or respect as the Queen Nervosas, even by people who should understand more than anyone else.

Harry doesn’t get it, this culture that wants desperately to swallow him whole. He doesn’t get it and never has, so he has done his best to avoid them. These people are hurting; these people want to hurt others; and even when they do not, they do; and none of it is any of Harry’s business.

And it hurts. The loneliness, of course -- the fact that people like him are not always kind and that the people who aren’t would not and simply can’t understand -- but his inaction, too. Like how Harry turns his head to the continuous genocide of Muggles because he knows, perhaps selfishly, what a war would cost him, Harry turns his head here, too. He cannot change these people by joining them. He is no one’s therapist and only one person’s friend.

So Harry knows. He knows well the dangers of the Butterflies, the dangers of the Chrysalis Club, and the dangers of people like them and he does his best to avoid them.

The problem is, they do not do the same.

Harry walks into the Great Hall one evening. Noted most concerningly is Headmaster Mouton, sitting at the staff table. She’s watching him, sipping on her drink absently. (A glass of wine for breakfast, How classy.) A butterfly pin has been added to her robes.

She is not the only one. Students throughout the Hall are wearing them, too -- the youngest being eleven. Harry’s heart aches. But he does nothing, says nothing, and sits down to eat.

But it is not that easy. Some ghosts do not haunt passively; some are downright poltergeists.

Harry sits at an empty chair, surrounded by empty chairs, content (to some degree) to spend his meal alone. Sitting down next to him are two girls Harry has never seen before, but who he knows how to classify regardless.

All it takes is one look at their robes; purposefully baggy; the pin; their eyes, filled with young hope. Anorexics in their honeymoon phases. Surely, thinks Harry, they most know it passes. It always does.

“Are you going to eat that?” asks one of them.

“Yup,” says Harry, bitterly.

“What about the carbs? They're the devil, you know.”

“Literally not how nutrition works.”

“And the saturated fat--”

Harry grabs his plate of muffins and stands sharply. The fact that he has an ED, reluctantly openly, is not invation to talk to him about it. It is not invitation to comment on it.

On a whim, for a reason he himself doesn’t quite follow, he walks toward the Slytherin table. His eyes move, all on their own, to where Cedric Diggory and his somewhat merry band of friends sit.

Harry stands behind Cedric. He clears his throat, all of a sudden feeling quite too silly, feeling not like the kind of person you would ever want to sit next to.

He has no time to leave or doubt himself further because Cedric Diggory turns around in his seat, face lighting up. “Kid!” he shouts. “I thought you’d never want to see me again, who’da thunk it. Come on, Goyle, move on. Take a seat.”

Harry grumbles, “I’m not a kid,” but takes his seat beside Cedric.

Malfoy’s there. Tracey and Pansy. Blaise is off to the side…

And then there’s Julian, sitting right across from Harry.

Harry turns his eyes away and attention toward his muffin, picking it apart with his fingernails. Julian and his situation -- the things Harry knows about him and the things Harry has just inferred and Julian’s letter -- are none of his business, either.

“You gave me quite the scare, running off like that, not returning for a week,” says Cedric.

“Sorry,” says Harry, not sure if that’s the correct response.

Cedric waves his hand. “Nah, it’s fine,” he reassures. “I heard about what happened. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Harry clears his throat. “Yeah,” says Harry, “Uh. Thanks.”

Cedric points his fork accusatorily at Malfoy. “Course, some people aren’t as emphatic, are they, Malfoy?”

Malfoy narrows his eyes. “You said you wouldn’t do this if I just gave up the money.”

Cedric shrugs. “I lied.” He turns to Harry. “Some people were placing bets.”

“... On the championship?” He hopes it is on the championship.

“On whether or not you’d finally done yourself in.”

Harry’s mouth flattens into a thin line. He starts to stand. “That’s wonderful, and all, but--”

Cedric puts his hand up. “Wait,” he says. “Let me finish.”

Harry doesn’t sit back down, but he doesn’t leave, either.

Cedric relaxes. “Malfoy made some assumptions. Said some things he didn’t mean. And won some money.”

“Uh… Pretty bitch move…?”

“And so,” continues Cedric, “he’s decided a way to make it up to you.”

Harry’s frown does not dissipate. “Make it up to me?”

Cedric looks at Malfoy expectantly. There’s some deep seated House politics and dynamics at play here that Harry doesn’t know enough about, but even he can see the battle for dominance happening.

It is Malfoy who relents. Cedric sits up straighter, a happy smile on his face, while Malfoy seems to slink in on himself. He puts a hand into his robe pocket and takes out the contents, holding it out to Harry.

Harry blinks. “That’s…” he says, “a lot of money.”

“It’s all I won,” grits out Malfoy.

“And then some,” adds Cedric.

“Go on, Potter,” says Mafloy to Harry’s silence. “Take it. It was basically yours anyway.”

Harry hesitaties. It feels weird. Like taking candy from a baby. A blind, deaf, and tied-up baby. With a gun to its head.

He realizes it is not just Malfoy’s money; it is Cedric’s gift.

Harry scoops the coins up into his palm and slips them into his robe pocket. “...Funky,” Harry says. He avoids the eyes of Malfoy and Cedric and Julian. He is a child being tugged back and forth in a parents’ divorce; in the middle of drama he’s not supposed to be involved in. It feels weird.

Cedric ruffles his hair. “I’m sorry I made you feel uncomfortable,” says Cedric.

Harry’s face goes red. “Oh -- oh, no -- you didn’t--”

“It’s alright,” says Cedric. “I just couldn’t let him do whatever he wanted, you know, disgracing you like that.”

And Harry gets it. He doesn’t get Slytherin politics, doesn't get why Cedric would protect him, but he understands that he did and that it equal parts for Harry and against Malfoy.

He is okay with that.

Harry takes a bite of his muffin, sitting himself back down completely. He says, muffled, “We’re chill.” Cedric smiles.

Julian clears his throat. Harry keeps his eyes to himself, on his plate. Julian is none of Harry’s business. Harry lack of attention does not stop him: “Did you get that latter I sent you?”

“...Yes,” says Harry. “I did.”

“Okay, then. I’m glad.”

“Actually, I was wonder--” But before Harry can finish his thought, someone takes a seat beside Julian.

Harry’s mouth shuts with a clink.

“What?” taunts Marvolo in a way he is sure is meant to be endearing. “Aren’t happy to see me?”

He is not rogue so what is he is dangerous.

Avoid him.

Harry’s trying. He really is.

“Cedric,” Harry says quietly. He knows next to nothing about Cedric or his influence or his opposition, but he knows very well how to use it to his advantage. “Get him to leave.”

Malfoy laughs a bit. “Marriage problems, really? The old ball and chain. I’d have thought you smarter.”

“I’m not married to him.”

“Oh, please, Harry, dear,” soothes Marvolo. “Don’t be so brash.”

“I’m not brash,” says Harry tightly. “And I’m not married to you.”

“Why would you ever insinuate such a thin--”

“Tom,” says Cedric. He sounds so cheerful. Harry wonders, perhaps enviously, how one person can sound so happy and not be faking it. “Tom Riddle. That’s your name, right?”

Harry knows an insult when he sees one. Marvolo narrows his eyes, leaning forward. He has no intention of backing down. He does not have the long-lasting experience within Slytherin that Cedric does, but he is well on his way to staking his claim in one way or another. His blood gives him status in more ways than one.

“It’s Marvolo, actually,” corrects Marvolo. “If you really must refer to me at all, if you really must know.”

Harry glances between the boys with no hidden amount of intrigue. Smack some verbal sh*t into him, thinks Harry. Get Voldemort to shut the f*ck ypu; you’ll be telling that story to your kids for years to come.

“If you don’t want me to refer to you,” notes Cedric, “Then it’s really silly, isn’t it. That you chose to sit with me.”

And what a point that is! What a good f*cking point! Harry grins.

“I chose to sit with Harry, my husband, dear,” says Marvolo, affronted. “Not you.”

“And yet Harry… does not seem all the keen to sit with you, does he?” Cedric tilts his head. “In fact, I’ve heard some rumors. One of you is a well-trained liar, aren’t you? Are they married or are they not? It’s hard to say, Tom. Tell me what you think.”

Marvolo’s face scrunches up. “I think you have a thing or two to learn about respect.”

“Toward who? You?” Cedric cackles. “Now there’s a funny lie, Tom.”

“It’s,” he hisses, “Marvolo.”

“Okay.” Cedric adds, “Tom.”

Marvolo stands up, jaw clenched. “I’ll talk to you later, Harry. Do watch your company.”

“He’ll keep in touch!” Cedric chirps.

And Harry says nothing, does nothing, staring at Cedric in awe, understanding then that he might be the one and only person able to protect him from this Voldemort. He understands that Cedric is the least Snake Slytherin he’s ever met and Marvolo is the most.

They are polar opposites. It is a wonderful thing, to be protected from the other.

He thinks of Tom. He wonders is that is what friends are for.

Then he wonders if that means he and Cedric are friends, and smiles, secretly and smally, all to himself.

.xox.

Harry sits on the ground at the Astronomy Tower. He’s supposed to be working on a project for Divination, but it is hard to focus. He instead lies across the cold stone, journal open in front of him and quill clamped between his fingers. He’s writing. Or at least trying to.

Appearing from the journal, in long, slender wisps, is Tom Riddle. He blinks down at Harry. “Aren’t you a wizard?” he asks, slightly amused.

“Last I checked,” says Harry, dryly.

“Then why don’t you make a chair?”

“It’s floor time,” replies Harry, resting his head on his propped-up elbow. “I think best when I’m in my element.”

“And your element is,” Tom furries his eyebrows, “... on the floor?”

“So I’ve clarified.”

Tom frowns, not understanding. But he sits down on the floor with him anyway, because that’s what being friends with Harry Potter is all about; putting up with things with no real reason.

“I’ve been making some progress,” Tom tells him. He’s been wandering the castle during the night, reading books from the library as he does. “I’ve been reading up on,” my, “Voldemort’s legacy. Trying to put pieces in their place.”

“Yeah?”

“His physical appearance is telling,” says Tom. “And his lack thereof.”

“Pardon?”

“The less he shows himself publicly, the more I speculate it is for a reason.”

“What do you mean?” asks Harry, closing the journal. He was making no progress anyway; his words too clunky, too much. And what Tom has to say is interesting -- and isn’t that what friends do? Pay attention to each other when they’re speaking?

Tom remembers Marvolo’s hastily written, defensive reassurance that making horcruxes has not hurt Voldemort’s wellbeing. It is a blatantly obvious lie. And Voldemort… he does not lie for no reason. By assuring Tom, he is trying to assure himself.

Everything is fine. Everything has gone according to plan. I am not wrong, or prone to failure, or capable of it.

I am fine. I have to be fine.

“He’s weak,” says Tom. Physically, at least, he must be. “He’s made at least four horcruxes -- and from looks of it, he did not stop there.”

“Well, there’s one of them in killing distance already,” Harry jokes. “So it shouldn’t be that hard.”

“Two,” says Tom quietly.

“Hm?”

“Nothing,” says Tom.

Harry snaps his fingers. “I just remembered something!” He zips open his bag and begins rifling through it.

“About the horcruxes?”

“No,” says Harry. “Just something I’ve… I’ve always wanted to do.” He pulls out a deck of tarot cards, holding them up triumphantly.

“...Tarot.” He has always had a certain amount of measured respect and disbelief toward future telling. All magic is to be praised, acknowledged, and utilized -- but that is not to say that some people will not use that belief against him.

And Harry Potter is not blessed. He is no Seer or divinationator. He is a boy with a deck of pretty cards and in his hands, they are nothing more.

Voldemort would reject the unspoken offer. Voldemort might even be a little bit mean about it -- just enough to be socially acceptable and just enough to sting.

Tom Riddle does not do that. Tom Riddle readjusts himself on the ground -- the lowly, filthy ground -- and asks his friend what layout he’d like to try.

Ignorant of his inner turmoil, Harry is joyful. He has never allowed himself to think about friendship, to explore the concept in his mind in any other way than fictional characters. Even so, he has shuffled his deck of cards many times over and wished he was doing so for someone else.

“A simple past, present, and future one would be nice,” says Harry. He holds the deck out to Tom. “Knock three times.”

Tom obliges. “Do you do these often?”

“Not lately,” Harry admits, shuffling. “But it’s fun.”

Fun. Voldemort does not do fun (but Tom Riddle does, and Tom Riddle is.)

Harry places down the three cards. Flipping the first one over, he states: “The past: Nine of Pentacles. Upright. Your past was filled with rewards. Luxury. Indicate of the fruits of your labor--”

Tom cannot help himself. “I was never rich,” he says. “As a child, it’d be fit to say I was rather poor.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “You can’t take it so literally. It would mean wealth of other kinds; power, people, knowledge. Here, in the past, you have a lot of something. And you worked hard for it.”

Tom stays silent. Images of dead rabbits and fear and control and games, played with life and paid with death flash through his mind.

Harry flips over the next card. He whistles. “The present: Ace of Pentacles. Reversed. You had it all, and you lost it all. Whatever you invested in… was not worth it. Did not pay off well, or at all. And now, you are living the consequences.”

Regret. Tom Riddle has learned regret. Tom swallows. “Alright,” he says. “Flip the last card.”

Harry turns it over. “The future. Your future. Upright two of pentacles. You will, or should, adapt to change. Balance your abilities; you wants and your needs and, msot of all, your capability to fulfill all of them.

“In your decisions, you will find balance.”

Doesn’t that sound nice? Lovely?

It also sounds impossible. It sounds like Harry Potter is not a Seer, has no reason to be playing with such things.

It sounds, despite this, like Harry Potter is on to something.

“Tarot,” Tom decides, “is not fun.”

“Sure,” says Harry, shuffling Tom’s cards back into the deck. He ducks his head to hide a smile. “I’m sure, Tom.”

.XoX.

“Put your grief in a jar

Put your grief on the shelf

It will grow a couple inches

Your tippy toes will fail

And when you one day reach it,

The jar won’t open up

Empty it will lie and sit

And you know it was never there at all.”

-- Harry Potter, “Four of Swords.”

Notes:

hello, friends. news: i have posted a new fic, "The Veil of the Sick, Poor, and Stupid," a harry x tom story. it's been up less than a week and has almost gotten as many kudos, bookmarks, and subscriptions as this story has gotten in three months.. hurts fr. but what can u do.
it follows Harry Potter, who, during the department of mysterious fight, sees sirius black fall through the veil and decides, then, that he must follow him.
they come out the other side in a parallel universe. things are similar but not and never the same. tom riddle is president; harry potter was his friend, and sirius black was in love with snape.
they try to make their way home -- but ti s a difficult task, and tom's weird and downright possessive behavior toward harry is not helping.
in other words; tom is a creep who is fascinated with harry. harry likes to fight and loves his friends and the two sides of him don't always get along. sirius black loses his f*cking mind.
harry must deal with a society that does not treat him kindly, friends who are supposed to know him but don't, and a revolution.
it has a lot of fatshaming toward harry. just a warning.
it is funny asf and much, much less angsty than this story.. it's really fun and has 10K words already posted (in two chapters.) please go check it out!!! and enjoy!!

Chapter 14 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Hey,

(little songbird),

Look all around you

See how the vipers

And vultures

Surround you.

They'll take you down, they'll pick you clean

If you stick around such a desperate scene

See,

People get mean

When the chips are down.”

-- Hey Little Songbird, Hadestown.

.XoX.

Sitting on the grass, a blanket laid out beneath her, is Luna Lovegood. She’s embroidering. A box of string and needles is beside her. There’s an empty plate -- it past lunchtime and not all people are interested in starvation -- and a water bottle there, too, alongside the pieces of fabric she’s working on.

Luna Lovegood in her natural habitat. She looks so… content and it’s a shame, really, such a shame, Harry's come to interrupt that. (Though maybe he doesn't have to interrupt this, her complacency… maybe he is just here to change it.)

(Surprisingly, and hardly noticed, she is sitting in the exact spot Harry was when he got the warning letter from Luna, before the Cup was drawn from.)

Harry clears his throat. He’d asked Tom what to say here -- had considered, even asking Cedric, but friendship with him is not a bridge he wishes to cross. At least not yet (though some would argue he’d already done do) -- and had recited the words a hundred times in his head on the way over. Even so, the lines dry up in his mouth and he falls, dumbly, to his knees beside her.

It’s her who greets him -- an ugly start already. “Hello,” she says. She does not look up from him; fingers still working diligently on her project. It’s her Hogwarts skirt. She’s adding tiny dragons. “Are you here for a commission?”

“A -- what?” Harry looks around her, then, more closely, and notes that not all the pieces of fabric here belong to her.

“I’ve had a recent spike in popularity,” she says softly. “Being one of the Champions and all. People saw what I was working on… and liked what they saw.”

Harry swallows. His first instinct is to undermine her progress. Be kind, he reminds himself. Do not think about the future -- your marriage with her -- because this is now and not then. It doesn’t matter. Act like it doesn’t matter. “That’s great, Luna.”

Luna.

Oh, and saying her name again, addressing her, god forbid, has brought back so many memories. His first year is sometimes a foggy one -- messed around and ignored in the bookshelves of his mind -- but he remembers what he has said to her. What he had done.

Looney Lovegoo, he’d said, he’d mocked. Any patience she refuses to have with him would be deserved -- but, like everytime they talk, she doesn’t care.

It’s time, he thinks, to stop feeling bad about that and start making up for it. “No -- no, I’m not here for a commission.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I wanted to talk to you.” He pauses, “About what I said.”

Luna hms; her sign to continue.

Harry wets his lips -- suddenly all too dry -- and says, “This was rigged.”

“Mhm.”

“And I’m…” those sticky words, forced out of his mouth, “Sorry. For insinuating otherwise. It wasn’t fair of me.”

“It wasn’t,” she says, not unkindly. Calm. Patient. “Was it?”

“No.” He adds, “I’m sorry for not responding to your letters. Years… I ignored them for years and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been -- … wasn’t -- angry at you.”

“No?” She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “It felt like it. Like you were angry at me.”

Harry looks away. It’s harder, he thinks. Owning up is harder than it seemed in his head. Harder than it seems in a written scene. His words are not enough then. And they are not enough now. “I didn’t want to be married to you.”

“Because you’re aromantic.” Another subtle sign she’s read his letters.

“Right. I didn’t want to be married because I’m aromantic. And I channeled my frustration toward you--” I bullied you, “because…”

“Because I was who you were married to.”

“No,” he says. “Because I’m an asshole.”

Luna smiles at that, the skin around her eyes crinkling a bit.

“It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid -- and I…”

“You were, too.”

Harry blinks. “What?”

“You were just a kid, too,” she says. She cuts a string with her teeth, getting to work on the finish. Her art -- and it is art, what she does, like how what Harry creates is art -- is so seemingly effortlessly done. Harry could never. (Harry once did.)

“It doesn’t make what I did any better.”

“No,” Luna says quietly. “It doesn’t. It does make it more understandable.”

“Yeah.” Harry rubs his hands together. He feels like he is being unraveled at the seams. Being mean, being alone is an integral part of his day to day existence. Harry chose to change that, by sending her his first response, and Tom reinforced it, when doubt crept in. And it is scary, change… but not so bad. It’s warm, even. “I read them,” he adds, as an afterthought. “I read all your letters.”

“You never responded.” She pauses. “You responded once, actually.”

“I liked it. The letters. Made me feel..” like I mattered, like someone still believed in me, like I was tethered to this earth, “... happy, that you understood my situation enough to choose compassion. Even if you shouldn’t have. Even if I didn’t deserve it.”

“What do you want from me? Now that it is all out, all said and done and undoable.”

I want forgiveness. I am not entitled to it.

I want another friend. I am not entitled to it.

I want us to work together and figure out why you were kept in the drawing against your will. I am not entitled to company in this endeavor.

Harry Potter wants a lot of things from her. Not one of them fair. Not one of them owed. And Harry realizes it is because it’s not what he wants that matters here, but her. She’s given so much.

It is her choice. It should be.

“I want you to tell me what you want from me,” says Harry. If wants to never see him again, he will disappear from her life. If she wants a friend, she’ll have one. If she wants a partner to figure out what happened with the Cup, he will sit with Tom, scouring books far past midnight (letting the Raven in him bloom.)

If she wants him to be okay with marrying her, with being civil… Harry will do his best to get emancipated. And then, if it fails, he will accept his fate, and her, without question and without further comment.

If she wants not to marry him, Harry will do everything possible to overturn their contract (like he is planning to do regardless), and he will let her help.

It is her decision, her life, her choice.

“I want a client,” she says. “And… a penpal.”

“A penpal?”

“Yes. After a while… we will see where we go from there.”

It is intentional, Luna’s ignored letters, left with no response, and her new proposal. There is the implication that this can no longer be a one sided deal. She writes him and, unlike before, he must right back. That’s the deal. (That’s what is only fair.) “I can do a penpal. I’m a writer. It shouldn’t be all that hard.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time.

“I charge high, by the way, for my commissions.” her little way of payback; one cannot be detested for so long without just a little resentment. Harry’s fine with that. He even finds it funny.

“Do you normally?”

“No,” says Luna. But this isn’t normal.

“Well,” says Harry, “I can pay high, too.” He could do his own commissions -- he does not want to rely on the Potter vault, one of the essentials of emancipation; an independent financial situation.

“...Can I ask you something, Luna?”

“You can ask me anything.” This does not mean he should.

“Why did you keep writing me?” He backtracks quickly, “Not that I don’t appreciate it, of course, it's just that…”

“That you yourself wouldn’t, if you were me?” She raises an eyebrow. “I’d gathered.”

Harry feels his face color. “Yeah -- yeah, that.”

She rocks her head side to side, humming. “It’s hard to say. And mean to.”

“I can handle mean.” Why dish what you cannot take?

“I suppose I pitied you.” Harry feels the familiar urge creep up on him, when someone says something similar to the words concern or worry -- his normal response to a confrontation, or even acknowledgment of his disordered eating, is to bolt. Say This is great and all, but I must be going or Go to Hell, and then just straight up leave.

But now, he’s not leaving. (That’s what friends, penpals, are for: sticking around.) He can dish it and can take it. He will grow out of his skin of fear and abandon that part of him, the cowardly part, on the floor, on this very blanket placed on grass.

Not all change is bad. Some is warm and some, this kind… feels inevitable. It feels like completion.

“Pitied?”

“Yes. You were reacting strongly to a situation that impacted you strongly. You were forced to be with me, saw our parent’s choice in me… and you lashed out. Hurt people hurt people. I know this. And you were ill. Are ill. So obviously sick -- at war not only with me, your parents, but yourself as well -- sick and alone. That’s what you were doing to yourself. What you are currently trying to undo. Isolation with only the sick for commentary leaves no room for healing; when you leave a potato in the dark, it does not die. It thrives and grows and tries its best to spread… and I saw you. I saw that darkness in you, the sickness, the loneliness, the telltale signs that you did not want to be a lone wolf but felt as if it was your only choice.

“A pretty, sick, sad child. That’s what you were. I… I think I wanted to help. In a cabinet full of darkness, I refused to let your fungus fester; I was a light. I attempted to be.

“It was therapeutic, too, to write those weekly letters. It was for me just as much as it was for you.

“I remembered, kept remembering, the parts of you worth saving. Not your anger or sadness, but your writing. Your wording. It was and is sharp and I did not want to let it die with you.” She adds, looking at him, “You were pretty in the face, too. It helped.”

Harry feels sick to his stomach.

Pretty. Twice she’d called him that -- even if she acknowledges the second time that his body is not attractive, is not pretty… it feels weird. Weird that he had spent so long yearning to be undesirable only to, miraculously, fail.

He had started his eating disorder to kill himself. Quickly, at first, then settling to slow descent. It was amongst other reasons -- he’s not sure he can pin it all on suicidal ideation and lately, all his motivation seemed to swirl together into a murky brown thing. Not every part of it is distinguishable.

But some parts are. His want to die. His desire to be unattractive -- so that Luna Lovegood, his bribe to be, would not want him.

(I am not supposed to be beautiful to you. I am not supposed to be anything to you.

Tell me I am sick. Tell me I look ugly, a walking skeleton -- like I am dying.

Sickness and ugly and dying are validation that I am doing something right.

Beauty… for me, is not.)

But he’d agreed to hear it, didn’t he? She’d told him it’d be mean. Implied it was not an admirable confession.

Harry pushed her anyway. He got what he wanted and what he got (was mean) was the truth.

She pitied him. Found him a pretty, skilled boy that would waste away alone, so she put in the minimal effort to ensure he wouldn’t.

It’s kind. It’s mean. It’s a mix of both and that’s what, Harry figures, the truth is most of the time; neither black nor white.

Luna Lovegood… is a good person. And Harry is not. So he does what he thinks she would do in this situation (what Cedric might, what Tom would try to), and says, “Thank you for telling me.”

Luna says nothing in response -- which says something on its own, which says she is grateful he did not blow up on her (and what a sad expectation to have of someone -- sad and all his fault and on its way to changing). Instead, she asks him what design he’d want for his (overpriced) embroidery commission.

Harry lets it slide.

He tells her he wants a diadem on the hem of his dress shirt.

.xox.

Tom is an overthinker. It’s his greatest asset and his worst curse -- other than, of course, his older self’s impending insanity. While Harry Potter is making his sort-of-amends to Luna (Looney) Lovegood, Tom Riddle is (carefully, as not to be spotted) searching the library.

He’s looking for things veiled. Things that are public knowledge but meaningful only to a select few -- like Tom. Voldemort’s legacy, given context by Harry, is a well-documented path of blood.

He looks at old newspaper clippings of the man Tom would become and finds that, fixed with his handsome face -- showing signs of aging, only slightly, a luxury, still, that Tom does not have -- Tom finds it is a legacy not worth inheriting.

But he’s not here to revel in the past, however regretful it is, however disgustingly unchangeable it is. He’s here for the future.

Notes:

laying the groundwork for my f*cker of an ending here. will be a while tho not to worry lol. that being said, this story is almost two hundred pages. (i have this story backed up in its own doc). what a ride! congrats on making it this far. go check out my other works! leave a comment!

Chapter 15 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“They were all in love with dying.

They were drinking from a fountain,

That was pouring from an avalanche

Coming down the moutain.”

-- Butthole Surfers, Pepper.

.XoX.

Harry’s pretty sure Voldemort is evil. Like, it’s pretty close (if not solely) a definitive thing. He’s killed and will kill and the only comfort is that Tom’s planning on doing something about it.

He is, on top of that, almost friends with Gellert Grindlewald. He hears a Raven jokingly call them star-crossed Dark Lords and finds it disgusting… though a valid possibility. One he pushes out of the crevasses of his mind and refuses to mention to Tom.

So, yes, Voldemort is evil. He understands that there does exist grey morality and understands even more so that it doesn’t apply here.

It’s weird, then, the rumours popping up. Marvolo has reported to his pseudo Head of House twelve times now that the Chryslsis is “not a club, it’s a cult, and I will not sit by idly and let children -- magical children -- buy into such a stunt. Gellert may be fine with murdering Muggles to achieve his cause, but I was sure -- oh so sure -- that this castle did not align themselves with that, did they?”

To Harry’s total shock and surprise, he even goes to Dumbledore about it. In the middle of the (very full) Great Hall.

Harry’s been sitting with the Slytherins -- he’s decided that Luna Lovegood can have the Raven table to herself. He is forgiven but they are not friends (just penpals), and he will not add slight to slight by intruding upon the space she’s clearly declared she wants. And besides… Cedric and Julian aren’t so bad. -- and Marvolo has been desperately trying, to Cedric’s eternal pushback, to sit with Harry.

But Harry’s not allowing it, not buying this act of star-struck child separate from his “father’s” legacy, and Cedric backs him up. Marvolo hasn’t yet succeeded.

So the day it happens, Harry does not see Marvolo stand up from his seat but he does see him walk, determined, up to the staff table. He stops right in front of Albus. He speaks loudly, curtly, “Professor Dumbledore.”

“Headmaster, my boy. My professor days are long behind me.” He looks only at Marvolo, ignoring the large amount of attention that’s on them. “Tom, is it? Named after your father… he and I have a long history, I’m sure you know.”

“Oh, I’ve heard,” says Marvolo. He locks eyes with him and something about the gesture is too deliberate. What are you playing at? thinks Harry. “And I go by Marvolo now.”

“Marvolo, of course -- my apologies. What brings you here -- and now, might I add?” He unlocks his fingers and spreads his palms out, gesturing to Great Hall, filled to the brim with students and staff, his only sign that he has any idea people are watching.

Marvolo shrugs minutely. “I wanted to make you you wouldn’t refuse to talk to me.”

“My boy, my office hours are free to use for any student. Foreign or not.”

“But not to me.”

Dumbledore tilts his head and says nothing.

“I have concerns,” continues Marvolo, “about the Chrysalis Club.”

“Do you?” mutters Dumbledore. He rises from his seat. “Alright then, we can discuss them. I’m sure you know the way to my office. Lead the way, then, if you would?”

Marvolo turns on his heel and Dumbledore trails slowly behind.

And though there’s no actual indication… Harry can’t help but think Dumbledore knows, too, that Marvolo is Voldemort.

Nothing further is done -- nothing outwardly comes from their conversation -- but that doesn’t seem to bother Marvolo. He is adamant not to shut up about it. One evening (three days from when Winter break starts… and two and a half weeks until the First Task), Marvolo comes up to him in the hallway. Harry opts to call it an ambush.

“Just wanted to make sure of something, love,” he gushes with that breath that stinks of blood and voice that’s full of lies and honey-sweet words. Harry backs up, but for every step he takes backward, Marvolo takes on forward. “You’re not thinking of joining them, are you? The Chrysalis Club?”

“What’s it to you?” Harry snaps, then rolls his eyes. “No. I’m not.”

Marvolo visibly relaxes. “God, good. Try not to get an attitude about it, will you? I’m just worrying. That’s what husbands do.”

“That’s news to me,” says Harry coldly, “that you’re my husband.”

Marvolo sighs wistfully. “One day.” He suddenly grabs Harry’s hand tightly. Harry winces. “Though I am serious. They’re going to offer you something… I don’t know what yet… but it will seem irresistible, I’m sure. But you have to reject it. If you need me instead--”

“Arrogant ass bitch.” Harry tugs his hand out of Marvolo’s grasp. “If I need you? I don’t know you, dude. We’re not friends. We’re hardly acquaintances. And we’re sure as Hell not lovers.”

Marvolo is untouched by his venom. He acts all parts of boy in love for what is practically a stranger. “Just tell me, Harry. Tell me you won’t join.”

Harry doesn’t see any reason that he would. He has no business surrounding himself with agony, especially when the… friends he’s made are much better company.

But he says, just to f*ck with Marvolo because Marvolo is Voldemort and any discomfort toward him is a win, “I’ll do whatever I want, thanks.”

His face falls and Harry leaves the corridor, feeling much better than when he entered.

.xox.

Harry speaks to Tom about it later. They sit on his bed, curtains closed tight around them, muffalo preventing any Ravens awake too late at night from overhearing. “I just don’t get it,” Harry says. “Voldemort and Gellert are, like, besties. They’re in sync on everything.”

“Just about everything,” corrects Tom.

“Yeah, well. It’s pretty close.”

“Apparently,” says Tom, “not close enough.”

Harry considers that. He’s writing in Tom’s journal, rewriting the prologue for his novel. They say the beginning is the hardest. Harry finds he agrees… in more circ*mstances than writing.

Tom breaks the silence. “You said he talked to Dumbledore? And Dumbledore knows about him, what he is?”

Harry flushes a little. “Yes. And it’s not a certainty that Dumbledore knows -- it’s just a theory, and I--”

“Intuition?”

Harry deflates. “Yeah. Just my intuition.”

Tom’s learned that any intuition of Harry’s is friend with fact. “What did they talk about?”

“I don’t know. Marvolo didn’t tell me.”

“Maybe he’ll tell me,” says Tom. Whatever they talked about… Tom suspects it didn’t stop at The Chrysalis Club. It is important. Tom’s sure of it. And he wants in. “Give me to him.”

Harry wavers. “Are you sure that’s the best idea? What if he doesn’t give you back?”

“I’m corporeal,” says Tom, shrugging. “I can handle myself, if the worst comes to worst.”

Harry does not look certain (and hasn’t Tom learned that Harry’s intuition is friend to fact?) but Tom is his friend. He may not trust Tom’s plan but he does trust Tom. If things go south, he’ll do what he can. That’s what friends are for. Trust… and backup.

.xox.

The day that Harry sends Tom off to talk to Marvolo, he is approached by two thin sisters with pigtails. Hufflepuffs. On their robes are matching butterflies. Harry doesn't need intuition to know these girls are trouble.

He’d known, since the moment he was offered a space in their club, that these are the kind of people that are carefully persistent. What they want, they will try their hardest to get and then try harder. They have a card up their sleeve. He’d thought that, had known that, and had been warned by Marvolo the very same thing.

They have a card. And now they’re playing it.

“The Task is directly after Winter break,” informs the taller one.

“Yes, I’m aware. Hyperaware, really. I’m actually one of the champions, don’t know if you’ve heard.”

“Oh, we know,” says the other.

“Some very influential people know, too.”

“They been reading the paper, huh?” says Harry. “Anyway, I must be going--”

“We’re here to inquire about your preparation for the event.”

Harry frowns, then grins. “It’s Nunya.”

“Nunya what?’

“Nunya business.”

She sniffs. “It’s a very difficult task. Your clue word’s Mockingbird, right?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t ring a bell for me,” says Harry. “But, hey, I’ve been thinking about bringing a gun. Like a Muggle gun. Pretty funny, wouldn’t you think? All these other wizards doing cool guy magic and sh*t I’m just over here. Shooting at it.”

“I fear a gun wouldn’t get the job done as well as one might hope.” She shakes her head sadly.

“And you would know?”

“Not me,” she says. “But people talk, you see, and knowing the Tasks beforehand is not… not such an impossibility.”

Harry doesn’t like where this is going. He can tell their offer before it’s even said. “So I join your Club and, what? Get access to all those juicy not-so-well kept-secrets?” Harry snorts. “The word of a stranger is as unknown as the person who voices it. I’ll pass.”

Shortie steps forward. “If we could guarantee our side of the bargain is held?” she asks. “What then?”

Harry narrows his eyes. “Then I’d be fine without it.”

“This Task isn’t as easy as you seem to think it is. Do you know why the Tournament was abolished in the first place?”

He does. “The body count.” It was one of the pros when considering whether or not to join.

“It’s still there, the factors that made it risky. “

“Cool,” says Harry. “Can you guys move now, or are you going to keep blocking my way? I swear, the more often I’m cornered, the less suprising it becomes.”

“One meeting.”

“Hm?”

“You don’t have to join,” says Tall-ie. “That’s what she said. You don’t have to join.”

“What would she be getting in return, then?” Harry accuses. “This information is valuable and I’m not stupid enough to think someone like Mouton would undersell it.”

“You just have to attend one meeting of the Chrysalis Club. Listen to her pitch… and then decide to decline it, if that’s what you do so choose.”

It’s weird. No. Weird is Cedric’s power over the Snakes. Weird is Dumbledore letting the Beauxbatons into his home while he so obviously hates them.

This is not weird.

It’s suspicious. (His gut is screaming at him to leave. There’s nothing they can say here to make their cause better or more sympathetic. Nothing they can say or do to make anything better -- they are, at their core, susceptible children complicit in a cause Harry Potter is not.)

(But that’s the thing, really. He’s gotten good at that. Ignoring his gut.)

“Why?” asks Harry. “Not a sure-fire way to get someone in, you know.”

Shortie spreads her palms out in front of her. “Everyone who joins, joins willingly. No one is forced and though you are prized, you are no exception to this rule.”

Prized? Katherine’s Portraits must have hit them hard, huh… What a legacy he has built. He and Tom have that in common, too. A past that leaves a bitter taste in their mouths.

But Harry wonders. These girls are messengers -- in the eyes of the Club, he’s sure they’re nothing less, nothing more.

But these people… they’re not just messengers. They are people. Real life people and being pro-ana doesn’t make them any less so. (Ignorance, misguidedness would not make what they have done any better… but it would make it more understandable.)

Grey morality exists. Harry knows this. Sometimes he considers himself a walking example. So Harry does not leave. Does not lash out, as he’s been so inclined to. Instead, he asks, gently, quietly, “Do you know what you’re supporting? Who you’re supporting?”

The answer is immediate. Practiced. “People like Katherine, the apparitions--”

“No,” says Harry, projecting more patience than he feels. “Who.”

“Mouton--”

“You say people join willingly. Did you?”

“Of course,” they both chorus.

“Well, you’re wrong about one thing.” Harry leans forward. “They join willingly. They also join ignorantly.”

“We are all well versed in what a low bodyweight can do--”

“Not that.” Though it’s concerning information. That they have been informed of the effects of an eating disorder and are conditioned to continue anyway. “Mouton’s the head of another organization. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“Oh, yes, the Butterflies is such an--”

“Not that.” Though it is again concerning. But not the point he’s trying to make. Not now. “And she’s not the head of the BUtterflies. At least, not officially. The Butterflies is a non-profit organization. It’s funded entirely by donational means.”

This is obviously news to them. But they try and act like it’s not a big deal, because right now, it’s not. “Your point?”

“They’re funded by a festive organization. Seasons’ Greetings. Fun, right? They sell Christmas ornaments, card, things for Yule. But that’s not where this fun train stops, oh, no.” Harry laughs. “You’ll see, in their donation list, one other thing. Wanna guess?”

“What are you talking about?”

Harry slams his foot on the ground. “Guess!” They both stare at him with wide, nervous eyes. Maybe they were warned about him, these messengers. Warned he might say something mean. Insult them. Be unreasonable and rude and maybe, these girls were prepared for that. But just that. “I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a ‘G’ and ends with a ‘rindelwald.’”

“That’s… that’s preposterous--”

“But it’s not,” says Harry, stalking forward. “You know it’s not -- I can see it in your face. I can see it. She’s built an entire group on the grounds of them hurting themselves -- is infecting an entire generation -- but they’re all just stupid enough not to notice that they’re not only hurting each other… they’re also hurting exactly who the Dark Lord wants.”

Cause Harry gets it. The urge to join a group like this. And he knows that not every Butterfly is a Mouton. Not everyone is intentionally malicious in their pain.

These girls want to hurt themselves. Whether it is a coping mechanism, response to a societal standard of thin they just can never keep up with, or something that started out of peer pressure that they just can’t stop, it is likely they never meant to encourage others to do the same. Even is that is what they are doing now.

So Harry tells them this because they might be pro-ana, but they are not pro-Grindelwald.

Harry walks past them and, this time, they do not try and stop him. “Tell Mouton not to wait up,” he calls. “And you can look into what I said, if you’d like. I am not a liar.

.xox.

He says that. Tells Mouton not to wait up, treats the proposition like it is ridiculous (and it is!), and the words of Marvolo ring in his head like a churchbell. She wants a way to trap him. This is it, her attempt at that, and it is hardly feeble.

He knows he should ignore it. Ignore her, her group, because any damage he can undo can only be done in small quantities and involving himself past that is asking (begging) for trouble.

He knows. He says that.

But the truth is, he still wants to die. He thinks about it when he starves himself, when he stuffs himself, and when his mind is just too quiet. But he has Tom now. Tom and Cedric and Julian and sort-of-Luna and they prove that life is not so bad when you have someone that wants to live it with you.

He wants to die. He wants to live… in only some sense of the word; in the way that he’d like to want to live for real.

It is a hope. A small burning in his chest and he will be damned if he extinguishes it now.

These people are led by a woman involved with a Dark Lord, drawing in children, easy prey. She is evil. Harry knows it. He also knows that she has (might have) information about what the First Task entails… information that, in Harry’s hands, is potentially life saving.

He doesn’t want to go to her meeting. He doesn’t want to talk, think, or hang around her at all -- but he will. He knows his life can be worth living. He knows Tom gave up a lot to be here with him and that is not a debt that he can repay dead.

So.

So, he’ll be going. He will, as a precaution, first get Mouton to swear an oath that if he uploads his part of the deal, she will, too.

It is one meeting. One meeting, and he can last one meeting.

What’s the worst that can happen?

(Tom is not here to dissuade him.)

.xox.

Harry tells Cedric during breakfast that he’s going to ask around, figure out the date of this thing, and then he’ll go to it. “If I don’t make it back, you’ll know who got me,” he says jokingly. He doesn’t think the Chysalsi Club is so outright to off him right there and then if he refuses to join them, but, hey. He’d put nothing past them.

Julian pipes in quickly, “I’ll come.”

Harry raises an eyebrow. (Sick knows sick.) “I didn’t think you’d want to,” he says.

Julain chuckles nervously. “Well, yeah. But I can’t let my favorite author risk his life like that. And… and I think it’s dangerous for you to go alone.”

Harry hums. “I’ll think about it.” And think he does. Julian has been nothing but kind to him. He’s offering to tag along for the sake of Harry’s wellbeing -- despite everyhting Harry has said and done and the kindness Harry has deliberately, time and time, again refused to reciprocate.

Harry catches him in the hallways later and tells him okay, he can come. He tells Julian to stop referring to him as his favorite author.

“Yeah?” says Julian. “What else could I call you?”

And Harry says, “You can start by calling me a friend.”

.XoX.

“I say I am to be ashamed

(as you do so agree)

Fretting over what he was

(ignoring what he grows to be)

A good or a great man

(if any man at all)

You’ll sink your teeth in and won’t let you

Your love’s like a turtle

(and it’s awfully slow)

Life is a forever tread below

And the only question to remain is

(how far am I to go?)”

-- Harry Potter, “Three of Swords.”

Notes:

we've made it to 200 pages??? whatt! been watching my doc of this grow and i cannot believe we've finally made it this far!! good on me for writing this much and good on u guys, for reading so much!! aaah!!! hope you enjoy this chapter. no kidding when i say some big BIG things are coming up. please comment!

Chapter 16 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Haven’t you heard

That I’m the new cancer?

Never looked better

And you can’t stand it.”
-- There’s A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought Of It Yet, Panic! At The Disco

.XoX.

“This was a terrible idea,” mutters Harry under his breath. Tom would’ve told him that. Likely anyone would have told him that, but didn’t. Probably , he figures, they’re just as curious as to what I’d find.

Julian, dressed in all orange, grabs a cup off of the nearest goblin’s tray “Dunno why you’re saying that so soon,” he says. He takes a sip and grimaces.

“So soon?”

“Oh, yeah. I reckon there’s way worse things to come,” he says absently, vanishing his cup.

“Like you’d know?”

“Mhm. I know these people.”

Harry blinks. “What?” (Sick knows sick.)

“Their food, for example,” says Julian. He shakes his head. “They remove the calories at the cost of the flavour. A shame, really.”

“Not what I was--”

Julian points toward the front. “There’s your girl,” he says.

The Chrysalis Club had signed out a large side room for their ‘meeting’, though Harry would more accurately describe it as a party from the Twilight Zone. There’s food and dancing and laughing, but something about it is all wrong. It is a room filled with so much orange it hurts his head to look at… and Harry wonders (perhaps unfairly) if it is purposeful.

Harry’s getting attention. He moves through the crowd with thin patience and a death lock between his arm and Julian’s, who seems not to mind. People ask if he is Harry Potter, the renowned author of their (bible ) shared text. He tells them repeatedly that no, he’s just some random Jerry Ridge and he doesn’t know what the f*ck they’re talking about, so sorry, but something in his voice, his posture, or the fact that Julian, the other Hogwarts’ champion, is right beside him gives him away.

Katherine’s name is tossed around more often than not.

For such a well-written, well-intended story, for such a good (in his opinion) character… Harry’s really started to hate her.

Someone asks if Katherine is based on real-life events and Harry loses his sh*t. “Next person to ask me about Kath-freaking-ernie gets their teeth punched in,” Harry snaps. Julian snickers quietly at his side. Someone in front of him opens their mouth to speak, but Harry doesn’t let them. “You’d be first, oi, I swear to God. ”

They put their hands up and back up a bit.

Getting to Mouton -- who is, as the Club leader, the very center of attention -- is a lot harder than Harry’d thought it’d be. He gets roped up in conversations and blocked at every possible turn.

It’s like they’re trying to get him to stay. On Mouton’s orders, most likely -- and he wouldn't think her better than not to.

“It’s a safe place, ” someone is trying to tell him. “Normal people don’t understand, and places like this give us a safe place to vent and be ourselves without the expectation to just… y’know, get better. ”

And Harry can see how they got to that assumption. But he also sees anyone that does not have the stereotypical look of an eating disorder being pushed to the side. People who are fat or male or POC are sort of sectioned off as cliches inevitably form. Even for people who fit the look, there is not just venting going on.

Harry thinks that there is nothing safe about this safe space.

“Sell your lies to someone who can buy them,” he snarls, dragging Julian by the elbow away from them.

“So you’re… just always like this?”

Harry glares at the nearest vulture (a seventh year Slytherin who’s never liked him, who Julian waves at). “Like what?”

“Hostile,” supplies Julian.

Harry stands up straighter. “I,” he says, tensely, “am trying not to be lately.”

“It’s hard to tell.”

Your honesty is both refreshing and f*cking not. “These people test my better nature.”

“I thought it was personal,” says Julian. “During the first time we talked, when you...”

Harry avoids his eyes. Go to Hell rings in his head. Fair. It wasn’t a fair thing to say. “It… wasn’t like that, Julian. I’m just…”

“Hostile?” finishes Julian.

Harry laughs, running a hand down his face. “Yeah,” he chuckles. “Hostile. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, 'cause I’m just a salty boy.”

Julian hums. They’ve stopped by the buffet tables.

Harry looks it over with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t know what any of this sh*t is,” he says, “but it ain’t food.”
“I know. What this food is, I mean,” notes Julian, scouring the table with a small frown on his face. “It’s… it’s kinda like a staple.”
“For what?”

“A stereotype, I’d say. A sterotypye of pro-ana groups. You’ve got your cucumbers and lettuce and celery. ” He shudders. “And no dip. And then you’ve got black tea and coffee and water for drinks. Chewing gum. I mean, you see it right? They’re supposed to be selling the image of a health and fitness group, but I look here and I look around and it’s never been more obvious.” It’s never been more obvious. Like once upon a time, it was subtle.

Is that what you’re saying, Julian?

(Sick knows sick.)

“You know a lot about pro-ana circles,” notes Harry. He tilts his head. “I’ve never really been involved with them myself, so I’m not up to date on the dynamics.”
“You haven’t been involved with them… but they like to involve themselves with you, don’t they?”

Harry turns his head away again. “I’d suppose.”

“You get… defensive,” is the word he settles on, “when someone brings up your book. But you got it published -- the writing contest people have been talking about had that as one of the rewards. You won. It was well written, like your class work is, but… but you’re ashamed of it.”

“I was stupid,” says Harry. They begin walking away toward the front. “I was stupid and I made a mistake and now no one will let it go. That’s all. That’s the end of it.”

Julian does not know how to take a hint. “But you got it published.”

Harry turns towards him and unlatches his arm. He grabs the front of Julian’s robe, balls them up in his fists, and insists, painfully, “I was twelve, Julian. I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was doing it -- I was hurting. And I wrote what I knew -- because that’s what artists say to do, you know: draw what you know -- and I hurt people. I hurt people because I was young and I was stupid and didn’t know any better. I am not ashamed of my illness, Julian, I am afraid of it. Of what it can make me into, of what it can do to others.” He releases Julian and gestures to the crowd of orange around them… some of them unabashedly listening in. He continues, quieter, “These people think they know what it is like. They think the side effects start at body weight and end at the medical effects of being underweight or purging or whatever. But it does not start there and it does not end there. They are alright with looking like monsters without ever considering they could become one.”

“You aren’t a monster, Harry,” is said reassuringly, softly.

I am not a monster. Voldemort is a monster and Mouton is a monster. I am something else. I am complicit. There does exist grey morality… and most of the time, I fall on the darker side of things. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a mistake of mine. And I’m trying to make it better, to be better. I’m really trying, Julian.”

“I know,” says Julian. He grab both of Harry’s hands and folds his arms in on himself until they ar forehead to forehead, a step away from a hug. “It’s okay. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you so stirred up.”

But Harry’s not worried about that -- as far as he’s concerned, Julian is forgiven and they’re as good as even -- because Julian releases his hands and wraps his arms around him and. Harry’s head settles in the crook of his shoulder.

Harry wonder when was the last time he was hugged.

“It’s better if we just head out,” says Julian. Harry feels Julain’s chest rumble against his skull. Julian laughs a bit. “This place hasnt been good for either of us, really, and I think if we just asked the other champions, we could get some--”

“That,” a voice rings out loudly, from ten or so feet away, “won’t be necessary, Harry Potter.”

Students murmur. It is almost like the parting of the Red Sea, the way people clear a path so quickly. The click of her shoes fills the room like water in the hull of a ship. She stops a few feet in front of them.

Harry releases himself from the hug slowly, soaking up the image -- and it is an almost angelic view; her, as something divine, and the people around her followers, if insignificant to her entirely -- with narrowed eyes.

“Mouton,” Harry says, lowly, nearly a threat.

Julain says nothing.

“Harry Potter,” she greets. She nods her head at Julian. “And Mr. Jackson, I see. A pleasure to talk to you again, sir, a pleasure.”

“The pleasure,” Julian says meekly, “is mine.

“It is lovely -- kind of you, yes -- that you would escort him to me. I’m so glad the both of you exell at following instructions. But me and Harry here,” she smiles with teeth too white to be natural; her eyes the way a shark eyes its prey, as something cruel and predatory. “We have business to discuss. In private, I'm afraid.”

The way she speaks about Julian is anafarious. Foul. The way Julian tells him, softly and sadly, that he has to go now, and the way that Julian leaves… that’s all f*cked, too.

Harry Potter’s gut feelings and mysteries do not mix.

Someone is hiding something here… albeit, not very well.

But he is given no further time to explore it as Mouton turns on her feel, glancing behind her shoulder at him, and walks away with the implication he’s to follow.

Students part in front of her and as Harry walks forward, people fill in the space he’d left. Yes, thinks Harry. There’s nothing right here.

.xox.

Mouton’s dorm -- a repurposed old staff room -- is too normal. A normal bed. A normal desk. A normal couch and normal books and Harry looks at the place expecting there to be, somewhere, a hidden butterfly or just a little too much orange to be natural. He is sorely mistaken.

She smooths down the front of her robe and sits at the kitchen table. “Sit,” she says.

Harry, begrudgingly, takes his place. The chair is normal, too. There is nothing sinister about the home of a cult leader and perhaps that’s the only abnormality here.

“You said you weren’t coming, Harry.” She places her arm on the table and her cheek in her head, looking at him intently. “I must say, it is a surprise you cae.”

Don’t cap. You knew I’d come. You knew I’d have to. He screws up his jaw tight and says nothing. If you do not engage in their bullsh*t, they’ll be forced to get to the point eventually.

“You were the only one not wearing orange. I couldn’t help but notice… it must have brought a lot of attention to you, if I had to guess.”

You don’t have to do anything. “I didn’t get the memo.”

“Julian did,” she says. “And he didn’t tell you.”

“I don’t get your point.” He does, but that whole thing about not engaging in bullsh*t… “Tell me the contents of the First Task.”

“Ah, yes, that. Our deal.”

“You’d sworn an oath, so I’m told. So I don’t really think you’d forogetten this.”

“No,” she says, smiling. “I hadn’t. I had wanted to ask you something, propose something, Harry.”

“Cool. Don’t think I agreed to that, though.”

“I ask that you hear me out, Harry, that’s all.”

“Tell me about the First Task,” Harry repeats.

She shales her head, tutting. “So problematic…” Says you, thinks Harry. “But, alright. I am not a liar, after all.” Harry raises a disbelieving eyebrow at that but says nothing. “Have you ever read the book series The Hunger Games?”

“A few years back. Why?”

“Well, it mentions directly the clue word -- don’t know if you’ve forgotten -- Mockingjay. A mix of the mocking bird and the jabbery jay, known to repeat whatever conversation it heard.”

“Dunno how a songbird relates to the Task.”

“I was getting there. You’re too impatient.”

“So-so.”

“The Task will contain the version of them in the second book. They will repeat phrases, sounding like they are from your loved ones -- not that you’d know anything about that -- being tortured.”

“So that’s why a gun wouldn’t work,” he mutters. He ignores Mouton’s slight. It is meant to make him angry, insecure about the supposed reality in the statement, but there’s nothing supposed about it -- it’s just a lie. “So, then, I need to make myself unable to hear them and storm forward to do whatever I need to do to complete the Task? That about it?”

“You’ll need to retrieve a large golden egg from within their forest,” she says. “And, no. It won’t be that easy. You are forced to listen to them, because within the birds will be one or more telling you the location of the egg.”

Clever. Rewarding bravery. Also inconvenient. “Your suggestion, then?”

“Know that the recording are not real. They will sound real, feel real, but, in the end, it is all thematics. And I know a thing or two about thematics. Fold to the pressure and lose… or withstand, and win.”

“No real danger, then? Even if I did lose.” Not worth coming here, not if his life was not at stake. But it will be useful information regardless. He’ll tell Luna in hs next letter. And Julian, too, because he escorted Harry here without reward and he deserves something out of this endeavor.

“No,” she says. “Not physically. But I gather, for someone like you, this might prove tricker ground.”

She knows what she’s hinting too -- the wording is to percise not be.. And too vague not to be intentional. “Why do you do that?” asks Harry, exasperated.

“Mhm?”

“Talk like you know what you’re referring to but never say anything exactly. It’s tiring. It’s obnoxious.” He’d say it is a Snake thing to do, but all Snakes are regulated by Cedric. They are not this. She is not Slytherin; she’s just f*cking evil.

“May I be outright with you then, Harry?”

Harry doesn’t like the inclination of her voice. “Depends what you’re being outright about.”

“Join my Club.”

An obvious suggestion, but it is off putting that she would state it so, as she said, outrightly. “Bruh.”

“I’m serious,” she insists, standing up from her chair. “Normal people do not understand. The things that your mind produces should not be censored -- and here, they won’t be. Why do you dim your creativity?”

“My creativity,” snarls Harry, “is dangerous.” And can you really call what is surface level creative?

“Don’t you want to be understood, Harry? Loved, despite your illness?”

“You mean because of.”

There is comfort in agony if it is all you know. The people in the party room outside are lonely. Their only friends are their despair -- and now, the despaired.

Harry gets it. He understands feelings he does not have because he’s a writer, after all, that’s his job.

But there is comfort in agony if it all you know and it isn’t all he’s known. He has Luna and Tom and Cedric and Julian. Someone spoke about how normal people -- and he hates the use of that word, normal, he really does -- listen to you talk about your illness and decide that you MUST get better RIGHT NOW. No one has ever done that to him. He’s lucky, in a way, not to be this woman’s target audience. He is lucky not to have fallen prey even when he was.

“Maybe I don’t need to be understood to be loved,” says Harry quietly. “Maybe I’m not like you.”

Mouton is insistent. It is not like she has invested anything in him, in the possibility of him joining… but maybe she has. He has no idea what all she has promised her Club. Or Gellrt, for that matter.“The work you have done for my movement, and the work that you could continue to do, if given the chance, the recognition you could gather--”

“I don’t want the chance,” says Harry, standing up. “I don’t want any of these big accomplishments to come from the fact I am writing about my illness -- I want to be reconginzed from the pure merit of my writing. You’re tainted. You’ve tainted me. And I’m done.”

“I have so much to offer you, Harry. My people are not your enemy.”

I know. But you are. “You don’t want me,” says Harry.

“I gave you a present, don’t you recall? All for you. ”

“No.” It is said calmly. “All for the idea of me. All for this caticure of EDNOS -- the kind of EDNOS that I do not have -- all for Katherine. I need you to understand something: One of the main notions of a good writer is the ability for their main characters not to be self inserts. I am not Katherine. I am not like her. You want the reality of what I wrote? Then go f*cking read it. It’s the best you’re getting. It’s the best I’ve got.”

Mouton sags in her chair. “You are valuable, Harry. There is nothing worthless to you.”
People like you only value me when I am convenient to them. When I am not, Mouton… I wonder what you would think of me if I was not. “I fulfilled my part of our deal. You, yours. I do not think this be the last I hear from you. But I sure hope it is.”

.XoX.

“You boring, repetitive, f*cks

All you girls look the same

You do not think to think

That maybe life is more than empty a hole where your heart once sat

This one pulls the trigger

And this one says it doesn’t hurt

You say f*ck the police

Without looking down at the blue you wear

And you will see that your illogical processes need some reconstruction

Or you won’t

And you will die

Boring, repetitive,

f*cks.”

-- Harry Potter, “Ace of Cups.”

Notes:

thank u for reading!!!!! next: the First Task.
as u all know, this is not the only fanficiton i write. i uploaded, a few days ago, a Death X Harry one-shot. my longest and most intricate one ever (i spent three days on it!!!! for reference, i wrote this whole chapter in about one sitting) and have gotten 0 comments on it. if any of you would like to check it out and leave some reviews, that would make me feel less like i wasted my time!! would be really cool!! thank you

Chapter 17 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“See how the brain plays around

And you fall inside a whole you couldn’t see.

And you fall inside a hole inside a--

[Someone help me]

--Understand what’s going on

Inside my mind

Doctor,

I can’t tell if I’m not me.”

-- The Mind Electric, Miracle Musical.

.XoX.

Winter break passes quickly. Harry sends a letter to Luna Lovegood. In part because they are pen pals and in part because Harry knows the poorly kept secret of the tournament and likes sharing. And if there is any person who deserves to know, it is her.

He also tells Julian. “You helped me figure it out in the first place,” says Harry, shrugging. “It’s only fair.”

Julian smiles and tells him thank you. Harry resists rolling his eyes and making a snide comment. It’s uncalled for. No good.

What is not uncalled for is Harry questions about Mouton. “She talked like she knew you,” Harry tells him. “And -- and implied that you knew about the dress code, and purposefully didn’t tell me.”

Julian makes a face. “Well, everyone knows her, don’t they?”

But that is not the point. Julian looks uncomfortable and says, awkwardly, not to take war criminals at their word before scurrying off quickly -- and though he’s right, it’s not the point. The point is that Harry is good at this stuff, telling when people are lying. The point is that even if he wasn’t… Julian doesn’t lie solely because he’s bad at it and Harry can tell.

Every time after that that Harry tries to get answers out of him, or even briefly mention the Butterflies or the Chrysalis Club, Julian tells him brightly he has somewhere to be.

He is a terrible liar. Harry just wishes he had a more exact idea of what it was he was lying about.

Most worryingly is Tom. Harry waits a few days and Tom is not back. He writes a letter to Marvolo, who is home for the break -- wherever Dark Lords like himself call home -- and gets no response. When a week has gone by and worry is spawned Harry writes another. It is angrier, more demanding, and again left with no response.

(He wonders, absently, if this is how Luna felt for all those years.)

The day before winter break ends, Harry sends a howler.

He tries not to think too hard about Tom and Tom’s absence apart from that. If he does, he will get too wrapped up in that familiar blanket of guilt and will not be able to pull himself out of it. He had let Tom leave him. Had sent him off himself, didn’t he? If Tom is in danger, and the certainty of this rises by the day… then Harry is complicit. He had his doubts and his doubts didn’t matter because he sent him anyway.

It is his fault.

He is unable to provide backup if he doesn’t know where he is, if he has confined himself yet again to the castle, if Marvolo opts to ignore him.

His friend -- his first real one, the first one he’d ever let himself have -- might be dead or wounded or worse and Harry cannot help but think this is why he’s never had friends before: Harry’s the f*cking worst at it. (Badperson, badperson.)

He cannot settle on his guilt because feeling guilty and doing nothing is only worth the latter. He cannot settle on his guilt because it will eat him alive if he does.

The next time he’s to see Marvolo is when winter break is over and everyone is crowded into the makeshift arena for the Triwizard Tournament; ready, none more so than Harry, for the First Task.

It’s a waiting game. Harry’s spent so much of life playing it. Waiting for the fat to melt off his body. Waiting for it to come back. And, always, waiting for summer vacation to finally end.

A waiting game. Harry’s good at those. So Harry gets to playing.

.xox.

Harry peeks out of the side of the tent. There are his classmates, cheering and loud. It seems they’ve carried over students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, too, to watch the proceedings. There’s Ministry officials. Reporters, photographers, people who are allowed for one reason or another to watch the First Task go down.

Harry sinks back into the tent, closing the flap shut. He’s dressed in the best outfit he’s got, but he’s not so confident to proclaim he looks better than any of the other contestants. Vixen wears robes so professional he looks like he’s a pro-Quidditch player… and now that Harry thinks about it, he might be. Harry’s not all that up on his celebrities. It would explain a populaties status that carries over from Durmstrang.

From Beauxbatons, Sally -- if Harry remembers her name right -- does not look as fancy. Still, her style fits her well. She grins like she’s a sure winner and dresses like it, too. Her hair is up in dreads and thick leather gloves don her hands.

Even Luna Lovegood’s normal school robes stand out; fully embroidered and in great detail.

Julian is the only one not dressed up in the slightest. He wears a gabby t-shirt and jeans. “I’m not even supposed to be here,” says Julian, standing beside Harry in the tent, shrugging. “So I’m not seeing the point.”

“It makes the rest of us look better in comparison,” jokes Harry. “A thank you, from the rest of us.

Julian smiles softly. “Be careful out there,” he says, quietly. He just got a new friend. It would be terrible to lose him so soon. (To lose his favorite author before his prime.)

Harry’s heart aches. “You, too.”

“How much longer?” Sally asks to no one in particular.

“They’re setting up outside right now,” says a voice and it is oh so familiar. It is daunting and Harry can feel his blood pressure raise just listening to it. “I’d say another five minutes, give or take.”

Sally shifts uncomfortably on her feet. “Got it, Riddle.”

Marvolo raises an eyebrow. “Riddle? My schoolmate, I wasn’t aware we weren’t on a first name basis.”

Harry soaks up the information and stores it away for later. What do you know, Sally, thinks Harry, if anything? He saves the poor girl from answering. He grabs Marvolo by his sleeve and pulls him to the side.

Marvolo is dressed like Malfoy is dressed; a rich man who is not interested in acting like anything else. A rich man who wears good robes to what might be a messy task because he can afford to get them dirty, to replace them.

He takes to the Snakes well.

“Where is Tom?” hisses Harry.

Marvolo detaches his hand from his sleeve and holds it gently, kissing the top of it. “You won’t have to worry about him right now, my love,” says Marvolo. “We’ve a task to focus on, hm?”

“Where is he?”

“Not here,” says Marvolo. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” More than you or I even know.

“Well,” says Marvolo, grinning slyly. Harry’s gut churns. “It is opt time for it to stop.”

If Cedric was here, it’d be a different story. It’d be a battle of tongues, or wits, until someone gave and from the track record, it’d be Marvolo.

But Cedric is not here. It is just Harry and while it is just Harry, he understands Marvolo’s innuendo without further details.

It matters to me. Well, it is opt time for it to stop.

You didn’t.

You wouldn’t.

But he would, wouldn’t he?

Harry hears his heart in his ears and pushes through a dry mouth to ask, feather light, “Did you kill him?”

Marvolo grins. (An answer. It’s an answer to Harry even if it wouldn’t be to anyone else. It’s an answer even if Marvolo does not intend it to be.) “I don’t know if he’s dead quite yet. But I’ll tell you all about it soon, okay? After you make it through the First Task, I’ll tell you everything.”

But Harry doesn’t want that. What he wants is Tom alive, in his hands, beside him, supporting him.

Alive. He wants Tom alive.

It is Harry’s fault. And like with Katherine triggering people… it’s Harry's fault and it’s someone else’s.

“I’ll kill you,” says Harry, firmly. He knows the words are true as soon as they leave his mouth. “I’ll beat you at this stupid Tournament and then I will kill you.” He will pick up where Tom left off.

“Oh, Harry,” coos Marvolo, cupping Harry’s face in his hands. “I sincerely doubt that. You will come to like me, Harry. I’m better than him. And what a pair we will make, Harry.”

“I’ll never like you.” A promise.

“We’ll see.” A kiss on his forehead. A challenge.

Then the horns blow and an announcer calls their names one at a time, having them file out of the tent.

It’s time for the First Task. Most everyone is there to win. An outcast from his peers as long as he’s had them, Harry is glad to, for once, be included.

.xox.

There is a forest in front of them that was not there before. The trees reach to the sky; clouds pooling around them at places. Their leaves are in thick bundles and that with the fog that surrounds the ground makes it hard to see; something very intentional. It’s to force them to rely on audio cues for efficiency.

Clever. (Clever and cruel and Harry knows deeply why this was outlawed once.)

Harry can hear birds chirping faintly. Jabber Jays.

“There are six golden eggs in the arena,” says the announcer. Is it the Headmaster from Durmstrang? Harry can’t tell. “You will complete the Task by finding one and the order in which they are discovered will determine the amount of points awarded to each champion. You have 90 minutes. Begin!”

The horns sound once more. Then there is radio silence. Dimly, Harry can make out the crowd's cheers. How are they seeing this? Harry wonders. Must be some special, x-ray magic, able to see them through the trees--

Harry’s train of thought is interrupted by Luna saying Help me! Why are you abandoning me? Helpmehelpmehelp-- Harry whips his head around to see--

Luna. Luna Lovegood, looking fine, not yelling for help at all, making her way past the ticket of trees, lumos lit in front of her.

She’s… Fine. Luna Lovegood is fine.

Harry takes a deep breath and reminds himself it is not real. It’s not real and Harry is not the strongest mentally but he’s going to have to act like it because it is not real.

Sally is making good time. She’s trying to scale a tree, seeing, likely, if it will give her a vantage point. She’s noticed the noise made by the birds… and made it so she couldn't hear it. Foolish. But useful, for Harry.

Harry quiets his breathing. He hears the voices of the birds, surrounding in the faux screams and pleas of help from his friends. Accusations of abandonment.

He hears his parents.

But he ignores those (because they are not real) and tries to sort through them in his mind.

There is Luna. And Julian and Cedric and his mother -- and then there’s the golden ticket to his golden egg.

Two thousand feet forward, thickest tree… seven hundred feet up… two thousand feet forward, thickest tree.

The instructions. Harry’s got it.

He makes his way forward, trying to make it look inconspicuous, like he hasn’t just found what will be surely a secure place in first, looking around at his opponents while he moves.

Marvolo is waving his wand, whispering incantations. He’s onto something, probably. Voldemort is never ill prepared. Harry hates him for it. The problem is Harry’s onto something, too.

Sally is descending from her spot on the tree, a scowl on her face.

Harry can’t see Vixen. Vaguely up ahead is Luna Lovegood.

Julian…

Has not moved from the finish.

Harry almost laughs. Of course he hasn’t. Of course he’s not even bothering to try -- everyone but he and Luna are here via their own free will. Julian does not want to win. He never did. He will wait this one out. From the bored and not distressed look on his face, he’s utilizing a silencing charm, too.

Harry is glad. Julian… might not take what these birds are saying well and when disorder people are upset, the way they deal with it is hardly ever healthy.

Harry continues onward. The birds are more rowdy now, some ten minutes in. Harry can see them, flying from tree to tree. They’re… dully noted, moving closer. But not toward Harry directly.

More toward Luna. Luna Lovegood.

And Luna seems to be alright. She eyes the birds moving closer with a careful eye and there are a few scratches on her hands, a few patches of her careful embroidery sadly ripped in places, but she looks fine. She listens to the birds and does not melt. She does not wilt or wither.

Luna, Harry realizes, is so much stronger than him, than Julian. Even with the assertion that what he is hearing is not real, that no one around him is begging for help, Harry knows this place is the stuff of nightmares. It will join the sequence of terror that awaits him in bed at night.

But Luna is fine. She is confident in herself, armed with the knowledge thrust upon her, and is trying hard to win. She had not entered and did not start this but she will end it.

It is marvelous. She is marvelous. Harry wonders why he ever had it in his heart to insult her.

He’s arrived at the tree he’s to climb. Seven hundred feet is a lot and a fall from the height is more than fatal.

Harry breaks off a branch and gathers vines and begins crafting a long and thick sliver of wood to settle himself on. It’d be better than going at it full throttle. He’s never been a climber.

What is odd, though, is that pieces of wood are breaking themselves off trees all on their own, all moving toward the same direction. (The same direction Luna Lovegood is in.) Harry cannot make out even a muted version of the birds anymore.

They’re making something. Branches are moving all on their own. Is this what Marvolo was doing earlier? But what use would it be? What even is it?

By the time Harry is finished with his plank, the shape of it is clear.

It’s… a spike. A long, large spike with a thin, pointy tip. No more branches align themselves with it and Harry is given an impression of finality. Whatever is being made here is finished.

Overkill would be an understatement if it was aiming to kill.

If it was aiming to kill…

Is it? And then Harry notices it moving. It’s creeping slowly at first and it is picking up speed at an alarming rate.

Harry trusts his instincts and his instincts tell him that that is overkill if it is aiming to kill and it might be. It’s moving the very direct Luna wandered off to and for some reason, Harry is to his feet and moving before he even thinks to.

This is rigged, remembers saying, he remembers Luna saying. It’s rigged because Julian is here when he’s not supposed to be here and it’s rigged because Luna is here when she’s not supposed to be here.

It’s rigged. Everything about it. His presence in the Tournament -- why, that might be rigged, too. And why wouldn’t it? Nothing here is genuine. Not Marvolo and not Mouton and not Dumbledore. The Snake pit does not start nor end with Slytherins.

It’s rigged. He knows this. Luna knows this, Tom knows this, and sure as sh*t those who rigged it do, too.

But -- and he hasn’t allowed himself to think about this; hasn’t had the time or the energy or the resources -- why?

Someone has something to gain by putting them in the Tournament. What is it? Why was this rigged?

And Harry sees, moving closer, Luna Lovegood fighting off a swarm of Jabber Jays. They go for her hair and clothes and eyes, pulling with their beaks roughly. She is holding her own well but that’s the thing: She shouldn’t have to.The Jabber Jays were never supposed to attack them. That’s what Mouton said, what she implied. And she was under oath.

This was not supposed to happen. It was not even a possibility.

It is rigged. And it’s rigged against her. The spike is fast now, too fast. Harry is barely outrunning it, propelling himself every few seconds with magic forward. It’s aiming for her.

Do you know why the Tournament was abolished in the first place?

“The body count.”

It’s still there, the factors that made it risky.

Someone entered Luna in the Tournament to kill her. And someone here now is getting the job done.

Harry yells out to her. If she hears him, she doesn’t look like it. She's probably hearing a lot of voices right now. His… is none special. His is not enough.

He yells louder and runs faster. They are pen pals and almost but not quite friends and Harry thinks of the Jabber Jays mocking impression of her. Why are you abandoningme?

No, thinks Harry fiercely. He runs. His legs hurt but he pushes them harder, straining by the effort. He has to. I am not abandoning you.

Not again.

It happens in a moment. In one, consecutive moment. Luna’s eyes widen. Both by the sight of Harry and the spike, rushing toward her.

Harry does not think. (He is in Ravenclaw for reasons unbeknownst to him. If it was Luna saving him, things would’ve turned out much different. But it is not. And so things didn’t.) He has no time to whip out his wand or to stop himself, to stop the momentum he’s built up, so he does what he can do.

He pushes Luna Lovegood out of the way.

And.

And by doing so, pushes himself in the way.

The spike stabs through his skull.

The last thing he sees is Luna Lovegood’s pale grey eyes looking back at him.

.XoX.

“My anger is relentless and consuming

It does not dissipate nor disappoint;

A magic resting ever under my skin.

I take my deep breath and do my yoga

Go to therapy and say my lines

And it is still there

A wild force and uncontrolled

It lashes out and it hurts me and you and those I hate but mostly the ones I love

It is the poison of all poisons

(I am the poison of all poisons;

I am my anger incarnate.)

Everyone has it and I do not understand how theirs is so tame

How they can exist in their day to day without the ebb of their heart getting in the way.

And if I cannot kill it,

I must control it.

But I have only ever been big on that

When the stupidest things are concerned.”

-- Harry Potter, “The Hanged Man.”

Notes:

getting very very close to the end of part one -- two chapters after this. what an ending to a chapter huh. might be the best one so far. next chapter: events that have been foreshadowed since chapter 3 FINALLY come into play.
since you're here, why not go check out my new drarry book nightmares? has 2 chapters uploaded already and it's gunna be a blast i promise.
also! school is OVER. planning on trying to finish The Veil of the Sick, Poor and Stupid (which is already as 40k words, go check it out mayhaps.) though this story holds a special place in my heart, it's far from my most popular. sorry that it does not get priority <3

Chapter 18 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Cause I don’t care if I lose my mind,

I’m already cursed.”

-- Fairytale, Alexander Rybak.

.XoX.

Harry had always wondered what it would feel like to die. It’s something that writers do -- try to put feelings and emotions they haven’t themselves experienced into words. Like how he writes about romantic attraction. He will never fall in love, but he has imagined it before. For his writing, he’s imagined a lot of things.

He’s heard some people do more than imagining. A boy -- a Lion, who else? -- during his fourth year got a friend to stab him so he could accurately describe it. And though Harry is certainly impressed with the dedication, it’s never been something he’s been all that into himself.

He has written his injury scenes and allowed himself some degree of inaccuracy -- it’s a book, after all, and a book he has no intention of sharing to anyone else. Who will be bothered if the sensation is really more throbbing than stabbing? Not him, that’s for sure. Not him at all.

In one of his short stories, he throws a line in carelessly and thoughtlessly. A man is dead -- had gone to bed to, simply, never wake up again -- and is told that he died instantly and in his sleep and the main character wonders if it was a painless death.

If any death at all is.

And now he is dead and he has the answer. His character is not just melodramatic, he’s spot f*cking on. He will write about this moment indirectly and directly in a thousand poems and a million short stories. Put some accuracy in any death scene he creates, give it a kick that no other author can feasibly supply.

He does not understand that Lion in fourth year, though. Perhaps, now, he understands him less.

Harry Potter died and came back and the moments in between were not empty. The moments after were horrifying. And though he will milk it for all its worth, because any trauma he goes through is just another arc for his character’s development…

It was not worth it.

And what does it feel like, now that the moment has come and gone, now that he has died instantly and supposedly painlessly?

It feel like f*cking Hell.

.xox.

He’s sitting between his mother and father, swinging his legs idly. He is eating popcorn casually while his mother tells him about Hogwarts.

The amazement on his face -- and the freedom in the way he eats, the lack of guilt and panic and overthinking -- tunes him into the fact that this is an old memory. While he was in a marriage contract and, blissfully, unaware of it. The first time he’d heard of the school that would later become his home.

(Though he’d thought dead people didn’t have memories. Is this, he wonders, what they mean when they talk about your life flashing before your eyes?

But that’s weird, too.

Why would he be dead?)

There’s four Houses, she’s saying, running her hands along his scalp. Slytherin, for the cunning and ambitious.

“And evil,” his father adds. Lily wacks him lightly on the head.

“For those with a knack for slyness,” she supplies. “There is nothing evil about self preservation. Then there’s Ravenclaw.”

“For nerds.”

“For the clever, creative, and wise.”

“So, basically,” his father says. “For nerds.”

“I was supposed to go to Ravenclaw, I’ll have you know.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause you’re a nerd.”

She kisses him gently on the check. “I’m a brave nerd. Hence the Gryffindor.”

“Mainly a nerd, though.”

She rolls her eyes. “Then there’s Hufflepuff.”

“The loyal, fluffy badgers!”

“Not always fluffy,” she corrects softly.

“But always loyal.”

“Not always loyal, either.” She says, in a sing song voice, “And Hufflepuff takes the rest.” Harry remembers that. He had went around repeating it over and over until he’s sure both of his parents got tired of it.

And Hufflepuff takes the rest!

…When did he stop hoping to be a badger? When did he stop expecting to?

Some point after he turned ten. But he can’t remember -- not exactly -- the why or precise when.

His father shrugs. “Sure, sure. You ever met a mean Hufflepuff, though? Rarest thing ever.”

“That girl in second year begs to differ.”

“She was a Badger?!”

“Yes, she was a Badger! I can’t believe you don’t remember.”

“Sorry, love,” he says, grinning. “I guess I’m getting old.”

“Oh, please. We’re the same age.”

“Maybe we’re both getting old.”

“Love. We’re barely twenty eight.”

“Which is almost thirty.”

“Which is not old.”

“I feel old.”

“Well I don’t!”

He eyes her. “Really?”

His mother huffs, then addresses the boy between them. “Ignore him.”

“Hey!”

“What I was trying to get at -- before your father so rudely interrupted me -- is that all the Houses have their perks. And we’ll -- both of us -- be happy with your Sorting. Whatever House you end up in.”

His father grumbles, but after a stern glare from Lily, reluctantly adds, “Yeah. Whatever House you end up in.”

His mother kisses him on the forehead. Her eyes shine with adoration. He is her only child. She would do anything for him. “We just want you to be happy,” she says.

(When did that change? …Did it ever? Harry wishes he knew.)

This house. His mother and father, who love each other. Who love him. He will carry this affection in his heart even when they are dead to him.

Even when he himself is dead.

The image fades from his mind.

.xox.

(The Past.)

The homely kitchen. The scent of incense. The living room with a couch and two armchairs. Love in the air and in the food and in every person in the house. A window above the sink. (His eyes linger on the scene outside for just a moment. There is sand outside. Why would there be so much sand -- so much discolored sand -- outside?)

Even so, he recognizes this place.

Doesn’t he?

That… woman there, the one chopping apples at the kitchen counter, he knows her. Knows her voice, knows that red hair, knows that old, old apron. He knows her. He wants to love her.

Why doesn’t he?

The woman pipes up, back still turned to him, “Are you hungry?”

“No!” he snaps… and he sounds young. The adolescence is back in his voice like it never went away, and maybe it didn’t. Maybe he is wrong to think that he is ten years old again because maybe he never wasn’t.

The woman -- he’s still searching for her name, he thinks he does know it -- pauses in her cutting. She glances at him over her shoulder with eyes so brightly green. “Are you alright?” she asks quietly.

He eyes the apple with narrowed, glaring eyes. The red is vivid. It is so, so juicy and fresh. It looks delicious. Was it picked from the apple tree outside, home grown? It must have been.

But he can’t have it. He’s trying to do something.

(...What is he trying to do again? His mind is all wrong. His memories are all jumbled up. Any and all knowledge is both inherent and not concrete.

It is like a large chunk of his brain has been blown out and here he is, sorting through the pieces.)

“No,” he says again, wrapping his arms over his chest. “Why would I be okay?” His tantrum (is that the right word for it? For some reason, he doesn’t know) is his self destruction.

What a weird response to pain, he thinks. To make it hurt more.

The lady sighs, wiping her knife on her apron. Mother, he thinks, finally. She is his mother.

(His mother, the one he wants so badly to love and be loved by. The one he isn’t and doesn’t. But -- and he cannot place this, cannot place anything -- …why? Why does he hate her? This hatred feels fresh on his soul. He wonders, so young, if he will ever grow out of it.)

(He knows, oldly, that he won’t.)

She grabs the cutting board of apples and places them down on the middle of the table. She takes her seat across from him.

He eyes the food with a watering mouth. He’s… new to this, to starvation. Will he ever get used to it? He wants to. Needs to. How will he ever die if he cannot persist through mere fruit?

“I understand you’re hurting,” she’s telling him. She knows he is young, too. She knows he is young and thinks he is too young -- too young to know the truth, too young to be hurting himself in the absence of it. “But, I promise, this is for the best. You need to eat. It’s been days,” and she does say his name at the end of it, a desperate plea, but it comes out as static and white noise.

He pouts his lip out further. He pushes the apples off of the table and onto the floor with an angry wave of his hand. A tantrum. He’s yet to pick a side between outward and inward destruction. But he will in time.

(And time… feels fluid here. Why can’t he pinpoint why? Why can’t he pinpoint where here is?)

His mother sighs. Not angry, not disappointed… not with him at any rate. She bends over in her chair and picks up, carefully, the apple slices, placing them in one hand.

When she sits up again, his mother is gone and in her place is a girl, his age, with pale grey eyes and embroidered clothing. The word ‘sharp’ can be used.

(The Present.)

He clears his throat. He feels the guilt of age in him now. (Will he ever outgrow that, too? Guilt for the things he did and the things he didn’t and things he should’ve. He wonders if he will die with it. If he already has.) “I’m sorry for…” he points a finger toward the now dirty food in her hand. “You know.”

“That I do,” she says, eyes lidded. “It’s alright.”

“Is it?” he asks. He is not just talking about the apples.

“...I don’t know,” she admits. “But I think so. Is that worth something?”

She… he recognizes, is a friend. He will only ever sometimes call her that. Why? What did she do? What did he do?

He doesn’t know. But he’s sorry. If that is worth something.

She stands from her chair. She’s going to grab another apple. One for her, because she is hungry. She is hungry and willing and able to eat.

She will offer one to him, too, knowing he will not take it.

Why can’t he be like her? So strong, so stable, able to establish boundaries when she needs them… Healthy. The word he is looking for is physically and mentally healthy.

What happened to him? He is a mess. There is a reason he is a mess. And why…

Why can’t he remember why?

When he considers it -- the start of this predicament, his hatred of his body, of its needs, of himself -- nothing comes up. Images presented are foggy and voices he does not know give him out of context clips of a conversation he should and does not remember.

You will change your mind when you’re older.

It is a good thing for you, too.

We love you anyway, of course.

The only clear image is a man with chestnut hair and red eyes. He’s evil normally. He’s evil here, too.

He is not sure how. But he is sure.

When his friend -- his penpal, his victim, all of it, all at once -- turns around, holding a bright red apple in her hand, in her stead is a ghost. A ghost with a skeletal body and cheeks so sunken in she looks half-rotted. A ghost.

No, he thinks, watching her with something akin to envy, to regret. She is no ghost. She is not dead because fiction does not die.

He does know this girl. There is nothing foggy about this memory.

“Katherine,” he breathes.

(The Future.)

“What…” he says, looking around, looking at her, looking out the window. There is something wrong going on outside. There is something wrong going on inside. “What are you… doing here?”

She feels the apple in her hand, tossing it up and catching it once. Looking at her reflection in the shine. She is ugly. She’d been asked to paint beauty and instead painted herself. But she is working on it. (There is beauty in life.)

“I’m eating,” she answers.

“Wh…what?”

“I’m eating,” she repeats. “To get better.”

“But,” he says, the author of her book, the god of her world, “Katherine was never supposed to recover.”

“Well then, Harry Potter. Maybe it’s time to write a sequel.”

She bites into the apple.

Juice runs down her chin.

.xox.

When Harry blinks the house -- his home -- is gone. He lies on the ground, naked and tired.

His head hurts.

Beneath him and around him is sand. Green sand, nearing blue, stretching on for miles and miles. Above him is a pastel sky of holographic watercolor.

Air enters his lungs roughly. Breathing pokes the sensitive flesh of his throat and nose. He smells sea salt.

Where is he?

No.

That’s not the right question.

What is he?

“You,” a voice says, “are unwell.”

Harry rises on his arms shakily and shifts so he is looking behind him. It’s a woman. A tall woman -- nearing ten feet -- though Harry can only see her backside. Long black hair comes down to her middle back.

When he speaks his voice comes out a sad croak. “Unwell?” He coughs into his fist.

She looks at him -- her eyes, he notes, are a brown so dark it is nearly black -- then back at her work. She’s cleaning his clothes the old fashioned way. She is wearing robes -- school robes? -- that are a deep navy blue. Around the edges, there is bronze.

“Unwell,” she says, her voice firm, her tone carrying well, “is one word for it.”

“Am I dead?” What prompted him to ask the question, he’s unsure. He doesn’t remember how he got here, what happened beforehand, but dead…

Dying feels about right.

“Dead is another.” She dips his undershirt into the water.

He settles himself into criss crossing his legs, looking at his still trembling hands absently.

Dead, he thinks. I am dead.

He doesn’t like it.

Why doesn’t he like it?

“What happened?” he asks.

“You saved one of our own,” she answers. There is a trace amount of pride in her words. “The most Raven Ravenclaw to ever exist, how you might put it. You saved her. You then died. Tragic.”

“...Do you mean Luna?”

“Who else?”

“I just,” he shifts, feeling the fine sand under him. “Did not think that she was the most ‘Raven Ravenclaw.’”

“Think twice, then,” she says, sounding tired of him. “For she would never have to.”

“I saved her,” he says, ignoring the urge to snap at her. “What from?”

“That’s hardly the right question.”

Harry gets it. “Who from?”

“You already know the answer to that,” she says, wringing water out of his shirt.

“No, I don’t.”

“You do.”

Like she knows him better than he does. “No,” he says, frustrated. “I don’t.”

“It’s somewhere in there,” she says. “I have faith you’ll find it.”

Harry doesn’t. But it is not the last of his questions, so he continues, “Who are you?”

“You know that, too. Work for it. Guess.”

Harry’s first answer comes immediately. “Death,” he says. “You’re Death.”

She pauses. “Not entirely correct,” she admits, shrugging her shoulders. “But not entirely wrong. Try again.”

Harry grips his hands into fists.

I know it already?

What do I know?

(Blue and bronze.

“Saved one of our own.”

Speaking in riddles, in questions…

“The most Raven Ravenclaw to ever exist.”)

“You’re Rowena Ravenclaw,” he says, awed. “One -- one of the Founders of Hogwarts.”

“Yes,” she says, proud of herself, proud of him. She folds his clothes over her arm, still damp. “I am also much more. For now, though… For now, Rowena Ravenclaw is all you need to know. I have… I suppose, two things left to tell you. We haven’t much time.”

“Before what?”

“Before you wake up. Before you return to the land of the living.”

Harry isn’t following. “I thought I was dead.”

“You are,” she said. “Though not for much longer.”

He feels relief. He never thought he would feel relief at living -- but he does not like it here. His head hurts. He has things left to do.

(He had worked so hard to kill himself before. Why had he done that, if this is what he would get in return?)

She kneels beside him. He is dwarfed in comparison. She hands him his clothes. “You are my champion.”

“Like -- like of the Tournament?”

She goes quiet. A small smile makes it way onto her face. “If you wish to think of it that way. There are other champions. You already know one.”

“I… I don’t think I do.” (Even so, face comes to mind. He is sitting at the Slytherin table and watching a Snake fight a Badger.)

“You do. You will need to gather the others -- and then you will need to find me.”

“I don’t understand.” Nothing she’s saying is making any sense -- like, champions? He died and now he’s being revivied and it doesn’t take a Luna f*cking Lovegood to figure out that isn’t supposed to happen.

He is the least Raven Ravenclaw to ever exist. If there is anyone worthy of Rowena’s presence, it isn’t him.

And…

And if he died to see her, and she wants him to see her again, then what exactly is she asking?

“Yes, you do. You will. Listen, Harry. Listen.” She looks into his eyes, taking his hands -- so small -- into her own. “Are you listening?”

He says, quiet, “I am.” He is not understanding but he is listening.

“The Deathly Hallows are a lie.”

And then he wakes up on a hospital bed, wearing a diadem with a hole in his head.

.XoX.

“I marvel at the beauty of life.

I marvel at the rising chest of a yet dead cat.

I marvel at the voice of a friend;

The laugh they are still able to produce.

My body is not a temple,

But a shack

And even shacks, I suppose

Work as shelter.”

-- Harry Potter, “The Empress.”

Notes:

whaaaaat and extra, non scheduled, chapter? that's right baby. here u go. love u all. pls comment.
im also going to, after the next chapter, go through this story and fix all the typos. so dw about those if u are seeing them.

Chapter 19 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Time.

I know we’re out of time.

But what if sad thoughts come and I can’t stop it?

Bye.

I don’t wanna say bye.”

-- Karma, AJR.

.XoX.

Something went wrong.

Harry had a look on his face when Tom suggested it -- that look, the one that screams he knows something. That he has a gut feeling, a premonition, that exactly this would happen.

Tom had noticed his doubt. And he’d thought it reasonable, if unwarranted. Something a friend gives to a friend. And then he dismissed it and went on with his plan.

It was, he’d thought, an alright plan. He is sent to Marvolo, gets answers about what he talked about with Dumbledore, and maybe -- just maybe, if he is able, if he is lucky -- answers about his fascination with Harry, and anything else he can get him to answer. Get his answer, get sent back. It’s a good plan.

So he thought. But it wasn’t.

Because something went wrong.

He’s been stuck between the knowledge that he is nothing like Voldemort and Marvolo and whoever else the f*ck is out there -- and the knowledge that he sort of is. You cannot separate the chicken from the egg.

Arrogance. The word for it is arrogance. Voldemort is egotistical and maniacal and arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, and…

And Tom is something like it. Something like him.

He is given to Marvolo a few days before the break. It is his last time in the castle for a long, long time.

Marvolo, he’s written. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.

What is it? Their handwriting is identical. How could Tom not have seen it before? He was blind or pretending to be.

You talked with Dumbledore. About Gellert’s Chrysalis Club--

Gellert’s? scrawlsMarvolo. I don’t recall mentioning that fact to you. Nor do I recall mentioning, at all, the Chrysalis Club.

He’s suspicious. Instantly. Tom’s either lost his tact or Marvolo’s gained it. Either way, he scrambled to cover, It’s Harry. He’s clever sometimes, you know, and has put things together at an exceptional rate. You did talk to him about not joining the Club--

So you ARE close with him, ponders Marvolo. I warned you not to do that.

I didn’t do anything, Marvolo. I am close to him to gain his magic and gain a form; that’s all.

But you’ve been doing that for weeks. Draining his magic. Haven’t you been?

Yes, says Tom. (But something went wrong). But it appears his magic… well, it’s hard to drain. He’s got too much of it.

You really are a fool.

I have been doing as you instructed-- Why is he being insulted, undermined? (What went wrong?)

As I instructed before you revealed your diary owner to be Harry Potter. Were you not paying attention? I need him alive. Do you not remember that?

Marvolo, I--

Were you not smart enough to take a hint? You did not even think to consider stopping draining his magic and getting my dearest Harry to hand you off to another, more suitable person. You know I could not have done it myself, without Harry causing a fuss, bless him. Are you slow, Tom?

I can change course now, writes Tom. Marvolo is able to see his panic clearly because Tom is able to see his panic clearly -- and they are not so different after all.

No. You will not be doing anything, Tom.

Marvolo?

You’re rogue. That’s a good word for it, I’d think. He knows, thinks Tom. He KNOWS and he’s not supposed to but he does and (something went wrong.) Being so, so attached to the Potter boy -- and him being so attached to you; very clever -- would be useful if your own affection was not genuine. His malice toward me, it’s knowledgeable.

Well, he’s got one hell of an instinct, Tom tries to joke. And that instinct is coming into play now.

But that’s not all that’s in the way he looks at me. He knows.

Knows what? Voldemort has always been good at playing dumb but Tom… is not not Voldemort. Not completely.

That I am a Horcrux of Voldemort. That you are. You told him. Because you care for him. The word ‘care’ is used sickly written.

I am not rogue. I would never endanger us like that, Marvolo. Endangering them is actually exactly what he’s planning to do, but he can’t say that… even if it seems Marvolo already knows it.

You would. You were concerned with the amount of Horcruxes we’ve created -- what type of concern, Tom, that’s what I’m wondering. And I search through the library and find, missing and unaccounted for -- not even checked out, so rude, Tom, you should know better -- documentation of Voldemort’s war.

I thought we weren’t calling it a war, Marvolo, is weakly said.

You think a lot of things, Tom. Like that you would get away with this. But thinking it does not make it true. Goodbye, Tom. We will talk alter. If you are lucky.

Wait? No, Marvolo, I have -- you can’t-- and Tom throws himself out of the diary, his soggy form made defensive. His magic gathers up beside him, ready for use, ready for protecting him.

Marvolo’s wand is already out. They’re in the Slytherin common room. Tom knows this place, save the changes around the edges. It was one of the last places he was before that eventful evening at the entrance to the Chamber

Tom, the Horcrux, was born here.

Would this not be a fitting place for his death to be sealed?

“You can’t kill me, Marvolo,” Tom snarls. “We’re the same person. You’d be killing yourself.”

“I,” says Marvolo, “and we are nothing like you.” And then he casts a stunning charm and Tom jumps to dodge, but Marvolo was not aiming at him.

He was aiming at the diary.

Tom’s form falls in on itself and folds back into the diary. A restless slumber ensues.

.xox.

When Tom wakes, he pulls himself from the diary slowly and groggily. He is on a floor that is rotten and wooden. Vines spill down the walls. Portraits of a family are hung up. This is the emptied drawing room of a once praised, once nicely upheld manor.

Now… now it’s not. And that family, the one that must’ve owned this place years upon years ago, must’ve been Tom’s family. Because a boy that shares his face is sitting between two older adults.

“The old Riddle manor,” says a voice behind him. “A charmer. Isn’t it?

Tom turns around. In the dull kitchen light coming from the room behind him, his presence looks almost menacing. He is taller than Tom and shows obvious signs of aging, but he is just as clearly matching to the portrait on the wall as Tom is. His chestnut hair, styled to perfection. Striking grey eyes. A smile fit for only a Snake.

Tom knows him because he is him… in some sense of the word. “Voldemort?” he asks.

“No,” says the boy, more a man, tilting his head. “But close enough. I’m like you.”

“A Horcrux,” Tom breathes. He tries to walk toward him, but he is stopped. Around him, in a 9 by 9 feet square, with the diary at the middle, is an invisible barrier. Tom places his fist against it and pushes. It moves like plastic wrap against his skin but does not break.

Uncrossable.

Trapped.

“I was tasked with handling you,” continues the Horcrux, approaching Tom, a curious look in his eyes. “And upon doing so, I will receive my freedom. So, so. It is nothing personal.”

Freedom? He’s… talking about taking someone’s magic, ending their life, stealing their skin.

It seems it is not only Tom who has a goal he is willing to kill for.

“Handling,” says Tom, head following the Horcrux’s slow pace around his box. “What do you mean by handling?”

“Destruction, I assume,” he drawls, looking him up and down.

“You assume?”

The Horcrux stops pacing. “I’ve been merely instructed to keep you, for the moment. I am awaiting further dictation. I assume, however, that the end goal is your demise.”

Tom breathes deeply, setting his head against the barrier. “That,” he says quietly, “is not comforting.”

Something went wrong. And hadn’t Harry known it would, hadn’t he thought it?

And Tom…

Didn’t listen to him.

Tom tries out his magic. As expected, it flickered out in his hand as soon as he conjured it.

“Ah, yes. That,” notes the Horcrux. “It is a precaution, tailored to your magical signature, to not allow any magical use within your confinement.” He smirks. “Evidently, it is a necessary one.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tom all but begs. He does not want to die here. He has so many things to do, a yet undetermined number of Horcruxes to destroy, least of which is standing right in front of him.

Later, he will die. But he will do it willingly, and on his own terms.

“I explained already,” he says, pacing once again. “I am in the need of a new body, and this is the task I must complete in order to gain it.”

“No. That’s not what I… It’s just that… You look plenty corporeal already.” He is not even mildly transparent, like Tom is. Wherever his Horcruxed object is at, he is not attached to it directly. “Why kill a person -- and follow Voldemort’s orders -- if… if you’re already alive?”

The Horcrux grins. It is too wide, like if it went any further, it would rip the seams of his mouth. He holds out his hand, rotating it for inspection.”Yes,” he mutters. “It’s rather convincing magic, don’t you think? They call them ‘glamours.’ They did not have them in your time, but they’re more popularized now. They hide so the untrained eyes cannot see through it. Here,” he says, “I’ll show you what mine’s hiding.”

He drops the glamour.

Tom stumbles back, a screaming rising in his throat.

Tom looks upon his thousand rows of sharpened teeth, all gleamed with his own blood -- unable to close his mouth without slicing deeply into his own flesh. His eyes are hollow slits. Veins throb rhythmically at such a pace that Tom isn’t sure he should still be alive--

And then Tom gets it. He is not alive. He wants to live because he isn’t currently.

The Horcrux slips the glamour back on easily, smoothly. Normal, lidded eyes return with a smile that is so normal it would be so easy to forget the monster that resides under it.

(So easy and yet utterly impossible.)

Tom finds it easier to breathe.

“So you see, Tom,” says the Horcrux. “I do need to live. I’m like you right now -- thriving off someone’s magic, a poor fellow wearing my diadem, unconscious in the other room. He was given to me by Voldemort. I will not get to keep him if I do not do this. I assure you again it is by no means personal.” He smiles. So charming, so sweet. A lie. “It’s business.”

The information is… a lot to soak in. It’s worrying. This is a man who wants to live and that means he cannot be reasoned with -- his rationality has been thrown out the window at the same time his self preservation peaks through.

It is worrying. (Tom does not want to die here.) But… it’s also confusing.

Why is he so willing to give up information? Was it done in the heat of the moment -- passion bleeding in? A mistake. Was it a mere mistake?

Tom latches onto that word, that phrase. ‘My diadem.’ Tom swallows then ventures, set to prove a theory, see if it was just a mistake, “What diadem?”

“The Founder, Rowena’s,” says the Horcrux, shrugging. “It was a doozy to get our hands on, such a valued magical artefact…”

Tom’s mind is racing (he’s connecting the dots. The diadem, the Founder’s artefacts, the locket…), but he still coughs out, “Don’t do that. Don’t do this.”

“Do what, Tom?”

“Would you really tell me anything if I dared to ask?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Yes, Tom. Whyever wouldn’t you find this proposition favorable?” His smile takes on a predatory hook; the fickle light highlighting his features in a way that is paralyzing.

Tom will humour him, as if he does not already know his answer. “Because I know this one,” he says, voice sounding thick with desperation. “This -- this trick, this piss poor attempt at physiological warfare. You don’t mind telling me sh*t because you don’t think I’ll live long enough for it to matter.”

“You’re right. But why shouldn’t I act as if you will die soon?” The Horcrux tilts his head. “It’s an outcome all but guaranteed, Tom.”

No. I will not die. I -- I won’t leave Harry alone. I still have things to tell. He’s…

He’s my first ever friend. I will not leave without a proper goodbye.

You tell me that you’re killing me because of business.

Well, Voldemort. I have business here, too.

So even though Tom will escape here (for certain!), he’s still opting to use this Horcrux’s belief that he will not to his advantage. “What’s your name, then?”

“Maître Detous,” Maître says, humming. “I picked it myself. French for ‘ruler of all.’ Do you like it?” He bats his eyelashes.

“It’s awfully Voldemort,” says Tom, repulsed. “I can’t believe we ever liked that melodramatic sh*t.”

“Ah, well. It’s a good name notwithstanding.”

Tom grumbles. He looks around the room again. His eyes fall on the portrait. “Why here?”

“There’s power in everything, Tom,” says Maître. “In names. In,” he chuckles, “appearances. And the power in places? It’s immense. It’s helping along my draining magic routine. It’s helping contain you.”

“And what is the power in this place?”

“We killed our father. Do you recall?”

Tom recalls being told about it. The death of a father, the creation of another Horcrux. And it seemed the start of Tom’s irrelevancy. “I do.”

Maître spreads his arms out. “This is the very place it happened. There is so much death here; so much death of our bloodline. And blood, bloodline… There’s power in those, too.”

Power. He is obsessed with power. With the power he has now and the power he thinks he will gain -- and the power he will gain, if Tom does not have anything to say about it.

“How many other Horcruxes are there?” The locket’s location is still unknown, but the very fact Tom knows it exists (and now, thanks to Maître, he knows a little more than that) is a good step forward. Voldemort had told him something about a ring. Rowena’s diadem is in the other room. Tom has his diary with him.

Four is not a number Voldemort would stop at.

“There’s six as of current,” explains Maître. “Me, you, Marvolo… A few unnamed. Oh, and Voldemort himself. Six soul pieces broke off; seven of us in total. Though,” he grins, “this number may be destined to change in the future.”

Tom thinks that every villain loves themselves a good monologue. He asks, rolling his eyes, “And why’s that?”

“You’re well informed of our… adventitious plans surrounding Harry, aren’t you?”

Tom’s heart clenches. “Not fully,” he says. “I’m still unsure why Marvolo’s taken the interest he has… and -- and I’m even more unsure why it would have anything to do with our Horcruxes.”

“It doesn’t,” assures Maître quickly. “At least, it’s not set in stone. Marvolo is pushing for it, but I don’t think Voldemort will allow it, personally.”

“Allow what?”

“The creation of a human Horcrux, of course. Not that we’re even certain if it’s possible… Bottom line is, Harry has something that we want. We do not know where it is and may not have access to it without him. Marvolo is to wed him, get the item given to him willingly -- or wed him, then inherit it after Harry’s death.”

“Which you will cause.” A venomous accusation.

“If we need to,” amends Maître. “Marvolo is… quite smitten with the boy, in only the sense Marvolo can be smitten with anything. His attachment is a different brand than yours. With enough push and prod, he’ll either be ripe to die or ripe to love -- and, if Marvolo has his way, become one with us in the most intimate matter.”

“You’re sick,” Tom spits. “You’re sick as f*ck, playing with him like that -- he’s ill. You know he’s ill and he’s -- he’s lonely. You’re going to twist him with grief over me until he’s yours.”

“We do seem to be taking that course,” is said conversationally.

Tom bangs his fist against the barrier. “Let me out! Keep your sick hands off of him! Let me out! Put down the barrier!” He bangs it again, harder, stomping his food down. “PUT IT DOWN!”

Maître just stares. “You’re throwing a tantrum, Tom,” he says, shaking his head. “Do calm yourself.”

“Let me out -- you’re going to kill him! Let me out!”

“In our defense, we only might kill him.”

Tom’s head falls against the barrier. “Like that’s any better,” he mutters, angrily.

“It is,” says Maître softly. “I cannot let you out. There is no way to break out. If it is any consolation,” he says, quiet. “Killing you is not the choice I would make, if I had any say in it.”

“But you don’t.”

“Right. I don’t.” He lets Tom stew in his despair for a moment before asking, “Is there anything else you would like to know? About Marvolo’s loverboy, perhaps?”

Tom would like to know how he plans to marry a boy who is in a marriage contract that doesn’t seem like it’s being broken any time soon -- and he wants to know why Harry was put in an arranged marriage around the exact same time Tom was sent to murder James Potter. He wants to know these things…

But he already has a good idea of what the answer would be.

What he does not knows revolves Voldemort. And whatever Voldemort knows… Maître should, too.

Maître Detous. ‘Rule of all.’ A power hungry monster who wishes ferociously to be a man.

Voldemort. ‘Flight of death.’ A mass murderer who Weeps over all the wrong things.

He recalls a journal entry from Voldemort, years ago. About love.

What do these monsters know about love?

And Tom thinks this is a good time to find out.

“Speaking of love,” says Tom, voice sounding light, “There was one entry. Years ago. I didn’t ask about it at the time -- didn’t care for it, or him -- and… It talked about a boy we loved. Who did we love, Maître? That’s what I want to know.”

Maître chuckles. “The boy we love, yes. I’m surprised you haven’t heard, or hadn’t guessed, considering who your diary was sent off too.” He hums, then shrugs. “No matter. I’ll tell you. His name is Gellert Grindelwald. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

Gellert.

Gellert Grindelwald. War criminal and murderer and lover.

Lover or almost lover or whatever -- he is loved by Voldemort.

Tom laughs. It is a bitter thing. Only a monster could love a monster -- and only a monster could find worth in someone so heartless.

Only a monster. Only Voldemort.

Tom does not know what else he could’ve expected.

Maître’s voice freaks him from his train of thought. “I’ll allow you one last question before I attend to my guest,” says Maître. “Choose, I suppose, wisely.”

Tom’s mouth moves before he permits it. “Why did you leave me?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did you leave me with the Potters? I could’ve died.” He laughs, incredulous. “I should’ve. Why am I not valued like you are?”

“Because you are not like us.”

Tom’s not arguing with that. “You didn’t know that then,” he says. "There was no way you could’ve known that back then -- our differences, my hatred, the hazard I impose. None of it was known so known of it should’ve been a reason to leave me to die.”

Maître steps closer to him. “We seem,” he says, slowly, “to have a very different idea of what ‘different than us’ means. Here. Let me clear it up for you: You are nothing like us because you failed and are a failure. You failed to kill James Potter years ago and you failed to take the hint you shouldn’t kill this one. I would keep you alive for the very reason you were created; you are a key to our immortality. But let it be clear, Tom: I do not fail. Voldemort does not fail. So you are not Voldemort.”

Tom is outraged at his audacity, the presumptuous and pretentious and without basis assumptions. The sentiment that almost killed him is ridiculous. “If you’re going to disown every failure,” he barks out, nearly a laugh, “you’re going to have to get Marvolo next, you know that, right?”

Maître looks at him. Almost disinterested. “Whatever do you mean?” he asks flatly.

“I mean,” Tom cackles, “He’s trying to woo Harry and it’s not going to happen. Harry doesn’t want to be married, to be in a romantic relationship -- much less to Vold-e-f*cking-MORT -- so beg my f*cking pardon if I’m doubtful of his chances.”

Tom sighs. “I‘d thought we were friends, man. I mean, not friends in the average sense… but close. We were supposed to be close.” (But something went wrong.) “Like -- like we were buddies at the start, you know? And then you stopped caring about whether I lived or died and now you’re working to make sure the latter happens.” And now Tom is working to ensure it happens, too. Betrayal has not been kind to his morale. “And I don't… I don't know what happened.”

“I grew up,” says Maître, like it is nothing. Like growing up justifies anything. “You didn’t. It’s that simple.”

“I don’t think it is.” Tom thinks Marvolo goes by the only wizarding part of their name. He thinks Voldemort and stupid Maître have chosen names that do not sound Muggle.

He thinks he goes by Tom for a reason. There is, after all, power in names.

“Is that a hill you are willing to die on?”

“It’s a hill that I will.”

.xox.

Tom is unable to pinpoint how long he spends at the manor. He will learn later it was a little over two weeks.

Maître will come to visit him every once in a while. Answer any questions that Tom has stopped having. He is told once that, “Voldemort will decide what to do with you after the First Task,” which has Tom thinking about Harry all over again.

Harry. Maître. Voldemort. His rage toward one and love toward the other -- it consumes him. He worries for Harry. How he is taking his absence. How he is preparing for the Task. How things are going with Luna.

He misses him. It is a weird feeling. It hurts, throbbing periodically in his chest. Beside it sits regret. Hope.

He tries out methods of escape often and finds them all lacking.

He thinks of, during his endless and restless pacing, his previous time in exile. When Voldemort had abandoned him -- a sin both of them will pay for -- and how he had spent years, decades, able only to feel a quill and a diary that not a soul cared to write in.

This is exile, too. In a way. It is better and worse for the fact that he is not alone.

Why, he thinks repeatedly, had he not listened to Harry? Does he not know Harry’s intuition is friend to fact?

Tom is a fool. He is an arrogant fool. Dying here would be inconvenient but deserved.

Tom feels regret overwhelm hope. He stays in his little square and paces; each second dreadfully thought of an inch closer to his demise.

.xox.

Time -- lots of it -- has passed by when Maître flies into the room, disheveled. “I need to get into contact with Voldemort immediately,” he rambles, moving things in the room around. He’s looking for something. “That is, if Voldemort doesn’t know already. We need a new game plan…”

Tom glances at him, perplexed. “What are you going on about?”

Maître ignores him. “And then we’ll need to… Ah! There it is.” He holds up a hanged tooth vicariously. Tom had to guess, it is some way to communicate with Voldemort disguised. ‘Glamour,’ maybe.

“What happened?” But time has passed. The Tournament. The one with Marvolo in it and, more importantly, Harry.

Tom does not think it’s been that long since his disappearance. But thinking it does not make it true.

Maître stands up straight. He looks at him intensely.

“Something went wrong,” he says.

For some reason, Tom shudders.

“I’ll be busy in the other room making it right,” Maître tells him over his shoulder as he leaves. “Please do be quiet.” It is a surprisingly solemn beg.

Tom watches Maître leave, listens to the quieting steps emitting from his boots. Distantly, he hears talking.

Something went wrong.

What? What happened?

If anything happened to Harry, if he is hurt or maimed or killed…

Tom slumps onto the floor, leaning his back against the barrier. If Harry is hurt, there is nothing he can do. Because he is here. Because he is trapped here. Because this is a prison of his own doing.

He did not listen to Harry. And now he’s here. It is his fault.

He feels guilt and remorse and wonders how people like Maître could ever live without it.

But he remembers Harry's mantra. “Feeling bad does nothing if it is just a feeling. Why use is guilt if you do nothing with it?”

And it’s… rude, but true. Calling yourself a bad person does not make you magically a good one. Blaming himself for being here does not get him out of here. He recalls, too, when Harry wrote about his childhood. His rage upon being forced into an arranged marriage.

He destroyed his room. His house. Made his parents’ life a living hell. Listen to me. I am being polite. If you do not listen when I whisper, then the only answer is to get loud.

But then he stopped hurting everything around him and started hurting himself. And it didn’t work.

Tom thinks it is a sorry revolution. When people want to hate yourself, want to hurt you, is not self love its own rebellion?

“Oh, Harry,” he whispers. He feels the name, his affection, thrum in his soul. Ruminate. “How can I get to you?”

And then he feels the barrier falter.

It’s just for a moment. It repairs itself instantly and the moment is gone just as quickly as it arrived -- but that’s the thing. There was a moment.

Tom turns around and places his hands against the barrier, pushing. It faltered why… why did it falter?

He had just… been thinking, brooding to himself. And then he’d said… Harry's name.

And hadn’t Maître said that there is power in everything? In this room. In his appearance.

In Harry’s name.

And this box had been tailored to Tom’s magic -- special f*cking treatment -- and he thinks that there is power in Harry’s name. There is power… and magic.

(Look. There is magic in everything. Can’t you see it?

Tom can.)

Tom had been draining Harry of his magic. Has been for some time now. It is a regretful, if necessary, betrayal but now, it’s come in handy.

Because, in him, he doesn't just have his own magic. His contained and dead here magic -- he’s also got Harry’s. He must have channeled it, somehow, by saying his name.

He sticks his diary in his waistband. He presses both of his hands to the barrier. He listens quietly for any signs of Maître. Swallows when he hears no difference.

An escape. It is time for an escape. He will not die here. He will not die today.

And it is all thanks to harry f*cking Potter.

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Harry,” he whispers. Thinking of him. Trying to pull his magic from his chest. The barrier falters weakly. It is doing something.

But not enough.

He needs more.

He thinks of Harry Potter, drunk on the floor. Calling himself an asshole. Tom saying, “I know. So am I. We can work on that.”

“Both of us.”

“Together.”

“Harry,” repeats Tom. The barrier is warm against his palms.

He thinks of Harry Potter. His infectious slang. Ridiculous and silly… and endearing. He remembers telling Marvolo that he’s, “cappin,” and feeling like he is stealing more than just Harry’s magic.

“Harry,” he breathes. The barrier wobbles.

He thinks of Harry Potter sitting on the dirty ground of the Astronomy Tower. Telling Tom that he is in his element. “And your element,” he’d said, “... is on the floor?”

“So I’ve clarified,” Harry said.

Silly. He’s just silly.

“Harry,” says Tom.

He thinks of Harry Potter telling him he has always wanted a friend to do tarot with. A simple past, present, and future. Harry tells him in his future decisions, he will find balance.

“Tarot is stupid.”

“I’m sure, Tom.”

Tom says, one last time, thinking that there is balance inside him (that, maybe, tarot is not stupid), feeling Harry's magic hum and whirl throughout his body, “Harry.”

He pushes through the barrier and falls onto the floor unceremoniously. The barrier repairs itself behind him, but it’s too late.

He’s already free.

Tom feels like he can finally breathe.

He waits to see if Maître has heard his crashing. He pulls himself onto his knees and stares at his shaking hands, panting quietly once he is sure Maître hadn’t.

There’s scars, he notes absently. On his hands, from the barrier. They spread from his palm and out to the rest of his hand, reaching down a good length of his arm like a spiderweb.

He has not left this place unmarred. But one thing is for sure.

He will leave this place alone.

He closes his eyes. He feels his magic -- something that is free, too -- spread throughout the house like a spilled cup of water. He reaches the edge of the building.

He puts up walls. Wards. A different kind of barrier. He will go about it in a similar manner that Maître did.

Similar… but not the same.

With Tom’s wards, only Harry’s magical signature is allowed through. Exclusion through inclusion. Similar and not the same.

Tom sets his hands against the wood. “Incendio,” he whispers.

He watches the fire catch quickly on the wood. He watches it spread. Soon enough, it will get to where Maître is making his call. It will get to where a diadem rests on a sleeping man -- an innocent man. Maître will notice the fire. Grab the diadem, try to leave.

The sounds he will make when he realizes he cannot.

He will burn alive, dying a man who thought he was all but unkillable. All but safe.

And the flames will lick at the diadem, bending the metal and staining with with dirty ash. It will disappear from the manor with a pop, long after Tom had made his leave. It will disappear from the manor, a place Apparation is not capable from, and into Hogwarts… a place where Apparation into is equally not as possible.

Soon enough. But for right now, Tom rises from his knees and makes his way through the house that belonged to very father he killed. He looks at the portraits. The old, rotten through furniture. It was a place well lived in. And now it’s time for it to die.

There is power in this house. There is also power in fire. Tom wonders which one matters more.

He walks out of the manor and onto the Muggle street. He does not stop to look back at the raging fire. Does not stop to listen to Maître’s gut wrenching screams.

He doesn’t have time to, after all.

It is a long walk to Hogwarts.

.XoX.

“Hold me close

Feed me parasites

Like I’m a ghost.

‘Cause you hate me

So you ate me

Ate me up alive

And I’m not having it.

So keep on halving it.

I will lose this war

‘Cause I’m both sides.”

-- Harry Potter, “Two of Pentacles.”

End of Part One.

Notes:

for those wondering,,, yes this is almost double the normal chapter length what about it.
happy pride month my bitches. ace/aros are included. i love u.
look forward to these chapters all being edited/spell checked within the week. love u all <3
some thing also to look forward to in Part Two: no longer will i just be quoting songs at the start of each chapter. will give a lot more depth to some future arcs and such.
leave comments or whateva!!!
on an only sort of related note, idk if i'm alone in this, but being a writer with an ED is so difficult. i started restricting 4 literally one day and had INSTANT writers block. who knew it took so much brain power to create. anyways. here's to writing this chapter over sweetened tea and apple pie. whatever.

Chapter 20 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“I miss the comfort in being sad

I miss the comfort in being sad

I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work.

Brooklyn’s too cold tonight

& all my friends are three years away.

My mother said I could be anything

I wanted -- but I chose to live.

the discomfort of healing.”

-- Tumlbr user fadedlovemp3, transscripted

.XoX.

Do you remember when you would break a cup as a child? A glass plate, a jar, a bowl -- something fragile that slips just past your fingers.

There’s a process about it, if you remember. If you dare to recall.

The initial push. Wide eyes and a parted mouth. A sharp gasp of anticipation.

The shattering is followed by a long stretch of silence. There is then the vocal realization that something is broken.

A tired, sadden exclamation: “Oh, no!” Maybe a ‘f*ck!’, if you are old enough.

Oh, no. Yes. Harry Potter waking up from dying goes something like this.

.XoX.

Air is in his lungs, but his lungs, he thinks, are too greedy. Oxygen makes the flesh inside him itchy and itchy and itchy -- and there is nothing he can do about it.

Because having air in your lungs is unavoidable. It’s a part of being alive. And, yes. Thankfully, Harry is alive. (What an odd thought that is to have, after years of suicidal tendencies. He will have a lot of those in the following days -- months, years … -- odd thoughts.)

His skin, stretched strangely thin, feels odd, too. Numb. His head pounds painfully against his skull. His eyes, not yet open, are in a mountain of hurt.

He died. He’s woken up, alive, but… (something went wrong)... it’s like his pieces are all switched up.

Harry peeks open his eyes, squinting hard against the blinding light. His glasses are not against his face. Even so, he can tell clearly, whether it is from the familiar anesthetic scent of the place, or the faint, very faint, voice of Madame Pomfrey in the background, that this is the Hospital Wing.

Yes.

The Hospital Wing. He is not lost in a sea of sand -- or back at his parents’ house, wrapped up between them -- and Katherine… Katherine is just a story character. Rowena Ravenclaw…

Well, whatever. He’s not there with her, or with them, and he might have never been (though his mind can’t help but play around with the idea that it did happen; that Ravenclaw has laid puzzle pieces out for him and is just waiting for him to see the big picture) -- he’s at the Hospital Wing. The Ol’ Reliable.

He lets his eyes adjust to the light for a minute. Madame Pomfrey, he recognizes, is not alone. She’s talking to someone -- several someones -- but Harry can’t make out who they are. His ears feel as if they are filled with sand. This body rebuilt all wrong continues to fail him.

His face. He can feel his face clearly now.

There’s…

A bandage, wrapped around his head, right above his ears.

Oh. Yes. That. He should know where he got that. The circ*mstances of his death… he finds some memories do not want to be recalled.

He sits up slowly and quietly. Madame Pomfrey will notice that he’s up soon enough. He will be pounded with questions, concern. Will have to interact with people, for sure, but that is only when Madame Pomfrey notices he’s up and right now, she doesn’t.

Harry’s hand fumbles in its quest to paw at the bandages. He wants to peel them off, take a look at the damage, see if it can jog his memory. His hands shake too much and instead, his fingertips flitter across metal.

Harry’s eyebrows furrow.

Metal…

He concentrates. He maneuvers his hands -- cold chunks of flesh he considers barely attached to his body -- to the metal. It’s on both sides of his hhead… like a ring, around his head. What’s the word for that? There is a word for that.

Oh. Crown.

He’s wearing a crown.

He lifts it off his head gingerly. He turns it around so the front of it faces him, thinking idly that, no, it’s not just a crown, it’s… it’s a crown subset. Not a coronet. A tiara? No…

It’s a diadem. He remembers asking Luna to embroider one on the hem of his dress shirt. It was an out of character request, not that he thinks about it.

But that is a train of thought at the back of his head. His hands are covered with ash -- the diadem is covered in it -- but that, too, is secondary.

There is a crest, decorated, at the edges, with jewels, and it’s the crest that concerns him.

Ravenclaw’s crest.

Rowena Ravenclaw’s crest.

(A familiar voice.

“You cannot hide forever. Get up, Harry. To think about what I said you must first believe what I said.

“But not now.

“There are a few things… other things, we must get out of the way first.

“An apology, Harry. This is going to hurt.”)

And all of a sudden, like seeing this has just slapped him in the face, he remembers. He knows. The circ*mstances of his death have avoided him before but now they come rushing back full force. He remembers seeing Luna in danger. Rushing to save her and moving too quick yet not fast enough and then he was with his parents -- no.

No. Then he died.

And then he was with his parents, in his home, in his kitchen, in a field of sand that stretched as far as the eye could see. And it was real. Ravenclaw was real and their conversation was real and to that, he is gripped with a strong and unwarranted certainty.

He died and woke up and there are many things in between.

He remembers how he died. Harry wonders how he could ever forget.

And the pain. The pain of it all, of dying, of being forcibly resurrected -- the unfathomable, unbearable pain of it all. His chest overflows with the force of it all and he interrupts his shocked silence by unhinging his jaw.

He unhinges his jaw, then screams.

.XoX.

The next few days he spends rarely lucid and rarely alone. He is given potions and a ‘stay in bed’ order.

He is also given the story of how it happened: Luna sees him die. Luna grabs him up in her arms, comes running out of the forest, and the next two and a half hours are spent trying to resuscitate him.

At the end of the third, he is declared dead.

“It should be impossible,” Madame Pomfrey tells him, frowning. “My diagnostic spells are never wrong -- not that we aren’t glad you’re okay, of course.”

“Of course,” he echoes weakly.

She is of the opinion that he never died. Harry comes to the quick realization that it’s not a widely accepted one. Though his visitors are sorted through and allowed only when he is declared okay-enough to meet them in the moment, people, as Madame Pomfrey might say, talk.

He holds a Prophet newspaper in his hands. The headline ‘STUDENT DIED IN TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT -- AND CAME BACK? GELLERT INVOLVEMENT SPECULATED’ screams out at him before the newspaper is torn out of his hand by Madame Pomfrey.

“Silly rumours,” she says, placing a tray of food in front of him. “Best to avoid the post for a while, I’d think.”

“What are they talking about?” he asks.

“Slow news day,” she suggests.

She’s lying. Harry does not buy it. “Those are serious accusations. What does Gellert have to do with anything? Is it -- is it the fact that I died? Is that it?”

She presses her lips together in a thin line. “They don’t know,” she says at last.

“More rumours,” he finishes.

“Yes. More rumours and just rumours -- best not to worry about them.” Harry sees the tenseness in her shoulders and thinks, soundly, that it’s something to ask around about. Maybe he’s ask Tom.

If Tom ever returns…

“That’s enough of that, now.” She pats his head. “Eat up. We’ll talk later.”

She walks off and Harry looks at the tray in front of him.

Food.

Right. Food. A sore subject as of late. He’d thought, after the time he hid away in the corridors of Hogwarts, starving himself, that his immediate response to trauma or stress would be restriction. His disorder is two sided and he was hoping for one to shine through.

Unfortunately, he takes to binging. EDNOS has never liked working in his favor. He eats everything Madame Pomfrey sets out from him and tells himself, firmly, that he won’t eat anything more. And then ten minutes later, he will crawl out of his bed, possessed by a man much more starving than he, and dig through the trash to find the very parcels he’d tossed out earlier.

He has always been a binger, one of the less glamorous parts of his disorder, but the amount he’s been eating lately has been absurd, even for him. He is constantly bloated and never fully hungry before he goes scouring for food again. He tries to purge and when he fails, he spends the rest of the day clutching his stomach in pain and ignores how Madame Pomfrey looks at him.

There is shame here. He hates it. He wants to retreat, take to his behaviours in private. He is not given the chance. Pomfrey does not know how long the healing process will take. “It’s been a while since I’ve treated a patient in such critical condition.”

Harry thinks she’s never treated a patient like him. And he, begrudgingly, allows her to do whatever magic she needs, despite its inconvenience. He does not know the effect dying will have on the body and, from the way he feels, it’s nothing good.

He mentions the discomfort to Madame Pomfrey one evening. “I don’t feel at home in my body,” he says. “Like incorrectly tailored clothes.” The pain, at least, has gone away. Harry attributes that to Pomfrey’s steady supply of pain potions than any real healing.

Pomfrey paused. “What?”

Harry stares up at her. She’s reapplying the guaze around his head. “Is that supposed to happen?” he asks.

“Is… is it a dissociation thing, Harry? I’m sorry. I wish I was a mind healer, Harry.” And she does. Something about her affection, her care, toward Harry is motherly. He would reject it. But he wants a mother he can’t allow himself to have, so he doesn’t.

Harry is quite sure it’s not a dissociation thing, the way air makes his blood irritated, the way his bones feel too rough for his joints. (He is feeling the mental side effects of dying, too, and they are nothing like this.) He’s also not quite sure what she’s supposed to do about it. Her treatment has helped the wound he sustained, sure. But anything else…

Anything else is like spitting on a grease fire. It’s a kind effort -- that he will welcome! Will allow! A lamination not rejected! -- as well as a useless one.

She shakes his head, looking back down at his lap. “It’s alright,” he says. “I’m sure it will pass.”

She secures the gauze. “Alright, Harry. I’m going to bed now. If you need anything, you know where my door is.”

“Alright,” Harry repeats softly. “Alright.”

He watches her retreat. Luna’s eyes, wide, frightened, come to mind.

He has died. It is hard on him. He cannot imagine how hard it is on Luna. He imagines her, scooping him up in her arms. Blood splattered on her face and on her clothing. Screaming, something guttural coming from her throat. Maybe she’d be sad. Sad that things -- rough, so rough -- between them and now, they’d never get a chance to fix them.

It’s hard for him and it’s hard, it’s gotta be, for Luna.

And it’s gotta be hard for her, too, Madame Pomfrey. Watching him self destruct after normal destruction with only her feeble damage control as comfort. “Pomfrey?” he calls out.

She pauses in the doorway. “Mhm?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, what he really wants to say choking up in his chest, “for ending up in here again. I said I wouldn’t.”

Pomfrey swallows. “In your defense,” she says, gently, “it’s not your fault.”

“Not this time, no.”

Pomfrey closes the door behind her. Harry was not able to say it. But he thinks she knows it anyway.

.xox.

Harry receives a lot of letters. Cedric tells him that he and Julian will come visit later, “whenever that hawk eyed Pomfrey starts letting people in.” Luna echos the sentiment and Harry winces.

There is no word from Marvolo.

There is also a letter from his parents. He stuffs it into the bottom of his trunk -- moved into the infirmary for this time being there for the sake of convenience -- and refuses to look at it. (His heart aches when he does so and he doesn’t think it’s a byproduct of the whole being dead thing.)

Luna. His parents. Ravenclaw. Tom. Dying, pain, death. He has been thinking about the same things lately, on loop. His despair -- around all the subjects -- threatens to consume him.

He does try his hand at being productive. Though Pomfrey assures him often that incomplete schoolwork will not be held against him, the pile of it is growing in his trunk. But he grows tired -- and weary -- of sitting with only his thoughts and self loathing for company, so he does try to complete it.

It’s just that… Whatever he is trying to do here, whatever is trying to be taught to him, slips off his mind like oil. He starts off his day trying to ignore how Tom still isn’t back and how that’ his fault and how he has traumatized Luna and his parents and how people think he’s evil because he’s still alive and how Rowena’s diadem sits in the desk of his drawer. He continues his day by picking up his quill to write an easy for Snape and ends it like he always does; huddling over his journal, writing.

It is one of the few things he can manage recently, writing is. It feels as easy as breathing once did, and he thinks how silly it is that dying is what pulled him from his writer’s slump.

He writes his main novel with an invigorated speed and a new outlook. He also writes poems, small pieces of prose, that spill out of him. A common topic of these are the one incident, a few days after waking up in the Hospital Wing, surrounded by worried friends and strangers and enemies alike, alongside the… You know. “Whole being dead thing.”

Pomfrey had been telling him, persistently, not to take the bandage off his head. Harry does not know when it needs to be removed, and when it does need to be removed, she’ll be the one to do it, thank you very much.

And Harry listens because Madame Pomfrey does know best and he has no reason not to allow her this.

But.

But he is curious. What it looks like. Because he can recall -- too vividly, perhaps -- what happened. A giant spike whose origins are still under investigation stabbing through his skull -- yes. He remembers. He’s just… never got a good look of it, is all.

He studies himself in the mirror, getting ready for bed. He ignores his pale, sickly (dead) skin. He ignores his eyes -- eyes that look fake fake fake, clear evidence that SOMETHING WENT WRONG -- and instead studies the bandage that stretches a loop across his forehead.

One look, he thinks. (A regretful thought. He’s made so many mistakes lately. He wants to take them all back and will instead be taking them to the grave.) One look couldn’t hurt, right? And long as he puts the bandage back as soon as he’s done.

One look couldn’t hurt.

He peels the gauze off slowly, watching his expression in the mirror. Will it be an angry red? Already scabbing? Will it look like an aggravated belly button? Harry snorts at the thought.

The gauze hangs limply in his hand. Harry turns his head to get a better look at the wound.

All laughter dies in his throat.

He can see through it. His head. He sees strands of flesh -- of brain -- stretch themselves out, working themselves back to completion. His mind is healing and he can still see through it. Like his head is full of cobwebs.

He raises a shaking hand and, without even realizing he is doing it, sticks a pinky into the hole. He feels strands of his brain spasm around the intrusion and work around it. Adapting.

That’s… That’s not normal. He should not be able to do that, to just do that. A Muggle would be dead and he bets every other wizard than him would be, too.

Madame Pomfrey’s healing skills are superb. But… they’re not superb like this. Madame Pomfrey, he tells himself, is an advanced witch. And Rowena Ravenclaw….

Well. She is, too.

.xox.

He wakes up one evening, maybe a week days after… after everything, and looks up at his nightstand. There is a black journal with the Weepers mark and Tom Riddle’s name on it.

“Huh,” he says, to himself. He wonders when Tom got back to him. He will celebrate it later -- hound it for answers, hound him with concern -- but right now, his head feels fuzzy. He wants to just go back to bed, to sleep forever, to see his mom and dad again…

“Recovering well, I hope?”

Harry’s eyes snap open, fully aware that wait, Tom is BACK and he’s sitting right here and-- and he flings himself into a sitting person--

Only to see Tom is not sitting in the chair beside his bed, but Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore.

Harry slumps in his chair, staring at his Headmaster dully. Pomfrey is still prohibiting visitors -- especially so after hours -- but he supposes, in Hogwarts, Dumbledore is an exception wherever Dumbledore damn well pleases.

Dumbledore’s legs are crossed in the chair. His interlocked fingers rest on top of his knee. He is looking at Harry, but the expression is indechirable.

“You don’t look all too happy to see me,” notes Dumbledore. He tilts his chin toward the night table. “Almost, if I may presume to say so, as if you were expecting to see someone else.”

Harry sniffs. He reaches over to his glasses, slipping them on his face, careful to avoid brushing the still sore spots on his head. They have healed over well, but Harry suspects they will scar. He frowns at his forearms, determined not to look him in the eyes.

“It’s just that,” says Harry, frowning deeper at the weight he’s gained, “we don’t talk much, Headmaster.”

“No,” says Dumbledore. “We don’t, do we?”

Harry swallows. He thinks of the newspaper. My Death Has Something To Do With Gellert richoents through his mind and he asks anyway, “Why are you here?”

“Here to prep you for the onslaught of reporters trying to make their way in, if I had to put a word to action.” (He sounds like a liar.)

“Reporters?” Harry asks, dubious. People talk, thinks Harry.

The light catches on his spectacles. “I admit, I, too was curious when rumour came around. They’ve started calling you ‘The Boy Who Lived.’ It’s got a catch to it, don’t you think?”

“Curious,” he repeats blankly.

“And worried. Though, as I said, you seem to be recovering well.”

“But you’re not here for that,” says Harry, all of a sudden certain. “And -- and…” and Dumbledore sounds like a liar, he is one, “And I don’t think you’re here to prep me, either, for some interrogation. I think this… this is its own interrogation.”

Dumbledore stares at him a moment. “Maybe. I mean no offense.”

“Offenseful people hardly ever do.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Harry shrugs his shoulders. “So. What do you want to know?”

“I have,” says Dumbledore, “a professional curiosity, you might say, in you.”

“You never have before,” Harry counters.

“No. I never have before. You had not died before.”

“You’re believing that rubbish?” Harry says, scoffing.

“I do not believe that it’s rubbish,” says Dumbledore simply. “Say, Harry. Is there anything you would like to tell me? About your death?”

Harry swallows and he wants to say No. I am not dead, I do not die. I don’t know what you’re talking about. But he looks at Tom’s journal on the nightstand and knows that he will scarcely get a chance to talk about it.

Tom is nice but Harry is lonely, and Harry is lonely now.

“I saw something,” Harry says. His voice does not sound his own. But, then again, often it doesn’t.

Dumbledore tilts his head. “You saw something?”

“When I died. I saw something.” Maybe somethings and a few someones.

But he’s not sure why he’s telling this to Dumbledore. He’s, on second thought, one of the worst people to tell. He is a stranger. He is a stranger and a war general and war generals taking an interest in Harry has never ended well for him in the past.

“What did you see?” Eager. There is urgency in his voice. What does it matter that Harry died, what Harry saw? His professional curiosity is not, Harry thinks, with him.

It’s with death. And death (had a lot to do with Harry) has nothing to do with him.

“I saw nothing, Headmaster. And I think I’m going to go back to bed.”

He turns on his side, lying back down, bringing the blankets back up to his growing body. He closes his eyes and waits.

Dumbledore stares at the back of his form a moment before rising, taking the dismissal as it is. “Alright, then.” It is said serenely, but Harry’s no fool. There is no acceptance here. “And,” he adds, “tell your ghost Tom I said hi.”

.XoX.

“will you love me,

in the morning?

I am

filled

with deep despair.

I create poetry from my guts

and my heart beats too small to my chest

but,

still,

will you love me,

in the morning?

By the end of the Lord,

The world wept.

And the Lord wrote:

If we were made to live,

and die,

together

(and we were)

Then,

my friend.

We have succeeded.”

-- Harry Potter, “Four of Pentacles.”

Notes:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzPVALd4ywVWyYs3eemoyIKE_N_3-drCH -- 'poetry spills from my guts,' aka the superplaylist of all the songs ive been listening to while writing this fanfic. if u wanna get into my headspace, here u go. maybe ill find some1 with a similar music taste to me.
sorry abt this chapter tbh, i have a lot of Events After Immediate Death planned out that i wasn't able to get to without making this chapter another 5k one.
still working on editing these. sorry for the delay!

Chapter 21 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself by as an echo of who I was.”

-- Novel quote; Ocean Vuong, ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.’

.XoX.

Tom is acting weird. (Harry is, too. He knows he is. But can he really be blamed?)

(Maybe Tom can’t be, either.)

Previously, the diary was their main form of communication. Tom’s identity as the Dark Lord -- even as just part of him -- was something that needed to be kept on the wraps. Tom had only used his ghostly form whenever they were in an assured private setting.

Tom, now, has abandoned all pretense. He makes no attempts to hide his presence, sitting steadfastly at Harry’s bedside, smiling politely to Madame Pomfrey and other injured students.

Harry’d grabbed his arm the first time he revealed himself publicly, hissing, “The f*ck are you doing? They can see you!”

“I know,” said Tom, calmly. “But it doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to hide. In fact, there’s plenty reason not to.”

Despite Harry’s incessant pleading, Tom remains steadfast in this, too. It’s led to some confused questions from students -- none of which Tom has shied away from answering. “Oh,” he’d said, innocently. “I’m Voldemort’s son. Yeah, no, I’ve heard of that other guy going around claiming the same thing but… he’s obviously way too old to be seventeen. I don’t know what’s up with him, but I’d watch out if I were you.”

Harry stared at him, gobsmacked at the pure gall. Harry eventually sputtered out, “Wha… what? What was that? What was that!”

Tom had shrugged. “Just want to f*ck with Marvolo.”

“But…!”

“Teach him a lesson or two. And who knows? Maybe whatever happens as a result will work in our favour.”

So, yes, Tom is acting weird. And it’s not that he outright refuses to answer Harry's many questions. It’s just that he does not find his answers worthwhile. His apathy, this refined anarchy. It’s new.

He brushes over his honestly insane tale of his time away and asks, repeatedly, how Harry acquired Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. “It’d have been impossible to, first off, get it out of Riddle manor and, secondly, into Hogwarts--”

“I don’t know,” Harry had finally snapped, throwing his hands up into the air. “I don’t f*cking know whatever it is you want to hear, okay, so can you stop asking?”

Tom has never been off put by Harry’s anger, by Harry’s bitterness. He keeps asking and though Harry keeps denying him, Tom is continually unaffected.

It is odd how, only days before, Harry’d been wracked with guilt about sending him off. He’d been eager, so eager, to recuse him, to apologize, to talk to him again.

But Harry died and came back and came back different. (Something went wrong.) Tom did not die… but upon his return, it’s evident he has the same problem.

Harry had threatened to kill Marvolo because he thought he had killed Tom, and now when Tom asked what Harry saw when he died and if Tom can somehow help him deal with it, Harry’s only response is a rapid fire, defensive, “Who told you I died?”

“I had a talk with Dumbledore.” Tom utters the admittance like it is casual.

“What?”

“He’s aware of my presence in the castle.”

“I mean -- Yeah, yeah I’d figured -- but--”

“We are on the same page,” says Tom. “Where it matters.”

Harry blinks at him.

“He can help protect you, if worst comes to worst,” Tom offers. A vague attempt to ease Harry’s discomfort, his confusion.

“What,” Harry says, carefully, feeling the detachment to his own body absently, “happened to you? While you were away? And I don’t… I don’t just mean what went down.”

“What do you mean, then?”

“You’re… different.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

And Harry jumps to say Yes, it is. I don’t know you anymore. I needed you and then I didn’t have you and I don’t have you now. But that is unfair. Because Harry has changed, too. And this is Tom. Tom is his friend… even if it feels less and less like it.

So Harry instead says, “I don’t know yet.” Honesty and kindness. Harry calls it compromise.

Tom hummed, placing one leg over the other. “I realized something, Harry,” he says, after a moment. “During my time away.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I did. I realized I have been overcomplicating things. Crafting manipulation upon manipulation will only get you stuck in your own web eventually. It would have gotten me caught, sneaking around in the library. It caught me with Marvolo… It got me caught with you, the first time we talked.” Tom chuckles, like he remembers confessing to being Voldemort with some sort of fondness.

“Great,” says Harry. He pushes his confusion and his bitterness out of his tone. Tom is explaining things to him. He is getting exactly what he wants. It would be cruel to punish him for that. “So what are you doing now instead?”

“There’s no instead, not really… I’d call it an enhanced focus on what I’d been doing before. It’s what you should be doing, too.” He holds out his hands to Harry, showing off his scars, a new edition to his body he’d explained to Harry in an almost bored tone. “This Tournament killed you. It tried to kill Luna.”

“I’m aware,” snaps Harry.

“So,” says Tom, shrugging, “destroy it.”

Harry blinks at him, waiting for the punchline. “You’re not joking,” Harry says after a moment. He furrows his eyebrows. “Why aren’t you joking?”

“I am Voldemort,” Tom says. “I am Voldemort in the way that he was okay with letting a piece of his soul die for grievances so minor they’re hardly faults at all. I am Voldemort because I killed a Horcrux that was not beyond redemption and I’m okay with that. I am Voldemort and I am Tom and Tom realizes that this is a fire you must fight with fire.”

He stands, spreading his psalm out in front of him. “This Tournament is rigged. It’s rigged against Luna and Julian and it killed you. It should have never been reinstated. It’s a fire and it will encompass it if you only let it. So,” he stresses, leaning in, “destroy it. Burn the whole thing to the ground if you hate it so much. If you need me to, I’ll do it for you.”

Harry snaps, meekly, “I still have to win it, you know. Emancipation, remember? I swear, the smoke’s gone to your brain.”

“Destroy that, too.”

“f*ck are you going on about?”

“Threaten your parents. Say if they don’t retract you from the marriage contract, you’ll destroy them. Make a statement to prove your point.” Tom’s eyes flash. “Make a statement with fire.”

And Harry closes his eyes and imagines the kitchen from his dream with Ravenclaw now with flames licking at the walls. He imagines his childhood bedroom -- a place stinking with memories of misery -- with smoke and ash repainting the walls.

He imagines his parents -- already emotionally strung out, having read the many newspapers saying that their son died and is evil because he didn't stay dead -- being blackmailed by their only child. He imagines his parents, looking upon their burning home with horror.

They’d deserve it. They’d deserve it like Maître did. They hurt Harry so they should get hurt themselves -- and Harry had been around that, at one point in time.

But Harry opens his eyes, exhaling slowly, because he’s not about that now. He hurts himself instead of the world around him. This is how he functions. He was not built this way… but he does not have the heart to change.

“No thanks,” he says, voice cracking. “I’m not crazy.”

It is supposed to be a slight. Like always (like even before), Tom does not care. “We will figure something out then. Together.”

…And that’s another strange thing Harry’s noticed.

Tom is a bonafide agent of chaos. Scars like lightning string down his hands, visual proof of his will. He survived and now he is putting in strong effort making sure Voldemort doesn’t.

Given his time in Riddle manor -- something relayed in great detail with little to no emotion in his voice; a tale of deceit, betrayal, and useful revelations -- his insurrection is… understandable. And it isn’t new. He has always wanted, always been working to, kill Voldemort, even if the methods he goes about it now are more disorderly. More disorderly and less Slytherin.

What surprises Harry is not Tom’s arsonist tenancies because, it’s like Tom said, those have always been here. The amplification of them, given the circ*mstances, may be uncomfortable, may be something Harry isn’t used to, but it’s in character, absolutely. What isn’t -- or what feels like it shouldn’t be -- is Tom’s interest in Harry.

They are friends. Friends who are there for trust and backup; who do want to protect each other; who help each other work toward their goals, mutually. That’s what friends do.

Harry thinks Tom might’ve loved him. He thinks he was growing to love Tom.

And now Tom has returned and there is no uncertainty about the fact. He cares about two things and two things only -- and one of those things is, incredibly, Harry.

Tom says he has a good idea of what locket Marvolo is. With the thought that it’s Slytherin’s locket in mind, he’ll be able to track it down more effectively. He refuse, however, to take to the library until Harry is released from the Hospital Wing. “I cannot leave you alone,” he says, sternly. Harry thinks it because Tom does not trust the people around him and because he doesn’t trust Harry around himself. “You went to Mouton’s party -- something I still can’t believe--”

Harry flushes. “I had backup!”

“-- and we don’t know if she’s going to try and make a reappearance. Nor do we know if Dumbledore--”

Harry is surprised at his suspicion. “I thought you said Dumbledore and you were on the same page.”

“On some things,” corrects Tom. “I did not know he was going to visit you.”

“Ergo?”

“Ergo,” says Tom, “he’s unpredictable.”

His special treatment toward Harry does not end there. He is patient where he does not have to be. After watching Harry write for some six hours straight, he pries the notebook gently from his hands and asks if he’d like to do a tarot reading instead.

“I thought you hate tarot,” Harry said, confused, still flexing his fingers.

Tom shrugged. “I know that you don’t. And… besides, it’s not always wrong.”

And when Harry refuses to relay what he saw when he died, Tom is both sensitive as to the possible reasons why, and unabated in getting the truth. He wants to know, he says, in order to help him deal with him. In order to protect him from other, more dangerous people who will not take ‘no’ as an answer.

Harry does want to tell him -- he wants to tell Tom in the same manner that he wanted to tell Dumbledore, expect this time when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out.

He sounds insane. Rowena Ravenclaw brought him back to life and he saw Katherine when he died and it’s true, all true, but it sounds insane. He writes about it, lying in bed, and when Tom asks what he’s Novelling about, Harry cannot bring himself to say it.

Tom is Tom. Harry will tell him the truth when he is sure of this.

Tom expresses guilt, also, to not have listened to Harry, putting himself in the position to get taken advantage of by Maître. He did not listen to Harry and so he almost died and Harry realizes it is the very same guilt Harry had felt.

(It is the very same guilt Harry still sort of feels -- how he feels about New, Changed Tom changes by the minute, and he finds that guilt does, too. It’s not dissipated, but morphed; if Tom is now unlikable, who’s fault is that? And on the other hand… he thinks he can still love him, that he still does.)

Harry, hesitantly, tells him about his body. “It doesn’t feel like it belong to me and it hasn’t…”

“Since you died,” Tom finishes. Harry nods. Tom hums and declares, “I’ll look into, first time I’m able.”

Protective. Offering up information that he thinks will soothe Harry, staying by his side. And doing a f*cking tarot reading?

Harry does not know how to feel about Tom, but Tom very well knows how to feel about him.

.xox.

He’s been writing his novel recently. Katherine’s words keep ringing in his head and he finds the only effective way to silence them is to listen to them.

It’s time for a sequel.

So he takes his novel concept -- a tree that turns people’s bones to wood infects some poor high school girl -- and adapts it. He wants to, at first, make the girl like him. Someone broken, someone who had died and not like what they’ve seen, who carries it with them, carries everything with them.

Someone who is rotten inside.

And everyone they touch is a little rotten too, and then he thinks that it is not the main character who’s rotten. It’s the tree.

The tree is him and the tree is Katherine. More accurately, the tree is their disorders. It’s a sequel, but it’s all unofficial.

He stops writing one evening to binge. Tom looks on with a frown and Harry gets the sense that he is out of his depth here. He always has been. He wants to help Harry but he’s not trained for this. He will say what he thinks is helpful, tries his best to support Harry; he will try and try and try and can only hope it’s doing anything.

(Harry thinks his eating disorder hurts everyone, least of all himself.)

And finishes eating and takes, again, to the bathroom. Tom slips him beside him.

Harry had opposed, of course, to this the first time Tom had tried it. “Gross,” Harry snapped. “You’re not watching me purge.”

“Then can I come in afterwards?”

“No,” Harry huffed. “It’s invasive.”

“There’s a whole aftercare process to this -- lot of misinformation surrounding it -- and… and I think you need some comfort. But it’s your call.”

“...Sure,” Harry had said. “You can come. But you can’t be mean or -- or pretentious or I’ll kick you out.”

Harry wonders why he wants to be there. It must be heart wrenching, surely, to hear your one and only friend attempt to throw his guts up right beside you. Tom has his reasons and Harry is not pretending to understand any of them. It is weird but so is Harry and so is Tom so it’s whatever.

Harry gags over the toilet. Thick strands of saliva trail from his mouth and his shoving heaves with the effort but no food comes up.

How can other people manage it so easily? Is he a failure? Is he broken? IS he destined to be fat, to keep gaining weight forever?

Harry wipes the tears from his eyes angrily with the back of his hand. He shoves his fingers into his hair, uncaring about the sanitation of it.

“It’s stupid,” he says, stubbornly, coughing once. “It’s stupid.” And then he shoves his fingers back down his throat to try again.

Tom is sitting on the toilet tank cover, watching him with a frown and that sad, sad look in his eyes.

Harry sighs, staring into the toilet bowl, dejected.

It’s stupid. It’s stupid. It’s stupid that he’s trying this and it’s stupid that he’s failing and it’s stupid that Tom’s just sitting there, watching. It is stupid, stupid, stupid and Harry would want to die if he no longer knew what it would feel like when he did.

Yes. His death. The one thing his mind can’t escape and for some reason -- maybe his vulnerability; his desolation; the fact that even if this Tom isn’t the Tom he knows, he is still a version of him and maybe that;s enough -- Harry looks at Tom with lidded eyes.

“Do you know,” Harry asks, lowly, “what it’s like to die?”

“No,” says Tom, quietly.

“It’s painful,” says Harry, lowering his gaze back to the bowl. “It’s so, so painful.”

“I’ve never died,” says Tom, careful, “but I have done something similar.”

Harry looks up at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Tom tilts his head. “Tearing my soul… I was nearly your age when I did it, Harry.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Like nothing I’ve never experienced,” Tom breathes. He rolls his shoulders, sighing. “But I thought it was worth it. I wanted to be immortal and a moment worth of pain, no matter how excruciating, was nothing in comparison.”

Harry rests his arms, bile covered hands stuck out weirdly. He lets himself sink into the feeling of familiarity. “What would you give,” he asks, “in order to go back and make sure it would never, ever happen?”

“I hadn’t… really thought about that. I am more concerned with things, how they are going forward…”

Harry keeps speaking like he did not hear Tom’s answer. “I would give anything. Anything to make sure it never happened. And -- and I can see why Voldemort did what he did. With his Horcruxes.”

“Harry?”

“Splitting your soul… and then I could never die again.” He places a hand against his chest. He feels his irregular heartbeat under his palm. “I could see the appeal.”

“Harry…”

“I don’t want to die,” says Harry firmly. “Not anymore. And -- and don't get all worried, Tom, I’m... I’m not going to go all Dark Lord to make sure it doesn’t happen. I’m just… not going to help speed up the process.”

“But if you want to live so bad,” says Tom, confused, “then why are you doing this? You said you don’t want to speed up the process, but that’s exactly what this is doing.”

Harry stares at Tom’s scarred hands, avoiding his eyes. “It’s not that simple, Tom.”

Harry ducks his head, breathing heavily, trying to work himself up to one more attempt.

Tom interrupts the silence tentatively. “I thought about you. At the manor.”

“When you used my magic to escape?”

“Right,” says Tom. “I thought of your entries – your early ones, when you didn’t know I was listening.”

“Still think it was rude of you,” Harry says, weakly.

Tom smiles gently. “It was.”

“Well… go on, then.”

“When this was first starting, you first destroyed everything around you. You wanted to make your parents listen to you and you’d do anything -- anything -- to make that happen. And it was impressive.” Until it wasn’t. “ I thought of that at the manor. And then I saw the merit in it -- what use is rolling over and dying, all without a fight? No. I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.** Your rebellion -- that version of it -- saved me, in a way. And I think it could save you, too.”

“...Pretentious,” Harry mutters. He gags into his hand.

Tom wrinkles his nose. “You’ve got to give that up -- it’s terribly damaging. It’s addicting, too--”

“What did I just say about being pretentious?” Harry wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. He rolls his eyes with a tired sigh. “You’re sounding to start like Madame Pomfrey.”

“Well, maybe she’s right. But…” Tom winces. “There’s… there’s more than one reason you shouldn’t start purging.”

“Is it stupid and will I hate you?”

“No -- well. Maybe. It’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I thought I had more time,” Tom says. “To work myself up for it -- to find the right time for it -- for you to… be, I dunno, more stable.”

Harry laughs a bitter laugh.

“But then you died.” All laughter dies in Harry’s throat. “You died while I was aware and I realize, Harry, that our time together is not guaranteed. There might not exist a ‘right time’ -- and I am as worked up as I’ll ever be.”

Something in Tom’s voice is starting to scare him. “What are you talking about?”

Tom takes a deep breath, then tells Harry what Marvolo told him, long ago, about the terms of emancipation.

.XoX.

“Where do I set this timeliness?

In my home and in my heart,

I beat and flow and bleed

My blood is that of love

And when I tilt my head back,

I see and want to say,

‘The stars look like hope.’

But the words dry up,

And my throat catches

On those dry letters.”

-- Harry Potter, “Ace of Swords.”

Notes:

i love taking sequences that were planned for a single chapter and spanning them across 3 instead. it's such a me thing.
btw,,, there's going to be a chapter, tacked on the end, that's a collection of all of 'harry's poems and it'll include, if i can write it well enough, a shortened version of the book he's working on. it can be read entirely standalone. so look forward to that.
** quote by Fallout lol

Chapter 22 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Other times I fixate on how endearing people are. We sleep on soft surfaces; we like to be cozy.When I see cats cuddled up on pillows, I find it sweet; we are like that too. We like to eat cookies and smell flowers. We wear mittens and hats. We visit our families even when we’re old. We like to pet dogs. We laugh; we make involuntary sounds when we find things funny. Laughing is adorable, if you really think about it.”

-- everyone in this room will someday be dead, Emily Austin

.XoX.

Tom had walked hours. Riddle Manor burning behind him, he’d ignored the yells of the neighbors -- the lot of them gathering in front of the lawn and, implicitly, being unable to go any further -- and he walked. He walked until their screams became monotone and until he could no longer hear them at all -- and he had walked further still.

Harry. He is thinking of Harry and only of Harry and it is that thought that compulses him to put one foot in front of the other. Only when Muggles start staring at him and when his head clears does he realize that walking is not the most effective method.

He closes his eyes, focuses his magic, and does something he hasn’t done in a long time, too trapped with nowhere to go -- he Apparates. He stands before the gates of Hogwarts, the sun long ago set, and the idea of subtly does not even occur to him.

He is feeling less and less green by the day -- if Salazar saw him now, he’d surely call him yellow. And what a thought that is. Belonging now to the rival House of one of the only things that matter now, and the only person that ever did.

He could’ve killed Harry. The realization comes to him with a vapid surety and the force of it nearly knocks him off his feet.

He could’ve killed Harry. And he had tried to, had lied to him about it -- is still lying to him about it -- and the only reason he didn’t is because he’s got far too much magic to drain.

And he swears, overwhelmed by secondhand betrayal, that it is one of the many things he’s going to come clean about. One day. It is a promise.

He waits by the gates and then thinks, dully -- his mind still in something like jet lag, his hands still aching with a ghostly pain -- that perhaps he should do something to grab their attention. He’s learned that waiting, on his own, does nothing. Change does not occur without prompting.

So Tom raises his hand and shoots off a firework spell.

He watches the sparks of color illuminate the blank darkness of the sky in streaks of blue and bronze and allows himself, just for a moment, to mourn. Mourn for his fellow Horcrux -- the one that he thinks could’ve been on his side if only things had been different; the one that had to die; that he had to kill. Mourn for Marvolo and the ring and the other two, left unnamed -- because they have to die, too. It has to happen. There’s nothing else Tom can do, not really.

And he mourns for himself. He mourns for the life he will never get to experience, the flesh he will never have, the relationships he will never form nor deepens. He stops living at sixteen and whatever he’s been doing since -- and will be forced to do, for the rest of his too short existence -- pales in comparison.

He watches the fireworks, mourns, and moves on.

He has work to do here. It is not yet over. He was a monster once, and is one now, and this is punishment. He will serve his time and he will kill and die and he will call that fixing the problems he caused.

He watches as Professor Dumbledore -- who has long outgrown that title and fitted into a new one, and looks exactly like it; an old man past his prime -- watches a slow path across the meadow. His eyes slide from the fading smoke of fireworks to Tom.

When he makes it to Tom, he places his hands -- old, wrinkled things -- around the bars of the gate and observes him. His face shows no signs of emotion, so Tom is left guessing. Is he surprised? (Curious, that god forsaken word?) Suspicious?

Tom has no way of knowing. So he thinks the only way to figure it out is to ask.

Tom takes a step forward. He places his hands -- near transparent, bluish things, proof his condition, of his abnormality -- on the bars beside Dumbledore’s and says, voice light yet sounding so loud in the hollow of the meadow, “Hello, Headmaster Dumbledore. I think we have some things to talk about.”

“Do we?” asks Dumbledore, voice the same level of breathless. He knows by opening this gate -- by evening just responding to Tom’s indirect call, by accepting this conversation -- he will be changing things forever.

And he’s okay with that.

Albus Dumbledore is a betting man at heart.

“My name is Tom Riddle,” he says, “and I’d like to ask about Harry Potter.”

.xox.

Dumbledore sits with his hands folded in front of him, a pleasant smile on his face. Marvolo’s cup of tea sits in front of him, untouched, and though everything about Dumbledore’s posture is surely intended for them, Marvolo hasn’t even glanced at him.

His eyes -- and focus -- is entirely on Tom. Shock and disbelief and anger paints his face. Unbecoming and unfitting for Voldemort (though not for Tom.)

Beneath Dumbledore’s hands is a newspaper -- Muggle, certainly, from the looks of it -- that’s headline reads, boldly: ‘FIRE IN LITTLE HANGLETON, ONE DEAD: FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.’

“Well,” Dumbledore says, jollily. “If this isn’t a sight for sore eyes.”

Marvolo makes a choking noise. Tom thinks, finally able to get a good look of him, and with himself there for comparison, that it’s a wonder he’s been able to pass for a teen. He looks like a full grown adult -- is only Tom able to see it? (Is only Dumbledore?) Detous had used glamour, and this Horcrux isn’t even trying.

His eyes give him away too easily. There’s not a drop of youthfulness in them.

Marvolo sputters out, “You’re supposed to be dead.” And it’s almost an accusation, the way he says it -- like Tom has done something scandalous by existing.

“I’m not dead,” says Tom simply. He turns his head to address Marvolo, taking in fully his palpable distress. “Why would I be dead?”

Marvolo keeps staring, his jaw dropping a bit.

Tom rolls his eyes, turning away from him. “Always the elegant speaker, my brother is.”

“Your brother,” repeats Dumbledore, tilting his head. “What an interesting title -- given that it’s not public knowledge that Voldemort had another son.” Though,” he chuckles, “it’s safe to say he hid the first one rather well, too, didn’t he?”

“So it’s as I suspected,” says Tom. He eyes Marvolo. “He knows. Doesn’t he?”

“Know,” says Marvolo, slowly, “what, Tom?”

Tom gestures between the two of them. “What we are,” he says. He raises an eyebrow, addressing Dumbledore, “You do know, don’t you?”

“I do,” says Dumbledore, more interested in Tom’s reaction than anything. “What I would like to know, however, is Voldemort’s fascination with Harry Potter. I recall you asked me about him, Tom, when you first arrived… and, Marvolo, I recall much, much more.”

Tom puts up a hand. “It doesn’t matter,” Tom says sharply. Because it won’t, not if Tom has anything to do with it. “Mavolo, how come Dumbledore knows we’re Voldemort? And -- and why does he know about the Horcruxes?”

Marvolo looks startled to be addressed so bluntly. “It’s,” he says, strained, “a natural side effect of being in the position we are with him.”

“The position of what?” Tom laughs. Dumbledore’s face gives nothing away -- he is no Harry; his eyes rest only on the surface -- but you know what? That’s okay. Because he’s not only here with Dumbledore. He’s here with himself, and they both know all their tells. “The position of two war generals in, I dunno, a war? I had thought that when you’re in that sort of position,” Tom’s tone seeps with venom, “the goal was to avoid giving the other side valuable information -- not to give it up freely.”

“We have a very intricate relationship with Dumbledore.”

And Tom knows his sore spot. He hits him where it hurts, “Like we have with Gellert Grindelwald?” (Like you want to have with Harry?)

Dumbledore all of a sudden goes very still.

Marvolo stares at him with a face, the beginnings of a flush breaching his cheeks. “That’s not -- I didn’t--”

“You went to him,” Tom continues, “when you had issues with the Chrysalis Club -- because you trusted him. And not only does he,” Tom lays out a palm toward Dumbledore, “know about Horcruxes, he knows you’re one. And I think that’s because you told him.”

“It’s one of the many things we discussed,” amends Dumbledore, able to admit what Marvolo cannot. “Have some maturity, Marvolo.”

Marvolo glares hard before taking a deep breath. “Alright,” he says, still faintly. “Maturity.”

“Besides,” says Dumbledore, the beginning of a laugh able to be heard. “I am not under the impression that Tom came all the way here just to bicker about our… ah, relationship, no?”

Tom sits up straight. “It’s not,” he admits. “But it’s a nice touch.” And it is a fraction of what Marvolo deserves for trying to shove Harry into a relationship, for planning to possibly kill him.

A smile plays at Dumbledore’s lips. “Why are you here, then?”

Tom shifts in his seat. “Because,” he says, plainly, “lying has lost its fun and I’ve lost my tact. And I think we all share some common goals…. Or, rather, we all should.”

“He should’ve killed you,” hisses Marvolo. His anger and composure is back. Tom understands how easily it is to lose it. Tom understands because he is Marvolo -- and Marvolo is him, just the same. “He should’ve killed you.”

“And yet he f*cking didn’t,” Tom says, same conversational tone, “and yet he f*cking failed -- by your terms, I’m not the only one who isn’t Voldemort, hm?”

Another sore spot that he knows Marvolo has because he has it too. What is more heartbreaking than your own, mind, body, soul, self deeming you to be… insufficient? Replaceable. And it is heartbreaking, whether or not you acknowledge you have a heart.

And he hopes to spawn the seed of doubt that Detous rightfully had. When there is a single rogue Horcrux, it is the Horcrux’s fault but… But Tom believes there is nothing singular about his rebellion.

What sense he got from Detous, during their time together, is that he was mildly into mutiny. He had his own ideas of running things and would’ve spared Tom, if given the chance. He wanted to spare Tom.

He has the feeling he is not the only rogue Horcrux.

And he has the feeling he is not one now.

Voldemort is the big, bad, in charge ‘main self’ -- but everyone single Horcrux he has created is more of a man (of a person) than he is, and they’d have to be stupid not to see the unfairness in the situation. And that’s one thing about both Tom and Voldemort.

They’re not f*cking morons.

“Anyway,” says Tom -- there is only so much he can do right now. The best doubt is that left to fester. “We both want the complete and total destruction of Dark Lord Voldemort… and we both know there’s only so many ways to do that.”

“You know the implications of that… on a personal level, yes?” says Dumbledore and is it not an outright rejection. Cautious, absolutely. But Dumbledore is always cautious… and that means there’s hope.

Tom tilts his head. He has half a mind (ha!) to let Dumbledore read his thoughts, to prove his intent… but some things are personal. His soul is his own to eat. And if Harry has taught him anything, it’s that not allies are friends.

“I understand,” says Tom. “In all honesty, I welcome it.”

Dumbledore hums. Marvolo stares at him, searching for something -- Tom does not know what -- in his face.

It is almost pleading. Almost an apology.

Almost, but not quite, and the distinction is clear. The distinction matters.

And, beneath that, perhaps he thinks that all horrid thoughts about Tom are being confirmed right now. But thinking it does not make it true.

Tom is more sane than he’s ever been. (Though it is uncommon of the insane to think otherwise. And does his sanity matter? Clear head or not, it is his heart that’s in control now. And what his heart wants, he will fight tooth and nail to get.)

“As a show of good faith,” Tom says, “I’ll ask, first, if you know how many Horcruxes there are.”

Marvolo laughs, finally having made up his mind. “You’re rogue, sure, but you aren’t suicidal.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re not really doing this.”

Dumbledore does not give in so easily to his doubt -- if he has any at all. Dumbledore is like Harry in that way; infinity intuitive. “I have my theories, having a more personal relationship with Voldemort throughout the years, but, no,” he says. “I’ve yet to come to an exact number.”

“There are six.” Tom neglects to mention the possibility of Harry becoming a Horcrux -- he has no reason to put Harry in danger like that and Tom’s working to make sure the possibility does not become a reality. “I am his diary -- Marvolo, here, is Slytherin’s locket,” Marvolo gasps, some reality of Tom’s perceived insanity finally sinking in. “There’s also the Gaunt ring. Two ones I do not yet know. And there was, lastly, Rowena’s diadem.”

“Was,” repeats Dumbledore dully.

“Yes,” says Tom, boldly. Proudly. “Was.”

Dumbledore sits in silence for a moment. Then he grins widely, holding out his hand to shake. “Hogwarts,” he says, “could always use more ghosts.”

Tom understands that this is more than an invitation into his castle. It is an acceptance of what will be a shaky yet useful alliance and Tom does feel insane. If you would have told him at eleven years old that he would one day be siding with Dumbledore to kill pieces of himself (or that, even, he’d be semi-accepting of his own demise), he’d laugh in your face.

Time changes everything, though, and time’s changed him.

Tom takes his hand firmly and grins back.

“There’s one more thing I’m wondering,” Tom says, casually (like it is an afterthought instead of a main priority), ignoring Marvolo’s bewildered expression, his soft protests. “If you don’t mind answering one more question?”

“Anything,” Dumbledore says, and it is almost the truth. The things he would do for his greater good -- the things he would do for his allies -- are vast.

“Something went wrong,” Tom says. He swallows and wonders where this anxiety has crept up from. “With the Tournament, I presume -- and I knew it had to do with Marvolo… or Harry. And Marvolo, why, you seem to be doing fine.”

Marvolo blinks at him. Shame, Tom thinks. There is shame in his eyes. Something close to regret, if Voldemort could feel such a thing. (Tom can and has… he wonders which version is leaking through more now.)

“Oh dear,” says Dumbledore softly.

And then he told him how Harry Potter died and rose again and Tom has never felt more sorrow. He swears that he will do everything in his power -- in Dumbledore’s power, in

He has been making a lot of promises lately. It is a good thing he has no reason not to uphold them. He is a dead man walking and it is an easier thing to do with a clear conscience.

.xox.

“Are you insane?” Marvolo asks. They’re leaving Dumbledore’s classroom and it seems Marvolo’s wits have finally returned to him. “He’s an enemy--”

“No.” It is said calmly. “We are, Marvolo. We are a danger and an enemy to everyone -- including ourselves.”

“You made yourself an enemy,” snarls Marvolo. Tom sees where he’s coming from. He sees that he thinks failure is a choice and it’s one Tom’s made clearly. He has made his bed. And now he will lie in it.

It’s a flawed argument, though, and that’s what Marvolo doesn’t see. The possibility that he could very well be wrong. This is the dividing line between Tom and Voldemort. It is a line one, a blurred one, and the fact that he used to be on the other side of it (and the fact he still sort of is) is the only reason he’s able to locate Marvolo’s fickle connections.

And it is the only reason he’s able to use them against him.

“And you’re putting Harry in danger by associating with him,” says Tom, shrugging -- but he’s like Voldemort in that moment, exactly like Detours and sort of like Marvolo; there’s nothing casual about it. His maneuvers are calculated and they are cruel. “We’ve lots of enemies. And… he did die during the Task. I wonder how that happened, Marvolo. And I wonder…. If it wouldn’t have if you weren’t there.”

Marvolo gawks at him, hands balled in fists at his side.

Tom keeps walking, diary tucked under his arm. “I do not want to fight you.”

Marvolo scoffs.

“-- But I will, if you give me no choice. We are on the same side, you and I -- or we could be. I am opening the door to the possibility.”

“Yeah?” says Marvolo, bitterly. “And what side is that?”

Tom looks back at him. “Harry’s,” he says. “Harry’s side.”

He walks away, leaving Marvolo to what will be growing distress.

It is not like he wants to join forces with Marvolo -- he’s far too intrusive with Harry, far too brash for someone so fragile -- but it would make this whole ‘Horcrux Hunting’ scenario easier. Marvolo… if he does join him, will not do so right away. And he will certainly not do it without being pushed.

So Marvolo will experience what it is like to be his enemy. He will be shown the light of having him as an ally instead.

And Marvolo will listen, join him, or he will stick his fingers in his ears. And he’ll leave, and that’ll be that.

Either way, Marvolo will die. It is just a matter of how much destruction he causes before he does… and how willingly it happens.

.XoX.

“My sick soul seeps of something sodden;

Dab up the juice of my wrung out trust.

What I see, I deny, and what I deny, I refuse to see.

Am I aware in my change? Am I changing? Am I aware?

Questions haunt me and I haunt them back.

I wash the bad memories off my songs and put my music on,

So loud that I cannot hear my screams.”

-- Harry Potter, “Five of Cups.”

Notes:

guess whose sick :D also if anyone knows how to get ur fanficiton popular, pls let me know lmao.
i am stuck between wanting to create content that i know people will read, aka fanficiton lol, and wanting to create my own original content.

Chapter 23 Chapter Text

“I tried to ask my parents to leave the room, but not my life. It was very hard. Because the room was the size of my life. Because my life was small.”

-- Chen Chen, Chapter VIII

.XoX.

Harry is angry. Angry at Tom, for keeping such vital information from him for so long -- no excuse he can conjure sparks any sort of understanding or sympathy -- and…

And angry at himself. His incompetence -- why did he take Tom’s word on it so easily, so quickly, without question? Tom was a Dark Lord fighting vehemently for his life; would he not have told Harry anything, if he thought it was what Harry wanted to hear? And even if he wasn’t -- even if he could have been assumed to have been telling, to his knowledge, the entire truth and for all the right reasons -- Tom’s knowledge, all of it, was backdated by half a decade.

Harry took Tom’s word for it for no reason at all. He did not do his own research and now here he is, knee deep into a Tournament he has both no chance of winning and no want to.

Because he knows, okay? He’s been around himself for long enough, listened to his own consistently destructive ramblings for as long as he’s had them -- so he knows.

He knows that, even if everything is at stake, even if the emancipation from his parents is on the line… he can’t recover. A part of his identity is his disorder and though it’s not what entirely defines him now, it’s still too big a part to abandon.

The vision with Katherine comes to his mind against his will.

“I’m eating. To get better.”

“But… Katherine was never supposed to recover.”

“Well then, Harry Potter. Maybe it’s time to write a sequel.”

And he is writing a sequel, he’s placing his quill against the parchment and watching a whole other world spill out of him -- but he gets the sense now that that’s not what that conversation meant. It’s not what it ever did.

Harry Potter was never supposed to recover. He decides that ‘supposed to’…

And he can decide against it.

Harry spends his days in the infirmary in silent fume and if he concentrates, if he allows himself a moment of free time for a bit too long, then he can nearly imagine it.

Being normal.

Is that the right word for it? Is it a kind one? For being not ill. For being free to eat in a normal manner; for not stuffing yourself; for not starving.

He would be able to talk to Tom, to Cedric, Luna, Julian -- and he would be able to do it kindly. They would bring up his eating disorder and he’d simply smile and say I’m alright and he’d mean it.

He’d be kinder overall, wouldn’t he? A person in pain is not a patient one. He’d be able to say Thank you and Please and it’d become second nature with ease.

And he would win this Tournament -- probably, maybe, hopefully; the judges have decided not to count the points for the First Task… considering Harry dying, and all -- and he’d get away from his stupid f*cking parents and he would be normal.

He would be free.

Recovering from his eating disorder would make him free.

It’s a good idea. It’s also an impossible one. Even if he wanted to recover, he wouldn’t know how to. There’s no Mind Healers at Hogwarts and the Chrysalis Club would sabotage him at every twist and turn and -- and it can’t be done.

It just can’t be. This is what he is. This is who he is. And he thinks that, deep down, there’s nothing he can do about that.

.xox.

He is still angry at Tom the day Sirius Black breaks up the melancholy of his misery.

He’s spent this time in the infirmary writing, eating, and trying to purge to no avail. He’s spent it with his mouth pursed shut. Tom tries to engage in conversation numerous times -- each time met only with a whispered insult or pointed silence.

Despite this, Tom does not leave his side. Harry thinks he hates him for it. Harry also knows that isn’t true.

Tom does apologize. Again and again, he says he is sorry. He offers up excuses and when he finds that Harry doesn't care for them, he stops offering up any of them at all.

This, Harry thinks, is why he never wanted friends. They may seem kind, but every moment that seems too good is -- every moment of actual friendship is a part of a long series of omitted truths.

This is why he never wanted friends; they betray so easily. Everyone is just like Harry. They’re just less subtle about it.

Harry is writing his story, Tom at his bedside, when Madame Pomfrey tells him he has a visitor.

“I thought I wasn’t well enough for visitors,” Harry retorts immediately. He does not want to see his friends -- not because he’s mad at them, because he’s not, because he has no reason to be. They’re kind. And he is sure he would enjoy their visit, for the most part…

Only…

Only, he knows they might ask questions. Did you actually die? Why are people saying you’re working with Grindelwald? Who is this ghost at your side? Did you gain weight?

What is on the other side, Harry? What did you see when you died?

They would ask questions. And he doesn't know what he’d tell them.

But it is not his friends who are coming to visit.

Madame Pomfrey smiles apologetically and tells him that he can have people over now; he’s healed enough that a few, short interactions couldn’t hurt. And then she tells him that Sirius Black will be in here a moment.

“Oh,” Harry says, breathless. “Oh -- okay.”

Sirius Black, Sirius Black, Sirius Black. Harry knows him and, most importantly, he knows what him visiting means. He knows what this is.

Tom, at his side, asks quietly, who that is and Harry doesn’t respond. He’s busy trying to reel the air back into his lungs and failing, desperately.

Sirius Black is his godfather. He is a man who wears leather jackets and ripped black jeans and has tattoos covered over eighty percent of his body. When Harry was small, he’d teach Harry how to prank his father and tell him that though, yes, as his parents have said, whatever House he ends up in is fine, Gryffindor is obviously the best.

Sirius Black is a simple man.

But he’s also someone Harry hasn’t seen in over seven -- or was it eight? -- years. He is a close friend of Harry’s parents. There is that simple saying, is there not?

The enemy of my enemy is my friends; the friend of my enemy is my enemy.

Why is Sirius Black coming to visit him now? Because Harry has died? If that’s the case, then why didn’t he visit sooner? Why now, two weeks later? Dumbledore had been allowed to visit Harry before Harry was healed enough for doing so to be considered safe -- surely, they’d be able to make other exceptions.

So Harry this has nothing to do with Sirius’ devotion to him -- because it doesn’t exist. And Harry’s okay with that, with not being friends with Sirius. He does not hold that against him; does not think it’d be fair to. After all, aren’t relationships supposed to be two sided?

Sirius has not reached over in seven years, and Harry hasn’t either. That’s fine.

But that’s not what this is about. There’s no resentment in this feeling, in this train of thought. There is no emotion blinding this judgement.

No.

This is about Sirius’ devotion not to Harry but to Harry’s parents. Because they know that Harry would not talk to them. That he would refuse to even try and listen -- that he has a spell to ensure this distance.

And their son just died, you know? Their son just died. They sent him a letter and waited for a response and got nothing.

The waiting period is over. Now is the time for action. Action in the form of one Sirius Black.

Anyone else would be called paranoid, thinking like this -- with anyone else, they might just be right.

Harry Potter, however, is not anyone else. He has always been good at this. He thinks he is blessed with intuition.

Intuition, almost like wisdom.

.xox

Sirius Black arrives a quarter past noon. Pomfrey had told Harry that he’d be there around ten -- such a reasonable timetable, it’s only natural that Sirius would miss it.

Sirius looks exactly like he did all those years ago.

Well… almost. He shows obvious signs of aging. Wrinkles decorate the corners of his face and his hair has thinned, however slightly.

He grins at Harry so genuinely he could almost forget he was sent here by Harry's parents. It’s the look a father gives to his son and Harry curses his weakness; he is a child and children… Children do like the idea of parents.

“Hey, kiddo -- been a while, hasn’t it?” He chuckles, then coughs into his hands. Harry stares at the tattoos that wrap around his fingers. They weren’t there before. Of course he’s gotten more.

“It has,” says Harry, carefully. It is tempting to sink into this thing -- this easy, familiar thing he used to have with Sirius. But he knows the truth. And so he can’t allow himself to.

Tom takes his hand and squeezes it gently, once. Harry lets him. Just this once.

“I’d never pinned you as a Ravenclaw,” Sirius continues. He blinks at Tom, sitting in the designated visitor’s chair. “Erm,” says Sirius. He obviously wants to sit there, but it’s obvious, too, to Tom that Harry doesn’t want him to. After a moment of silence, Tom doesn't budge and Sirius clears his throat.

He continues standing. Harry tries not to feel back about it.

“Who’s this fellow, Harry? Your boyfriend?” Sirius stares at Tom, an odd expression taking over his face. “Hey, have we met?”

Harry blinks, alarmed. “What?”

Tom raises an eyebrow, shrugging. “First of all,” says Tom, “I am not Harry’s boyfriend. And, secondly, I do not believe we have.”

“You certainly sound like someone I’ve met.”

Sirius, a member of the Order of the Phoenix, recognizing a young Tom Riddle… Oh, yes, there’s no way that could go wrong. Harry opens his mouth, ready to dismiss his idea and offer up a fact name, but Tom is not interested in such theatrics.

He beats Harry to the punch. He sticks his hand out to Sirius and says, pleasantly, “Tom Riddle. The Dark Lord’s son. I’m his likeness; perhaps you’ve met him?”

Sirius stares at him. He stares, blinks, and then, just when Harry is sure they’ll start dueling right there and then, takes Tom’s hands in his own.

Impossibly, he shakes it.

Sirius laughs -- a weary thing -- and conjures his own chair to sit in. “I guess,” he says, quietly, “it has been a while, huh?”

Harry swallows. Sirius is… well, he’s disappointed. In Harry, for his company, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t end there. He’s disappointed in himself -- in Harry’s parents -- and Harry only has to ask why to know.

Sirius thinks it is their fault that Harry has resorted to the company of Dark Lord spawns. If Harry had been closer to them, then maybe it would have been different.

It’s their fault -- and so it is not anger he feels toward Harry. Just disappointment and just guilt.

Vindictively, and somewhat shamefully, he hopes the guilt eats away at them forever. He hopes it never goes away.

“Tom’s nice,” Harry says, purposefully gentle. “He’s my best friend.” Harry is also mad at him right now, but Sirius does not need to know everything.

Sirius clears his throat, looking at Tom. “I was sure, ah, that he was described to be more… human-y.”

“You mean my imposter?” says Tom.

“Your what now?”

“There’s this other boy -- looks like me but a bit older, competing in the Tournament, you’ve heard of him -- and he’s claiming to be me.” Tom shakes his head sadly. “It’s devastating to my public reputation.”

“Huh,” says Sirius, obviously thinking that maybe the ghost sitting next to him in the real imposter. “That’s -- not good, I suppose.”

Tom nods seriously. “Identity theft is a serious problem.”

Sirius smiles -- and his amusem*nt is genuine. He looks at Harry and laughs a bit. “He’s warming up on me, I’ll admit.”

“Thanks,” Harry says, as if it was a compliment -- and it might be. “Em,” he says, unsure how to continue the conversion, or if he should at all. His eyes trail to Sirius’ hands and his eyes widen. “That’s -- a ring. You… you married--”

“Remus?” Sirius snorts, holding up the ring hand for inspection. “I sure did.”

“When?”

Sirius shrugs. “Two years. Nearly three -- at least, I think. I can never remember the date quite right and I’m usually just guessing when I give anniversary gifts, if not relying on Lily.”

Harry’s laugh dies in his throat.

Lily.

Right. Constant vigilance; Sirius is not here for him. He’s here for Harry’s parents and though Sirius is nice, it’d do him good not to forget that.

Sirius is aware of his drop in mood. “Listen, kid--”

“Why are you here?” Harry demands. He will give Sirius no room to slither his way out of this one.

Sirius runs a hair through his hair. “With all this Tournament business -- congrats on the entry, by the way; great opportunity for you -- we haven’t been able to talk much.”

It’s a lie and Harry knows you don’t have to be a Raven to see it. “Wrong,” says Harry. “We weren't talking before.”

“Seeing your name in the newspaper has reminded me of when we used to hang out, and I couldn’t help but--”

“Wrong again,” says Harry. “My name’s been in the newspaper ever since the Champions were drawn -- and that was months ago. And this is now, Sirius.”

Sirius sighs, dropping his head into his hands. He says, lowly, pained, “Why are you like this, kiddo?”

“Why am I like this?” Harry barks out a laugh, affronted. “Why am I like this, Sirius? Do you have any idea how stuck up that sounds?”

His head hurts and his hands press into the side of his head. Tom places a hand on his arm, trying to soothe him, but Harry shakes it off.

“No, kiddo, it’s just…” He sighs again, wringing his hands together. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he tries.

“Yes, you did.”

“Alright,” says Sirius. “I did -- but, Merlin, Harry, do you hear yourself? You’re paranoid beyond belief--”

“So I’m paranoid now?”

“-- because someone related to you comes to visit you while you’re injured, in the hospital, and they want to check up on you, and your first instinct is to treat their concern like it’s something to be disproven.”

Harry’s not having it. “You’re the one here under false pretenses.”

“I what?”

Harry crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re here because my parents sent you.”

Sirius throws his arms in the air. “Of course I am, Harry! Of course!”

“See! Exactly what I mean!”

“Why can’t you understand their situation?” Sirius rises from his chair. “Why can you unravel people’s mind so easily, but not understand something as simple as a concerned mother and father wanting someone to check in on their son?”

Harry stiffens. “It’s different with them.”

“No, it’s not. You enter some death-ridden Tournament for money you don’t need, and then, not only that, you die in it--”

“I didn’t die!”

Sirius talks over the outburst: “And then, when your parents reach out, you don’t respond -- and they’re the unreasonable ones? They’re the ones that have no right to use underhanded methods? They’re the ones that have no right to be worried?”

“Yes!” Harry yells and his anger surprises him. “Yes, Sirius, they are--”

“You’re so mature one moment and the next you’re acting like--”

“They broke me!” Harry laughs and it breaks into a small sob. “They broke me,” he repeats. “They shoved me into a marriage with her and it didn’t matter what I thought and that’s the reason I’m like this. They broke me because they didn’t care then. They don’t have the right to care now.”

“But you know why they did that, Harry; they had little other choice.” Condescending, angry -- insufferable.

Harry laughs dryly. “If I know why they did that,” he says, “then that’s news to me.”

Sirius gawks at him. Realizing he’s not joking, he lowers himself back into his chair. “I thought that they…”

“They didn’t,” says Harry, sharply. “But they obviously told you.”

Sirius quiets. After a moment he says, all anger completely drained from his voice, “You were so young when it happened… They couldn’t tell you then. You were… you were so young, Harry.”

“Am I too young, now, Sirius?” His voice is full of venom, but Sirius does not even flinch.

“No,” says Sirius, softly. “You aren’t -- and… and you haven’t been, for a long time.”

Harry…

Harry could get answers. Right here and now, he could get the great answer to the large, ever haunting question of why? Most of the time, Harry writes it away as ‘if arranged marriage worked for us, it’ll work for Harry’ -- something traditional and unsympathetic and surface level.

But Sirius doesn’t talk about it like that and if there’s something deeper to be known here, he wants to know it. He deserves to. He has suffered for years because of his parents’ actions and he’s more than earned an explanation.

Harry says, Harry dares him, “Then tell me.”

Sirius glances at Tom and he says, “Okay. But he’s leaving.”

Harry scoffs at the same time Tom snaps, calmly, “Absolutely not.”

Harry exhales deeply. He says, evenly, “Tom is my best friend. He’s staying.” Because Sirius is an enemy and though Tom is a liar, he’s a liar that came clean. He is Harry’s first ever friend.

Harry wants him here. He might need him.

“You’re joking,” says Sirius. “He’s the alleged son of Lord Voldemort with an alleged doppelganger out there, claiming to be him. Do you know how crazy that sounds? And -- and, just -- look at him! I have literally never seen a person more suspicious.” Tom shrugs in response.

“He’s been better to me than any of you have.” Hit him where it hurts. Harry Potter has been vicious for a long, long time.

Sirius winces but insists, “I can’t tell him with him here.”

“Then, perhaps,” says Harry, cooly, “you can tell me another time.”

Sirius looks pained. He rises from his seat slowly and Harry can almost see the words why are you like this? imprinted above his head.

He is disappointed, sad. But not angry. Not anymore.

“Perhaps I should,” says Sirius. And then he leaves and Harry is left wondering if he made the right decision. He looks at Tom, feels his hand, covered in scars; proof of his devotion to Harry -- and he decides that it doesn't matter what Sirius was going to say.

Because he’s going to get emancipated. And then whatever reason for him to be in an arranged marriage will be void and he will be free, finally and fully.

He is going to get emancipated.

But he has to recover to do it.

He looks at Tom beside him, squeezes his hand, and thinks that recovery is a hard thing to do. An impossible choice to make. But Tom has made a lot of impossible choices and maybe Tom…

Tom can help him.

.XoX.

“Fighting against a raging riptide; when and where drop their irrelevancy

Decisions made in the heat of the moment -- but the heat of the moment is hot

And however despised, they stick

Sickly with conflicton, there is only so much one heart can take

But hearts do not break.

No, mon amour. They bend.”

-- Harry Potter, “Ten of Cups.”

Chapter 24 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“And I told her: it's not every day. But there are days. Days when I know.

When I wake up and at noon and at six pm: I'm not gonna sleep and pain is deep and wide and the chasm of it is inside me.

And she gave me ten nights of sleeping and tonight is that is one of those. It is the first. The light behind my husband illuminates him so that he looks like a saint in the Catholic church. Words feel good in my mouth.

My pain is gone and I am to sleep.”

-- Reddit post. u/endergrrl, “The doctor know the sleep is important and gives us the sleep.”

.XoX.

EDNOS is the most deadly eating disorder. It is also the most common -- if only for the fact that it is a ‘Hufflepuff takes the rest situation’; if one does not fit entirely within the criteria of anorexia or bulimia or BED, they’re shoved into the one category left. Over eighty percent of all eating disordered individuals have EDNOS.

Harry finds that, despite this, most people do not call it that. It’s always ‘anorexia with a binge-purge subtype’ or something of the like -- not an incorrect description, by any means, but also ignoring the fact that there’s a label for their experience, right there, and they’re ignoring it.

It is either due to the restrictiveness -- somewhat needless -- of the criteria to fix anorexia or bulimia… or it is due to shame. There’s nothing flashy about OSFED, nothing impressive. It is not as well known, even if it is more common and though Harry is about as self-aware about his condition as he can get, even he can see the appeal.

It is an accomplishment. To fit one of the big categories, it’s a brag in it of itself.

But this new era of Harry’s life is not about being sick or getting sicker; it’s about getting better.

Getting better. Right. Harry tries not to think the idea laughable.

He has been, for the most part, always been able to set out whatever it is he puts his mind to. With no big interest in schoolwork, he still meets all self-set writing deadlines, and it’s only upon this year that this pure dedication has even tried to fail him.

But recovery, he knows, is not like writing poetry. All the letters of the word are jagged and slice through his already uncertain, already shaking palms without a second thought. Recovery, recovery -- a mountain so daunting, it cannot compare to the ease writing now presents itself with.

He mulls the decision over in his head and goes back on it several times before the sun sets. What is he thinking? Getting better is for people who deserve it. Badperson, badperson, badperson, it’s his f*cking mantra and he doesn’t think eating right is ever going to change the fact that he is one f*cked up little sh*t who’s nature is nothing less than inconsiderate and horrible.

He should starve himself. He should isolate himself -- should, should, should. His mind fights itself and Tom notices his demeanor, because, really, it is hard to miss, and tries to comfort him. But Harry pushes away all attempts at soothing, intent on proving that adamant voice in his head correct.

Despite this inner turmoil, it is like a switch in his head has been slipped. When he wakes up in the morning, his mind is screaming RECOVERY and there is nothing except listening to it that silences it effectively. This is decision made, he thinks, without a return policy.

Strangely enough, the things that once motivated him in his sickness now serve to do the opposite. He started starving himself because of his arranged marriage -- and started binging because he started starving, and so the cycle continued, and so it now stops -- and now, he has decided to stop for the very same reason.

And… death, yes. He wanted to die. He’d do everything but pull the trigger outright to accomplish that.

And here he is now. Fighting -- and it is a fight, certainly feels like it -- for the right to live. He knows what is on the other side -- a sea of discolored sand with no end and regrets as far as the eye can see -- and will do anything to slow the inevitable and rapid descent toward that destiny.

Going from here -- from the resolve to get better, from that pivotal decision -- is… confusing. And painful.

He thinks that EDNOS, out of all eating disorders out there, is the hardest to recover from. Especially his BED-anorexia combo. With an eating disorder so defined by all or nothing, it is hard not to slip in the same black and white thinking when considering recovery.

There are small victories, with bulimia. There’s half-victories, there’s ‘hey, at least you didn’t do X, you’re still doing alright’ -- for if you just binge, at least you didn’t purge, right? And, with anorexia-bulimia subtype, if you restricted, at least you didn’t also binge and purge, right? It’s still a win, at heart. You’re still doing alright.

It is not like that with Harry, with Harry’s eating disorder. Or, at least, the line between partial failure and total failure is more blurred. If he binges -- well, that’s part of his disorder, that’s a huge ass aspect. He doesn’t purge, despite his best attempts, and so the ‘relapse’ part of it… starts and ends there. If he restricts and if he binges and that’s it, that’s the two sides of the coin he has. There are no minor wins here.

He either eats like a normal person, or he is being sick.

And maybe he’s being too hard on himself, and maybe he’s being unreasonable, but Hogwarts has no mind healers. All he has to recover is himself and he has never been the best company, never been the kindest to himself or those around him.

Himself… and his friends.

He will be released from the infirmary, officially, in a week. His condition is… manageable, but not fixed, and Pomfrey wants to see if she can make some last minute improvements. Harry is doubtful. He does not say this. He will let her have enough hope for the both of them.

He is to attend classes again -- at his leisure -- and eat his meals in the Great Hall. Every night he is to return to the sanctuary of the Hospital Wing, receive her dutiful attention, take his potions, and rest.

Harry tries to kill his resentment because Madame Pomfrey does not deserve it. The messenger should survive despite its message, and Pomfrey’s message is subtle but clear; he has died, but life goes on. Life must.

Even so, when Pomfrey tells him of his release, even far off, he closes his eyes and imagines the scrunched up face of Sirius Black and Lily and James and he knows, suddenly and achingly, that growing up feels an awful lot like letting go. He would like to stay in his bubble of the infirmary, in the cycle that the pain of it brings him, but he can’t. He knows he cannot. The world is not a clinical environment and if he is so set on not dying, the only other option is to live with it.

It hurts, being made to leave. Harry is resentful about it. But when Madame Pomfrey wakes him, on the first day of him eating in the Great Hall and the first day of recovery (of a new life as he knows it), he doesn’t show it. He hands her a smile and a Thank you and begins getting ready for the day.

(Recovery is not just about getting better. It is about being better.)

He talks to Tom while he packs what he’ll need for class. He chooses his words carefully. “I’m mad,” is what he settles on, back turned to Tom.

“I know,” says Tom. Understanding, calm, kind. Any man willing to offer himself up for trial is ready to accept whatever punishment comes his way.

“You hid something very important to me.”

“I know.”

“And you did so for a very long time.”

“I know, Harry.”

Harry swings the strap of his bag over his shoulder and grips it tightly. He faces Tom when he says, firmly, “But I forgive you.” Because I love you. Because I need you. Because I cannot survive alone anymore.

Tom’s smile is gentle and light. “Thank you,” he says.

It is so earnest that Harry almost doesn’t want to break it up with his next line -- almost. Harry steps closer to him.

“But, Tom, be aware; I won’t be so lenient a second time.” He grips his bag so hard his knuckles are white and his head pulses, painfully. “Do you understand? Do anything like this again and we’re over. And I will do everything in my power to take you down. Do you understand?”

At times like these, Tom thinks it is easy to forget that being taken down is a part of his big plan. Harry thinks he has power here. And Tom is okay with letting him. He loves Harry.

“I understand, Harry.”

“If you have anything else to tell me… confession time ends as soon as we leave the Hospital Wing.”

Harry stares at him expectantly. He’s always been intuitive like that, muses Tom. A part of him must know Tom is hiding something -- and he wants Tom to fess up, but he doesn’t want to forgive him for it. He wants to be given a reason not to. A reason to prove to himself that with alienation, he was right all along. Friends are good for nothing and he is better off alone, every time.

Tom is a martyr. But not now, and not yet.

So though Tom knows that if Harry finds out anything Tom’s yet to tell him, it will coming crashing down on him -- and that even if he cannot control if that happens, he can control when, and is just choosing not to -- he also knows that Harry is too important to him to make that happen.

Tom opens his mouth and lies: “I’ve nothing to confess, Father Harry.”

Harry cracks a smile and only the wrinkles around his eyes give away the lingering impression of suspicion. He takes his morning potions with a disgusted expression but no complaint and exits the infirmary with Tom at his side.

Harry gets one foot outside the door when he stops in his tracks.

Luna Lovegood stands with her back to the wall.

She is… waiting for him.

Harry lets the breath leave his lungs. He steps forward, past the door, and into the unknown.

He swallows and searches for the right words to say -- but he knows there are none. The last time they saw each other, Harry died and Luna ran out of the forest covered in his blood, screaming. It would be understandable, in his book, if she never wanted to see him again. If she was too haunted by the past to think about the present.

But Luna Lovegood has always been about the present, always been invested in the future. Harry can never seem to escape his head and Luna lives entirely outside hers.

She is here. Waiting for him. Harry takes one last deep breath and speaks, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Luna tilts her head, her hair spilling over her shoulder. “Poppy didn’t tell you?”

“Should she have?”

Luna hums, gesturing her hand in front of her for Harry to walk with her and Harry, with only a second’s hesitation, joins her side. “She told me you were being semi-released today. So, yes. I’d have thought she had.”

“Oh,” says Harry. He is angry at Pomfrey for telling someone without his permission, nor his forgiveness… and, at the same time, happy that she would be considerate enough to. (Don’t all mothers look out for their children?)

“You look rough,” she notes bluntly.

Harry chuckles, running a hand through his hair. He feels the off center rattling of his bones and is self aware of the small scars that mar his head, covered only by his untamed head of hair. “I feel rough,” he says. And, because he is not the only one who has suffered, because he wants to be a better friend than he is, he asks, “Are you? Feeling rough, I mean.”

“I’m alright,” she says, and Harry doesn’t know whether or not to believe her. “I’ve been working a lot.”

“Have you been?”

“Mhm,” she nods. “I have your embroidery finished.”

“Oh,” says Harry again. Evidence that she’s been thinking about him… but not evidence of anything else. “Are you going to mail it to me?”

“I was thinking of giving it to you. In person.”

And that, yes. That reminds him of what’s been puzzling him ever since he saw Luna waiting for him.

“I thought we were… on penpal territory,” says Harry, lightly. Confused but not unhappy. “And yet here you are, face to face. I wonder how that happened.”

Tom walks behind them, hands stuffed in his pockets. His posture is relaxed, ever content to observe. He is finally meeting the famous Luna Lovegood.

Harry wonders if she is living up to what he’d described. Harry wonders if they are staring at the same girl at all.

Luna shrugs, casually. “You saved my life,” she states. “I think that makes up for it.”

Harry chuckles, nervously -- on edge the way he always is when anyone even hints to the fact that he’s a walking dead man. And it is not like he can deny this fact to Luna.

Because Luna carried him body, limp in her arms, out of the Tournament arena. She was there. What is lying, if not a waste of effort? “I’m sorry, I just--”

“It’s okay,” she says, calmly. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Harry says, pained in the necessity to force the words out of him, “But we should.” He ignores the way Tom perks up in interest, eager to know what Harry won’t tell him because he’s eager regarding everything about Harry now.

“Why?” asks Luna.

Harry sputters. “Because I -- because you almost--”

“But I didn’t,” says Luna. “And you’re here. You’re okay.”

Harry ducks his head. “I don’t know if that’s true, Luna,” he says, quiet.

“Will talking about it make you feel better?”

It might. It won’t. It will. Harry is forever unsure of himself and his heart. “Would it help you?”

“Only if it would help you.”

Harry can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Luna stares at him, a small smile on her face.

“I don’t want to talk about dying,” Harry admits, after composing himself.

“That’s quite alright.”

“And I don’t want to talk about how I feel.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But,” says Harry, sighing, “I’d like to talk about how it happened. If that’s okay with you.”

“You mean who tried to kill me,” Luna states.

“Yeah,” says Harry, shuffling awkwardly. “Foul play, as always.”

“It’s the work of whoever put my name in the Cup.”

“You think? I still don’t get why someone would do that to you, though.”

Tom speaks up, walking up to them, breaking his silence. “I have an idea about that, actually.”

Luna eyes him warily. “Right,” she says. “Your ghost, Harry, I’d noticed him.”

“Really,” Tom drawls.

“I also noticed he looks eerily similar to one of the other Champions.”

Harry puts his hand up, silencing Tom, cutting off the routine lie Harry’s sure he’d tell. “It’s a long story,” Harry says, rubbing his temples. “I’ll tell it to you later. What you need to know now is that… I trust him. And he’s a friend.”

“Like I am?” Luna says softly.

“Yes,” says Harry -- the words feeling heavy and new now that they've been spoken, now that they’ve touched air. “Like you are.”

“Mhm,” she considers, pleased with herself. “Slytherins and Dark Lord ghosts -- you’ve the most unusual company, harry.”

“It could be worse.”

Laugh laughs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Harry snorts. “I could return Marvolo’s affections.”

Luna blinks at him as Toms’ expression darkens. “I’d thought he was joking,” Luna starts.

Tom cuts her off. “I’m afraid,” he says, strained, “he is far from it. It’s.. ah, much more sinister, his true intentions. It also has to do with you. Luna.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do. Here’s my theory, forgive me if you’ve heard it before; Harry’s parents were approached, when Harry was at a young age, by Lord Voldemort. He wants a marriage contract set up with his son, Marvolo, but he's already in a marriage contract with Luna." Tom neglects his theory that he was put in a marriage contract becauseof Voldemort's advances -- mostly because he doesn't think Harry wants to hear it, and somewhat because he doesn't think it matters.

“I was told, by a reliable source, that Harry has something that Voldemort wants. This can be, supposedly, only acquired -- or easiest acquired; it’s hard to say, exactly, with such vague information -- via marriage. So his plans, while Harry is young, are foiled.”

He is omitting the part where Tom being sent to murder Harry’s father was just before that, and how that’s undoubtedly involved, but, hey. Some things are best not discussed with strangers so close -- and Luna is just that. A stranger.

Tom will talk to Harry about it later, in private. He swears it.

Tom rolls his shoulders. “Years later, he’s given the chance to try again. The Tournament. He makes sure that the both of you are in it, as well as his son Marvolo -- an opportunity for him to get close to Harry, and an opportunity to finish off what he considers the only thing standing between him and Harry’s happily ever after. That would be you, Luna. He tries to kill Luna and gets Harry, accidentally, in the process.”

“That…” Luna starts, unsure how to respond or proceed.

“Makes perfect sense,” Harry continues. “I, uh,” he explains, sheepish at Tom’s expression, “saw Marvolo casting spells -- acting all weird, all shady -- before... You know. Things got weird.”

“What about Julian?”

“What about him?”

“Well,” says Luna, “Harry said that Julian also didn’t put his name in the Cup. How does he fit into your theory?”

“He doesn’t,” says Tom, simply.

“Tom,” Harry scolds gently.

“Maybe Julian’s lying,” suggests Tom.

“Or,” says Harry, pointedly, “maybe Voldemort isn’t the only one manipulating the Tournament.”

And now that he’s said it out loud, it all makes sense. The pieces push themselves together and Harry wonders how, for someone so perceptive, he could’ve missed it before.

Julian’s odd behaviors around the Chrysalis Cult, Julian’s eating disorder, Julian’s submissiveness wherever Mouton is concerned, the way Julian warned him that the Chrysalis Club would invite him the very same day he got the letter for it, Julian’s knowledge of the Chrysalis' dress code without preempt.

Julian’s admiration of him.

How could he have missed this? Because he wanted to? Because his idea of friendship is fragile and he thought that this would break it?

And doesn't Harry know that where Mouton is involved, someone else is, too? Someone much more powerful?

Harry breathes out the words: “Maybe Gellert Grindelwald is, too.”

.XoX.

“I am my parents’ eldest and only child

Often,

I’ve wondered if having a younger sibling

To share my burden

Would make it lighter,

Or heavier?

Is it not freeing to suffer alone?

I find no solace in company

When I am told 'I’ve suffered, too;

Just like you,'

My only response is

(and shouldn’t be),

Why would you ever tell me that?”

-- Harry Potter, “Queen of Cups.”

Notes:

this chapter was supposed to include like,,, two more events but, lol, i guess compression have never been my strong suit. i genuiely enjoy writing this fic even tho it ain't as popular as my other ones tbh, my fav fic to write rn.
ignoring the fact that there are two fics of mine that have gone weeks without an update, go check out my new fic, the gift of fear. leave me a comment nd tell me what u think!
the description of it:
Tom Riddle takes one look at hoping-to-adopt Harry Potter, who is best described as divine, and decides that he must have him. He's determined to manipulate, lie, and cheat to get what he wants out of the man -- but, as it turns out, Harry is nothing like the weak minded fool he was once assumed to be.
Harry Potter takes one look at childish, fumbling, determined-to-one-day-be-defeated Tom Riddle, and thinks that being tossed into the past didn't have to be a total waste. He observes Tom's weak attempts at manipulation, and thinks he can do him one better.
With a little prodding, who's to say Harry can't help create a Voldemort that the world will TRULY fear?
Harry involves himself in schemes so grand Tom can only guess at their meaning; Harry tries desperately to revive the wraith named Death that was once his lover; Tom attempts to survive in a household with a man who is both an angel and a demon, and too many house elves to count.

Chapter 25 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“We have built cathedrals out of spite and splintered bone.

Of course they aren’t pretty;

Nothing holy ever is.”

-- Forgive Me My Salt, Brenna Twophy.

.XoX.

Harry enters the Great Hall, flanked by two of the people he cherishes most, with an unadulterated sense of dread. It is his first day of recovery and, on top of that, he’s had the most bizarre revelation.

Julian is a part of the Chrysalis Club -- probably a part of the Butterflies, too; something that is hard to tell but not difficult to assume. He’s a part of the Chrysalis Club… and he so obviously does not want to be. For, Harry reasons, what type of true-blooded cult member warns other people not to join? Faces its great leader with poorly masked fear, and somewhat sadden rage?

The Chrysalis Club prides itself on the fact that -- no matter how desperate they are, or they appear to be -- everyone who joins, joins willingly. Harry has always recognized it as the half-lie it is -- everyone is here of their own volition, but coerced consent is hardly consent at all.

And so it bears the question: why is Julian different? What is Julian doing here? And if he is so unhappy, what is stopping him from leaving?

And that is if he is unhappy there, a part of Mouton’s sick club. The thought that Julian wants, genuinely, to be a part of the organization that’s hurt Harry like it has -- that’s hurt so many people -- is… unappealing.

Harry tries to wipe the prospect from his mind. He is still up to his neck with unanswered questions and wracked with the anxiety of the possibilities of the answer.

Harry sits next to Cedric and cannot help the sweep of his eyes down the table. Across from Cedric sits Julian -- who Harry imagines dressed in orange, thinking, spiteful, that it’s his color -- and besides Julian is Luna, who had previously confined herself, for the sake of distance, to the Ravenclaw table.

And to Harry’s other side sits Tom. He has gathered the attention of a good part of the Slytherin table and is already in deep conversation with Draco Malfoy. He is back at it again, his lying. He is trying his hardest to make Hogwarts as a whole suspicious of Marvolo and it’s so easy for him, deceit, that Harry comprehends wholeheartedly how easily it was for Tom to fool him.

Tom tells Draco Malfoy that Marvolo is an imposter. He will tell the world.

Harry cannot understand it, where he’s coming from. He can’t understand most things about Tom lately, and it hurts. He wishes it didn’t hurt.

Cedric clears his throat loudly. “So,” he says, near conversationally, “Harry, are you going to introduce us to your new friend?”

Harry shrugs, eyes on his plate. He begins loading it, reminding himself that this is not a binge or restrict day, it’s a recovery one, and he has to eat like it. He points his fork in the air. “Well, her name is Luna Lovegood.” Luna beams brightly with a small wave. “She’s another champion, a fifth year honorary Ravenclaw -- oh, and if you haven’t heard, she does custom embroidery for a price--”

“That’s great,” says Cedric. “But you know that’s not the friend I’m talking about.”

Julian tries to catch his eyes -- mocking, lightheartedly, Cedric’s seriousness; the way he deals with taming some-two hundred Slytherins slipping into his casual conversations from time to time -- and Harry notices. He notices and then… he avoids them.

Julian frowns.

“Oh,” he says, like he wasn’t intentionally trying to avoid this conversation. “You mean Tom?”

Tom snaps his head toward them on instinct. His smile stretching wide, he sticks out his hand to Cedric.

“Tom Riddle,” says Tom.

Cedric doesn’t take the hand. “As in, Tom Marvolo Riddle?”

Tom smacks his lips together. “Yep,” he says.

“As in Tom Marvolo Riddle, the Dark Lord Voldemort’s son?”

“I wouldn’t say he’s all that paternal, but, yes, sure.”

Harry resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“You mean the Dark Lord’s son that isn’t a ghost? The one that is sitting seven seats down from us?”

So like Cedric to know where each of the Snakes sit. Rowena’s voice, for whatever reason, rings in Harry’s head.

(You are my champion. There are others.

You know one of them already.)

Harry takes a deep breath, ignores the way his skin feels too tight on his flesh, and then keeps eating. It is up to Tom to earn his place with the Snakes. Harry knows that if anyone can do it, Tom can.

“Yes, I’ve heard of that guy,” Tom says, humming. He tilts his head, retracting his hand. “Such a mystery, isn’t he? Like father, like son, is all I’m saying.”

Harry bites his tongue to prevent the chuckle from escaping his chest.

Cedric narrows his eyes. “I would say that the real mystery is sitting right in front of us,” he says, lowly, and now Harry can really taste the protective venom in his voice.

“Would you? Is it so unbelievable, my presence here?” And then Tom introduces a new lie, one Harry hasn’t heard before, which makes him wonder how many versions of the truth are in circulation -- and, again, wonder why. “To be frank,I, tragically, died before entering school this September. I am the ghost of ‘Marvolo.’ And whatever is sitting, seven seats down,” Tom says, mockingly, “occupying my corpse? My friends, it cannot be good news.”

“Right,” Cedric says, with obvious disbelief.

Tom has the gall to look offended -- although Harry would guess that it, like all of this, is performance. It is all risky, all improv, though Tom wants it to be thought of as something calculated, controlled. That is the difference between now and then: the sheer amount of chaos.

“I’m as light as the sun is bright, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“I’m not insinuating anything.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Because it sounds, to me, like you’re being suspicious.”

“Can you blame me, if I am?”

“Only if you are.”

“He’s a friend,” Harry interrupts tiredly, bored of the back and forth. Holding your own against Cedric Diggory is a feat -- and would sure as Hell be an interesting show, if Harry was in the right mood. He sees Luna watching intently, enthralled with the new dynamic, and is sorry to ruin her fun.

He is just… tired. Just tired.

He spears eggs onto his fork, ignoring the small voice in his head that screams that he’s been binging ever since he’s been revived and the best way to end a binge cycle is obviously to restrict, and shoves it moodily into his mouth. He swallows, and then continues, “And when I asked him to stay back, he told me he didn’t want to leave my side until he absolutely had to. So, here he is.”

Honestly, Tom’s idea of egregious publicity is tiring. It brings attention to Tom and to Harry by proxy. Harry has few experiences where he appreciated any level of celebrity.

Cedric looks at Harry, searching his face. Harry tries to school it into something flat and emotionless and is sure that, despite this, true emotion leaks to the surface.

Harry pictures what he depicts. I am cautious, his face might show, his heart does feel. I am endlessly attached. Is there more scary a combination?

I don’t know, Cedric. I am so uncertain, it is leaking out of my ill fitting skin.

Whatever he sees prompts him to ask, forcefully, toward Tom, “Do you care for Harry?”

Tom grins wider, holding his hand back out expectedly. Cedric looks at the scars staining them. “With all my heart and soul,” he admits in earnest.

Cedric has no idea the irony of the statement, and he doesn’t need to. He stews on Tom’s confession for a moment. But only for a moment.

He nods sharply, once, and returns Tom’s handshake firmly.

The rest of the group -- Julian and Luna -- relax visibly. Even Harry can hardly deny the small lax of his shoulders. And Harry has the hilarious idea that it’s not just Snakes that Cedric controls; it’s f*cking Ravens, too.

Tom holds his hand out to Julian and, after an approving nod from Cedric, it is returned.

Tom grins smugly. Happy, he is, to be accepted in this part of Harry’s life. A smile graces his lips and eating breakfast is a little easier.

“What House would you describe yourself as, Tom?” Cedric says Tom’s name like it is bitter on his tongue; it is as if Marvolo would sound more natural.

Harry appreciates his restraint.

Tom co*cks his head. “I wouldn’t know, exactly,” he lies, “as I went to Beauxbatons, and not Hogwarts. But if I had to guess, I would say I am either Slytherin or Hufflepuff.”

“Slytherin and Huffepuff,” repeats Cedric, dryly. “An unusual answer, if I might say.” He says this like he himself is not the least Slytherin Snake to ever walk the hall of Hogwarts. “I assume Hufflepuff in reference to your… friendship with Harry, yes?”

“My loyalty has saved me,” says Tom. “On more than one occasion. Who would I be, if I did not consider that instrigitic to part of my being?”

“So why Slytherin?” asks Luna, curiously. “If you’re a Hufflepuff because of Harry, why are you a Slytherin?”

“I have goals,” answers Tom, vaguely. “Ambitions. I’m a very focus driven person.”

“Do any of those goals involve the wellbeing of our dear friend Harry here?”

“Cedric,” Harry says, pleadingly. “You gave him your pass, didn’t you? For today, you gave him a pass.”

Cedric looks him over. He notes, perhaps, Harry’s plate. Him eating normally, for the first time in a long time, for the first time in forever. He notes, maybe, the tension in his shoulders. The way his heart beat is one note off.

He -- and Julian -- had wanted to visit Harry in the Hospital Wing. Given Pomfrey’s strict restrictions, they weren’t able to. But the fact remains that he was in the Hospital Wing, and they did not get to visit him. They did not get the privacy of asking questions.

Those questions… they do remain. They have to.

What is on the top of that list? That unuttered, unutterable list of questions?

Did you die?, perhaps.

But maybe, Are you okay?

And there answer here is an evident I am trying to be.

So Cedric turns ahead, back to the comfort of his best friend, of Julian, away from Tom. He says, “For today.”

Harry sinks back into himself, letting out a breath of well earned relief. Kindness feels good. This feeling is the very reason he is working on being less cruel -- if he can bring this sort of joy to anyone else, he will be a little less of a monster.

Cedric blinked. “Oh, that’s right,” he says. “Julian, didn’t you have something to tell Harry?”

Julian chokes on his tea, slipping it over into his cup. “Uh,” he says, wiping his face with a napkin. “Right. I do. I’d -- … forgotten.”

He’d forgotten. What a quaint way to say he wants to forget -- that he doesn’t want to say this at all.

… Or that he doesn’t want to tell Harry it.

Harry thinks of Julian starving himself under Mouton’s dutiful praise. He thinks of him saving his calories for alcohol. He is everything Harry does not want to be, and everything Harry aspires to be.

That he used to, at least. Everything that Harry used to aspire to be.

Harry thinks of Julian, and then he asks, quiet, calm, and he hopes with gentle patience, “What is it, Julian?”

“The champions -- us champions, I mean… we were called in,” says Julian, the words coming out of his mouth awkward and stiffly. “And talked to.”

“Is this about them voiding the points of the first round?” Harry asks despite himself. Voiding points would not cause this hushed guilt. It is not something worth hiding. (Everyone who lies has a reason.) “Because I’ve heard of that already, you know.”

“It’s not that,” says Julian.

“We were supposed to gather those golden eggs, right?” Luna has tired of Julian’s wishwashy-ness and has, apparently, taken it upon herself, as another champion, to move things forward. “During the First Task, that was the mission, right?”

“Right,” says Harry. He tries not to feel pleasure in the way Julian squirms.

“No one actually got their golden egg.”

“Because I got injured.”

Her eyes soften. “And in the eggs was the clue for the Second Task.”

Harry gets it. “Which no one got to hear.”

“So they called us in and told it to us.”

Julian sips his tea again. “Exactly,” he says. “That's it -- that’s all.”

But his hand shakes when he raises his teacup, and his tone is a tad too sharp.

And Harry… Harry does not think that’s it.

“What else?” Harry asks. “Hm? Julian?”

“Erm -- I just…”

“What, Julian?”

“Mouton,” says Julian, hushed.

“Mouton?” Of course. His nervousness, his hesitancy.

Harry reminds himself that Julian is just like him, a victim of his disorder. And, at a larger scale, a victim of Mouton, too, because Harry refuses to believe he has more than one morally ambiguous friend.

Julian is not an antagonist. His anger is ceaseless and uncalled for. This is his new mantra and it is much more useful than ‘bad person, bad person.’

Harry takes a bite of breakfast and tastes the remnants of change in his chest.

“She volunteered to tell you the clue herself,” says Julian. He is apologetic, and it is another conflicting sign that he is not a fan of the cult leader he follows.

“Not without opposition, I’d hope.”

“An understatement, I’d say.” Julian chuckles darkly.

Harry envisions the scene. Dumbledore, telling her that won’t be necessary. The Headmaster of Durmstang arguing against him, ignorant or uncaring of Moutons’ true intentions. And Dumbledore being either too cowardly to state his opinion of Mouton without a factual basis or too stupid -- and Dumbledore losing.

Because Mouton wants to talk with him, in private. She had dragged Harry to her last time. Had set out a honey trap for him to fall into -- an elaborate plan to get him willingly alone.

That had failed. This time, she is changing her tactics; she is dragging herself to Harry, and there’s little willing about it.

Harry wonders if the reason she is changing tactics is because of her failure, or if the thing connecting her to Dumbledore is more than Gellert Grindelwald.

Harry wonders if this is another ambush. If this has anything at all to do with his dying.

“It’ll be fine,” Harry says, shrugging, giving Julian the luxury of returning his prying eyes to his plate. “There’s nothing she can do I can’t handle.”

“Are you sure?” asks Cedric. “I could talk around, see if I could work something out for you.”

Always taking on the role of the caretaker. Sweet. But, “No,” says Harry. “She’s… Persistent, when she wants to be. It’s better to face this kind of threat head on, you know. ‘If I cannot control if, I can at least know when.’”

Tom perks up at the word ‘threat.’ “I could go in your place,” he offers.

“No,” says Harry immediately.

“Why?”

“Because,” Harry says honestly, “I think you would kill her.”

Tom does not even bother denying it. “You’re supposed to be listing reasons why I shouldn’t go in your place.”

Cedric snorts at Harry’s side. Harry huffs, rolling his eyes. “Tom. Listen very carefully. I am supposed to meet up with Mouton, right? And lots of people know I am supposed to go meet up with Mouton. And then Mouton winds up dead. I want you to think about this. Who are they going to assume killed Mouton?”

Tom says, dejected, “I don’t have to kill her.”

“I don’t care,” says Harry. “Whatever you do to her will be reflected unto me. I’m a big boy, Tom. I can handle myself.”

“You don’t need to,” says Tom, and he is right. Harry is not alone anymore.

But, “That doesn’t mean I can’t.”

Tom’s returned from the fire of his father’s home like a phoenix, being reborn from its ash. He’s returned feral and a liar -- and attached to Harry.

A part of Harry wants to revert into itself; after seemingly a lifetime of isolation, any touch of reverence is due to be fled from.

A still more rational part of Harry argues that Tom speaks like a man who is already dead. His plan -- his overarching plot of vengeance, of justice -- is a dangerous one and Harry’s not sure if Tom is uncertain of his chances of surviving it or what, but he knows that Tom speaks and acts with the reckless abandon of someone with nothing to lose.

It scares him. Being attached scares him. And Harry is constantly working against this mindset that is stuck to him like glue, but he knows he’s not quite free just yet.

Luna stands. “I’m ready for class, Harry. Do you want to walk with me?”

Harry taps his fork and knife against the plate. “I’m,” he says, trying not to sound sheepish, or, god forbid, ashamed, “going to finish up here first. Taking my time, you know.”

Something gives him away. The way he speaks about it, or the fact that he hardly ever, when binging, when eating, takes his time -- and her face softens.

She gets it.

She reaches over to him, squeezes his shoulder tightly, and says, softly, “Alright. I’ll see you in class.”

She leaves and when Harry is finished, he rises from the table. Tom instantly rises with him, placing his arm across his shoulder. Tom will leave, in a moment. He cannot accompany Harry to class and has loads, he’s said, of research to catch up on.

It will not last. But it is nice, for the time it is here.

“Hey. Harry?”

Harry blinks at Julian. (A boy, a man, a victim, a perpetrator. A friend. Harry looks at him and doesn’t know what to see.)

“I’m proud of you,” says Julian. There is no need to specify what about.

And… with Tom’s arm wrapped around him, Luna Lovegood’s squeeze of the shoulder still lingering in the back of his mind (with Luna’s forgiveness still fresh), Harry hears the words and thinks, impossibly, against everything he has learned, that they’re true.

Harry is not forcing himself when he says, “Thank you.” How can this kindness be anything, if not second nature?

.XoX.

“I can feel myself falling apart for tangibly,

You could grab the strings of my very being and pull

And I’d just come apart.

I feel the seams of my insides,

Run my hands along my sides,

Playing my ribs like xylophones,

And know that there is more to me than this.

I am more than this body.

I know this.

I just hope I start acting like it.”

-- Harry Potter, “Seven of Wands.”

Notes:

fun fact, i got so high, i thought that today was friday and that i had missed my sceduled update.
someone left me a five paged comment on one of my other works and i have so many feelings. there, they are good.
it is my birthday Tuesday!!! i have officially Aged. 16. wow. i feel so old.
leave a comment! i cherish them deeply & you all too!!

flip the page (and you'll find me) - ivysaturn - Harry Potter (2024)

Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

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Chapter 11

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Chapter 12

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Chapter 13

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Chapter 14

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Chapter 15

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Chapter 16

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Chapter 17

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Chapter 18

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Chapter 19

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Chapter 20

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Chapter 21

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Chapter 22

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Chapter 23

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Chapter 24

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