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Chapter Text

The two speeding cars swerved to avoid hitting each other head-on, but it was already too late. The opposing headlights blinded him, they were approaching at the same speed as two monstrous snidgets that could only grow in his field of vision. The rain pounded the car's bodies, drowned the road, and he lost control of his trajectory when he felt his tyres slip. A crash. The engines had smashed against each other with a noise that matched the thunder of lightning overhead... 

Speaking of heads, he had felt his hit the steering wheel hard and was still resting on it as he gasped for breath, still in shock from the impact. In a vague moment of lucidity, he knew that the liquid dripping from his forehead was not the rain that was now seeping through the shattered windscreen. The lucidity of the moment continued as he felt his body weaken and blackness creep into the corners of his eyes. 

He laughed hoarsely. It was true that the situation he was in was tragic, but it was also very ironic.

His past relatives would have been ecstatic: his first aunt, his mother's sister, had never allowed him to ask questions when he was younger, but in a fit of courage—or stupidity—he had asked about the origin of the scar on his forehead. "In the car accident that killed your parents," she had said, her eyes narrowed and full of disdain. "And don't ask questions," she'd repeated harshly before grabbing his wrist to turn him back to face the cooker, so he could resume his task of watching the indecent amount of bacon and keeping it from charring.

He imagined that his Aunt Petunia would have been pleased to learn that her abnormal nephew had just suffered the same fate she had created to conceal the true cause of the disappearances of her witch sister and the Potter husband she had found in that freakish school. 

A sigh escaped painfully from his crushed lungs to conclude this brief memory. The time spent in his thoughts had been enough for blackness to obscure almost all of his vision. Anyone at that moment could have guessed what this foreshadowed, yet he didn't panic, rather irritation made him itch.

He really hated this part. Dying was easy, but the last few moments before were always a nightmare—or agony, more accurately. He didn't feel his pain eased by the fact that he'd devoted his last coherent thoughts to his first aunt, but it wasn't as if the life he was about to leave had offered him anything exceptional to hold on to… 

His hands had already dropped from the steering wheel, the energy that usually animated his limbs had left them, they were no longer responsive. It took him a few seconds to find where his hands were as they rested limply on his thighs. The nerves in his legs were inert and unable to detect any new sensation.

Around him he could fathom screams, but all he could hear was the faint, hieratic pulse of his heart echoing through his numb body. 

The door of his car flew open, revealing faces drowned in the deluge and the dark landscape of the countryside. He slowly turned his head towards them, smiled faintly, and then closed his eyes when he felt an unearthly chill coil over him. His old friend was there. 

"Again, " he whispered to them secretly.

Limbo was a familiar place that Harry liked, but where he never stayed long. Not because it was unwelcoming - especially in the guise of King's Cross Station, which it mimicked to remind him of its main function: a transitional stage - but because it evoked too many memories that he preferred to flee. He was content to pass through and catch a new train each time that would take him to another quiet life, always a little further away from the first. 

The unmistakable whistle of an old departing locomotive caught his attention just in time for him to see a spectrally white copy of the Hogwarts Express shudder and slowly leave the station.

On the platform, a towering figure was also watching the train depart. Shrouded in black, the being stood motionless and contrasted in the colourless space. Harry approached to stand beside them. He gazed into the distance, where the souls who had been able to board the train were disappearing to begin their new journey into the land of the living.

For what seemed like an eternity there was only silence, the two immortals stood still, neither of them interested in disturbing this moment. They remained like this for perhaps a minute, an hour, a decade, or perhaps even a century, but it did not matter. Time did not matter to the dead. It was just a question of opportunity. 

The high ceilings of the pale King Cross station amplified the whistle of a new train, it seemed to echo through the infinite plane of limbo to announce its fresh arrival. The station was filling up in a morbid imitation of the first day of school at Hogwarts, except that the panicked, ecstatic cries of children and the reassuring words of worried parents were replaced by distant whispers.

Around him, Harry let his gaze trail over the stream of souls, some undecided about finally boarding, others rushing into the carriages without a second thought. 

Delicately, an intense coldness grazed the back of his neck.

A fingertip touch that preceded Death's voice, which sounded like a distant whisper from beyond the grave, "You should leave," they advised cautiously. "It is impossible to find what you ask in my realm. What awaits you there is quite the opposite even."

"It has been a long time since I asked you to give me peaceful lives. You kept your promise, but I don't know if I want to go back to another cycle just yet... I've always liked being here more than living." 

Death's long, skeletal fingers lingered on Harry's coppery, immaterial skin. "Have you asked yourself why?" 

Harry shook his head, he preferred not to look for the answer. Sometimes settling for blissful ignorance was the easiest thing to do. 

"If you're going to continue to bury your head in the sand, then you're still not ready." The chill nestled at the base of Harry's neck slowly disappeared as Death withdrew their hand. They resumed, a teasing undertone in their whisper, "I'm still torn as to what will devour your soul first, my friend. Will it be your boredom or your regret?" And without waiting for an answer, Death slowly walked away. 

The souls on the platform quickly moved away from their wake—even though they were already dead, the shadow of Death looming over them aroused a fierce instinct of self-preservation, dictating that they stay as far away from the being as possible. 

Harry, for his part, remained petrified, his gaze glued to his old friend's back. Death's last words had seemed to take his breath away as suddenly as the car accident that had just taken his life.

He suddenly cried out, "Neither of them!" 

He dashed after Death, who continued to advance without looking back. When he finally caught up with them, he grasped the shroud that seemed to be woven of pure darkness with the force of an anger he had not suspected until then.

"Neither," Harry repeated, his voice weaker, uncertain. His expression was troubled by the sudden anger he did not know he possessed. 

All around them, everything seemed to have come to a halt. The souls in transit stood still, clearly nervous of the reaction of the being who ruled this realm. 

With the characteristic slowness of those for whom time is meaningless, Death turned to Harry. The tug that Harry held on the cloth stretched it, revealing the sharp, angular lines of Death's skeletal body. The large hood that covered their face fell back.

"There are only two forces capable of destroying a soul..." 

Harry looked up from where his hand remained clenched to drown his gaze in Death's empty sockets. They bent their long figure with a terrifying clank and crack of bone to bring their faces closer to Harry's. The endless darkness in their sockets was like an abyss just about to swallow him.

"I have never yet resolved to destroy one, but some have already been lost forever. Gone and consumed by themselves."

Harry blinked, his thoughts racing as he tried to grasp the implication of Death's words. Did they think he was about to self-destruct? Would the sudden anger he had felt be the first warning? An alarm to remind him that he would be consumed by his own feelings if he continued to ignore that little voice that kept asking him for a second chance?

When he reached his conclusion, the shock left him colder than his friend's touch and caused the shroud to slip from his hand. "What am I to admit then? Obviously you know better than me what I want." 

"You already know the answer... but let me help you." Death brought their face a little closer to Harry's, their hand sliding a finger under his chin so that his gaze wouldn't waver when the truth would be spoken. "Be honest with yourself. Tell me, what was the last thing on your mind when you felt your end was near?"

"Petunia," he blurted out. 

Death's quiet but shrill chuckle made Harry wince.

He immediately tried to explain himself to clear up the misunderstanding, "I didn't like her! The car accident reminded me—" He paused.

Now he was sure where this conversation was going.

He let out a long, infuriated sigh as he pulled his chin out of Death's grip. "That's it? You want me to say I miss it? Then yes, of course. I mean, I loved it! Even though it was a crappy life, I had people there that I loved." 

Memories of his friends and the precious years of his youth flashed quickly through his mind and tightened his throat with emotion, preventing him from speaking for a few seconds.

Harry ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head to chase away his rush of nostalgia. "I miss it, but that's not what I want, Death. Even if it were possible, I wouldn't want to go through that again. You saw what I did after it was over! I don't want to go through that loop again... " Harry's shoulders and eyes dropped, his voice breaking in his last words, filled with the bitterness and shame that haunted the memories of his second life.

This second life marked by violence was a pure product of the infernal spiral that had been the first, so one did not exist without the other. Harry saw them as a play in two acts, "The Saviour: The Rise & The Fall. 

At the height of the ‘Rise’, and by the end of the Second Wizarding War, a general fear had spread rapidly through the British wizarding world. Everyone feared that Voldemort would return... Again. He had become an agonising nightmare that clouded the minds of every wizard. 

Shortly after Voldemort's body had been moved to a room adjacent to the Great Hall, Hermione had quietly taken Harry aside, offered him her beaded bag and advised him to flee the country for a few years. "Only until everything is sorted out," she had clarified. What a fool he had been to convince her that everything would be fine now that Voldemort was dead! It had been naive of him to believe that all the dangers would disappear with the end of the reign of his fated enemy.

It was only after his rushed and unfair trial that he understood what had led to his imprisonment... 

The Ministry, the unmarked and surviving Death Eaters, the press: everyone had called for his head. All those who had caused the unstable general state of magical Britain were dead, and he had been the only one left to bear the consequences. The bloody 'Boy Who Lived'.

He had become the person responsible for the instability of the Ministry, the target to be aimed at to avenge the dark side, the last face and embodiment of a long era of fear. Even the small circle of people who knew about the horcruxes had feared him and his scar. They saw it as just another way for Voldemort to make his return.

Harry had almost wished it was true! That there was still a microscopic part of Voldemort's soul in him, so that he could resurrect the noseless bastard and deliver him to the post-war wizarding world.  

The sentence that had slightly appeased the crowd, and that he had heard at the end of his trial: Azkaban.

It was only as he left the room to go to prison that he had heard those present at the trial whispering to each other. No one had been content enough with the sentence, all had called for his death... But no one had dared.

The executioners had all refused, fearing that the killing curse would rebound on them too - if not on all the spells intended to kill him. The Ministry already had no control over the Dementors, so even the Kiss had not been an option. So they simply put Harry in a cage and took great care to lose the key forever.

All this time, he had hoped that things would sort themselves out as Hermione had told him, but nothing changed. He stayed in his cell, waiting for someone to open the door and tell him that his sentence had been revoked. That his trial had been a mistake and that he hadn't deserved the authorities' relentlessness or to have been made the scapegoat for all the disasters that had happened... 

"What you did?" Death echoed, interrupting Harry's memories maelstrom in the process.

A long limb of decaying flesh and bone stretched out of the shroud that clothed Death's slender figure, their hand came to rest on Harry's shoulder. The Hogwarts Express whistled furiously to announce its imminent departure and the landscape around them snapped.

In a whirlwind of grey mist, Death and Harry were projected onto another landscape. A memory. Not exactly like in a pensieve, with blurred edges, but rather the opposite. It was almost too real. Harry could smell the peculiar odour granted by the dampness of his cell and feel the cold, rusty iron shackles sinking into his wrists. He was chained to the exact spot he had occupied during so many decades. 

Death faced him, impenetrable in the darkness of the prison. Harry's cage. "Let me tell you what I saw back then: a mere babe. A shattered toddler raised by wars. An exhausted child used to my company. A fearless boy trained to fight. You were not their saviour, but their warrior. They expected you to comply without resistance, they pushed you again and again to the front line of the battlefield... And then, when they won the fight, they pushed you one more time. Except this time, that last push was to throw you off the cliff." At this point, Death's usual whispering voice had become a distant, high-pitched howl. "So tell me my friend, why do you regret taking the lives of those who imprisoned you there?" 

Being here was like rubbing salt on Harry’s wounds. Every corner reminded him of his worst moments at Azkaban. With a sharp, ferocious tug he pulled on the chains that bound his handles. They gave way and fell with a clank of metal to the floor of the cell.

"The real problem, Death, is that I regret a lot of things, but certainly not this," Harry explained, controlling his voice to keep it calm. Out of habit, he kneaded his wrists as if trying to chase away the sharp coldness of the metal that seemed to cling desperately to the core of his soul. "What I did was wrong and I'm ashamed of it, but I can't regret getting my revenge. It was the only way I could mourn what I had lost… No, what I regret is that I tied this madness to the loop of my first life."

The ‘Fall’ began when Death had come to him at the end of his first life and asked him what he wanted—he had seized the opportunity without thinking of the consequences. He was still ashamed that he had allowed himself to be blinded by his rage and had followed Talion's law. To this day, he clearly remembers that his request had felt like a prayer, he had pleaded for a rebirth dedicated to destruction.

An outlet. A simple and unique opportunity to ruin the chessboard by being the grey bishop who spares no side and takes orders from no one. The exaltation of freedom had gone straight to his head to the point where he had forgotten his own morals... He had forgotten himself. All this time he had been like someone else. A vengeful spirit. 

‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ had been his mantra throughout this second life. It was only when he took his last breath that he felt the wizarding world had paid its debt to him and he finally promised that he would try to forgive them—

But now, the memories were coming back with more and more strenght and the anger Harry had felt was bubbling up inside him again.

He understood then, why this feeling had felt so strange, it was because he had not felt it—not with the same intensity—since the wizarding world had betrayed him. An old fury, dustier than the corpses buried in its intangible graveyard of traitors.

He remembered how sudden everything had been. He recalled as if it were yesterday the farce that had been his trial.

For a brief moment he had felt like he was in Sirius' shoes when James and Lily had been murdered. His godfather must have felt the same way as Harry did when he had seen the court full of wizards glaring at him, damning him to all the misery in their world.

Harry remembered the shock that had led to his acceptance. He had agreed to die for them. Why refuse if he could continue to protect them and ease tensions by staying locked up for a while? It seemed sensible at the time. Stupid boy, that was before you found out they wanted to put you down like a rabid dog...

Harry had relied on his friends to clear his name and explain the misunderstanding - because it was only a misunderstanding, he had thought at the time. 

Harry Potter had been the name that no one had ever dared to say again. The Boy Who Lived became the Man Who Waited. He had waited for a plea, an apology, a place in the world he had fought for. He waited, but nothing happened. The wait buried his name deeper and deeper under new piles of files on a minister's desk. 

They fed the lion of darkness with the promise that the light he hoped for would come. Tied a chain around his neck and whispered that it was an important necklace. Locked him up by telling him it was to protect others. Muffled his roars by shouting at him that he was scaring the children. And finally, the lion's mane lost its golden sheen, his shoulders hunched, he had turned more times in his cage than the earth turned on itself and his silent throat became a bottomless pit leading to his broken heart.

There was no more lion when Death entered the cage. Under the chains and behind the bars, there was also nothing left of the boy who had become their master. It was a horrible, enraged creature that accepted their embrace, and its last breath became its first. The creature that had been the lion-boy no longer wanted the light, nor even the sun, it wanted everything and fell so low as to become the Monster-Who-Wants. The one who wanted revenge, who wanted to be remembered, who wanted to claim the price of his sacrifices. The monster roared. The world trembled at the sight of what they had created...

With a thought, Harry's prison was transformed into another memory: the Forbidden Forest. There was no one there, except the two immortals. 

"Perhaps you are more ready than I thought..." Death muttered to themselves as they walked away from Harry towards a treeless area. When they stopped, they glanced over their shoulder. "Do you feel ready?"

"Ready for what?!" Harry exclaimed, his long-suppressed anger as hot as the fiery breath of a Hungarian horntail. "To set Limbo on fire and turn it into the Infernal City? If that's the case, yeah! I'm fucking ready!"

Around them the ground rumbled, shaking the gloomy trees of the Forbidden Forest from root to leaf. By the time Death turned around, the rumbling had increased in intensity and without further ado, the first tree crashed to the ground with a deafening thud, its trunk snapped in two. Harry's fists were trembling as he stood at the epicentre of the chaos he was creating in the forest.

Death's attention scanned the surroundings, unfazed, before focusing their empty sockets on Harry again. "No. I'm asking if you're finally ready to give up those boring lives I've given you since you returned from your fantastic mayhem."

"I give them up and what? I sit here, twiddling my thumbs and going bonkers?"

The ground rumbled from the bowels of the earth, the dry earth cracked and more trees fell to the ground, some carrying others in their fall and creating a gigantic cascade of leaves and branches with a noise that would deafen mortals. The wind picked up with the storm in the background, almost loud enough to rival the noise rumbling beneath the earth.

"Because that's what's going to happen, Death! If I don't do something, I'll only think about my first life and nothing else!" 

"These lives are just a way for you to numb yourself. You bury yourself in boredom to avoid facing your problem."

"I've already dealt with the problem!" Harry shouted. The fallen trees around them burst into flames. "I have taken my revenge! Now I can move on!"

Death let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "You want more. More than quiet lives and blood." They advanced through the flames. Their shroud swept away by the storm wind that blew the foliage of the surviving and still standing trees. "You will not rest until you find it again. Do you not feel its absence digging into your heart? Have you not felt empty all these millennia?"

The storm broke. A bolt of lightning struck the ground, only a few feet away from Death.

"Say it! " Harry shouted, his voice surreal with the elements raging around him. 

"What you really want, Harry, is not just to get your first life back," Death stated in a soothing voice as they crossed the last few yards between them. "You want to be able to live it again to change it."

Harry felt as if he were about to explode. Lightning rained down in a cataclysmic pattern that leveled what was left of the forest.

"And you know that's impossible!" Harry shouted, in a cry full of anger and grief. "I can't get my life back, I can't change it!" A broken sob escaped him. "Even if you could give it back to me, I would inevitably follow the same path that led me to my second life! I would have no free will! Fate would always put me back on the path she had planned for me! I don't want to go through that again..."

As Harry's voice died on his lips, all the elements subsided. The storm left behind the rain. The flames curled up on their burning coals. The wind no longer howled and sang only an unnoticeable lullaby. 

He dropped to a stump behind him with a long sigh. His anger was suddenly gone, totally consumed by the exhaustion that now gripped him. He removed his glasses and massaged his eyelids. This conversation had gone nowhere, except to exhaust him and rehash what was most painful to him. 

What forced him to open his eyes again was the sound of cracking and clicking bones that announced Death's movements. Even kneeling before him, Death was much taller than he was. Although they only had a face of bone and therefore no expression, Harry was sure that his old friend seemed delighted.

"If you could change the course of events, you would want to go back, wouldn't you?" 

Harry's head nodded without him even being aware of it. He was too busy fighting the hope that was blooming in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't allow himself to hope for anything. Especially what Death seemed to be suggesting. 

He knew two inescapable facts: he was Fate's favourite chew toy and she hated to lose him.

In short, even if Harry could relive his first life, he couldn't change it. Fate would always come back to interrupt his free will and redirect him to the right path. Inevitably, if he lived that first life again, he would also repeat the second. Taking a step in this loop was just an endless circle of violence that he had managed to get out of and that he did not want to repeat.... But what if he could really intervene and change things?

"Let me ask you again: are you ready to leave your boring lives behind and listen to what I have to offer?"

Chapter Text

“A noise like feathers. Like leaves. Like ashes. Like leaves.”*

They had arrived in a part of Limbo that Harry had never explored before, and it was radically different from the usual faded white copy of King Cross. Here everything was as dark as Death's shroud, and judging by the rocky walls Harry was touching, they seemed to be in a cave. 

As they went deeper, a faint light could be seen. They approached and Harry first saw a huge ritual circle carved into the stone floor. 

Although he didn't recognise any of the runes used to design it, he could safely say that they were far more elaborate than those he had already come across... And as he detailed the circle further, an uneasy feeling crept over him. Harry didn't consider himself an expert in any field, and often relied only on his experience from his various lifetimes, but he could tell that the work before him was far more than simply advanced. The circle and the ritual seemed to depend on a level of mastery and power that no man could even dream to achieve...

Sometimes he forgot that his old friend was also a divine entity. That Death was not only their name; but also the realm they could manipulate at will. 

Harry swallowed loudly and looked around for the source of the light that illuminated the circle. In the center of it, he found something. His unease increased and his survival instincts kicked in. The shape remained indistinct, it seemed almost innocent as it glowed softly, but Harry felt deep down that what layed there was not something that could be handled without caution. 

If he concentrated hard enough, he could even feel the eerie coldness that lingered in the atmosphere that Death left when they used their own magic… This did not bode well. 

Without looking away, Harry grabbed Death's skeletal arm like a lifeline. His throat knotted with anticipation made his voice barely audible, "What is that?" 

"Don't you recognise? It’s a soul. Well, more precisely, a piece of it." 

Harry's eyes widened with as much horror as if Death had just admitted that torturing puppies was their favourite pastime. "You split one? What's wrong with you?!" He abruptly removed his hand from Death's arm. The betrayal he felt flashed in his eyes as he took a few steps back. 

Death did not take offense at Harry's attitude. On the contrary, they nodded serenely. "Even if I don't condone my actions, I had to do it. This soul, even split, was acting in a way that was... how shall I put it? Strange? Hmmm... Yes, this soul was quite unusual. At first I tried to bring it back together so that it could make a new start, but it resisted with all its might... Tell me, now that you are close to it, don't you feel something?"

Of course Harry had felt something! He had been wary at first of what awaited him here because of the Death magic that filled the cave with a chilly, and gloomy atmosphere; however there was something else he hadn't paid attention to. Ever since he had come close to the circle, he had kept moving forward until he could not move any further. His toes were just behind the line that defined the circle. He was drawn in.

Was this what Death was talking about? 

"Maybe? Your magic prevents me from knowing for sure..." He glanced at his friend who continued to observe the piece of soul. "Death, what did you do?"

"Are you sure it's my magic that's distracting you, and not the boredom of your last few lives that has totally numbed your own soul?" A breeze swept across Harry's face as Death shrugged under their shroud. "Well, one day you'll have to come to terms with the fact that there is a connection between the two of you... In the meantime, I have divided one of the existing pieces to create the one in front of us."

"I don't understand anything. There were already several pieces and you split one of them again? What for?"

"The others - the originals - were waiting for something to happen. So I took a tiny part of one of them so as not to damage the others and forced it to show me what they wanted. I must admit, I'm rarely surprised, but it turned out that I was not expecting this... Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, he won't miss such a small part of him because he didn't even notice that they were disappearing one by one while he was alive." 

A sickly cold sweat ran down Harry's spine and his eyes erratically shuttled between Death and the circle. He know it for sure. What stood there, in the cercle, was a bloody horcrux. And not just anyone's...

He couldn’t believe it. In his past lives, he had met a few people desperate enough to resort to creating one, but hardly any of them had been able to bear the absence of just one part of their soul for long... only one of them was insane enough to split it up several times. Seven times exactly. 

"Voldemort," Harry snarled venomously as he stared at the madman's soul fragment. He turned sharply to Death, an accusing finger pointed in the direction of the circle. "And this! This is supposed to help me change my first life?!"

"I grant you that it sounds far-fetched, but yes." Slowly, Death left Harry's side and ventured inside the circle to approach the soul. The light emanating from it flashed as a warning not to come any closer, but Death ignored it. In a gray mist, their scythe materialized in their hand and, with the wooden end, they poked the soul. “I can't give you your life back, old friend. What I can do, however, is offer you the alternative I've discovered.”

Harry didn't respond immediately and watched the fragment flashing more and more furiously. He wondered if a soul could explode… Knowing Voldemort, it was very likely. 

"Fate doesn't like to change her plans, but this alternative will free you from them. And in the long run, it may also allow you to regain control over your first life."

"That's—" Crazy? Vague? Unbelievable? Harry wasn't sure what to say. 

Death would stop poking at Voldemort's soul. "Horcruxes are anchors, not only for the main soul to remain on the mortal plane, but also in time. I remember that you saw it yourself : they do not age. They are bound to the time of their creation.”

It all seemed surreal to Harry. Using the soul of his enemy, the man he had killed, to return to an era he thought was lost forever, it was beyond comprehension… And, it was—also—too good to be true. 

"So I only have to use one of them to get back to the living and in the timeline of my first life? That's it? What's the catch?" he asked as he cautiously stepped into the circle and joined Death’s side. 

"I made sure myself that there is none. The circle around us has allowed me to temporarily integrate myself into the connection that binds you to the soul and thus integrate the timeline for a few seconds..."

" Buuut? " Harry stressed, feeling there was more than that.

"It's not a requirement, but I think you'll have to gather all of his soul—"

"What? No way!" cried Harry in an outraged tone, "I'm certainly not going to help Voldemort pick up his pieces! The bastard made his own bed!"

Death had no real face—just an impassive skull. It was only by their movement to lean on their scythe and their hand resting tenderly on his cheek, that Harry could sense his friend's concern. 

"And why not?" Death suggested softly like a tempting invitation to be corrupted. "It is not him you will help first, but yourself. The new path ahead will not be the one you knew as Harry Potter. It will be your path as my Master. The one you’ll shape by your own choices and will."

Where Death's hand lingered on his face, Harry felt the mystical chill embrace him. A sensation that only he found soothing; a touch that only he, the Master of Death, could accept without fear of the consequences. What he had always wanted was now within reach, he wanted to be seduced by the idea, but he couldn't help being cautious—a little less reckless. 

"Why should I pick up all the pieces? Wouldn't one be enough?" he asked, thinking he might be able to negotiate. 

Death stood still for a few moments, seeming to weigh the pros and cons. Finally, they said in a vague tone, "only your actions will determine that."

"I'll just use one then."

Harry moved away from Death to crouch down. He reached out, his fingers already ready to close on the piece of soul on the ground, but Death grabbed his wrist to keep him from touching it.

"Did you not hear what I said? You will return to your own timeline, yes, but not to the time you wish. You'll be transported back to the time this one came from."

"So...?" Harry trailed off, a little bit frustrated by the complexity of Death's plan. 

"So, by using only this horcrux, you will be transported to a time long before Harry Potter was born. And furthermore, I regret to inform you that you will not be able to stay in that time indefinitely. Not without disrupting the timeline."

"Wait, what? This will only be temporary? Why wouldn't I be able to remain there?" Harry complained loudly as he leapt to his feet. 

"Using it is like creating a bridge between my realm and life, such an effort will exhaust the piece. And, as soon as it runs out of energy, you will be forced to return here," Death explained calmly. "Well, you will come back here, as long as you are not integrated into the timeline... because you will be an anomaly. You can't exist twice at the same time. I know two ways for you to stay. The first one, is by appearing at several key moments in the past before Harry Potter arrived. Like that you will be able to gradually implant yourself in this reality… That's why I was talking about the long term. It will take patience, before you get to the time you wish to reach, but if you can wait, then you will be able to do everything you want."

"...And what about the second way?" Harry asked after a moment's hesitation. 

Death's face turned in the direction of Voldemort's soul piece before shifting their empty sockets back to Harry. "If you want to stop at the first one and be able to stay where it's taking you, then you'll have to cause such a major disruption in the timeline that it will become radically altered. Totally different from the one you have known. So much so that fate will be unable to put anyone back on the path she originally intended."

"In other words, kill Voldemort too soon," Harry concluded darkly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Another murder. No less! Just thinking about it made Harry’s stomach twist with guilt. Yes, counting all his lives, he was responsible for a body count so high that Bellatrix Lestrange would have probably worshipped the ground beneath his feet, but he didn't want to be a murderer anymore. He didn't want to help Voldemort either, but he didn't want to kill him unless it was his last resort... 

"He was a sadist, a megalomaniac and a supremacist. Many people I've loved died by his hand or by his orders..." Harry sighed heavily as he shook his head, his eyes closed. "And yet it would be hypocritical of me to kill him while he's still innocent."

When he opened his eyes again, Harry watched as Death bent down to cup the piece of soul that was glowing more and more intensely in their hands. Showing its fury - or panic - at being touched by what the man had feared most. 

"Fond of second chances, aren't you?" Death teased. "Remember, only you will be free to act. The others will not possess this power. At least, not while you are unable to stay definitely."

Harry gave the soul shard another glance, but the dilemma still clouded his eyes. Would he have the strength to endure such a long wait? To be a mere spectator of the past that had taken place before his arrival as Harry Potter? How would he be able to change anything if he was only passive? And then, of course, he wanted to change the course of events... but he hadn't yet decided how. 

"What will happen?" Harry waved his hand loosely at the piece of soul that Death was still holding.

"Nothing... Everything. There's no answer to your question. The possibilities are endless. Ask yourself instead what you intend to achieve with this second chance."

"I-I... I don't know." Harry confided in a whisper with his gaze dropping to the floor, "I guess, making things better… Fairer, maybe?"

He felt like a muggleborn, alone for the first time in Diagon Alley. The universe suddenly seemed too big, too overwhelming, and with no map to guide him. He was finally getting the power to change things, but now that it was at hand, he didn't know what to do with it. It had been his dearest desire, the wish he had most hoped would come true, but his fantasy had prevented him from projecting further. It had all remained a distant and unattainable utopia until then...  

The soul piece appeared slowly under Harry's eyes, and perhaps it was only an impression, but its light seemed to faintly warm his face. How could such a simple sensation remind him so much of life? Perhaps because he had been in this icy realm for too long?

"Fairer? Are you sure?" Death inquired in a whisper. 

Harry was silent, unable to answer that simple question. 

Death sighed slightly. "Waiting here to find out what's awaiting you there is impossible. You can think about it, but it's only along the way that you'll find the answers you seek... No one will expect anything from you anymore, so why not just give it a try?" 

Without a word, Harry approached a little closer. He flexed his hand spasmodically into a fist, reluctant to take hold of the only way to bring him back once and for all.

Sensing his hesitation, Death added, "I'll always be there, by your side, no matter which path you take."

Harry's eyes met Death's empty sockets. In the ocean of darkness he could see constellations and planets, the beginning and the end of the universe; he could see something beyond himself and he believed in his friend's words. He needed a friend, a support, someone who would guide him, not for selfish reasons, but so that Harry could finally be free of his regrets. 

Still cupped in the hands of Death, the fragment increasingly radiated light as Harry approached it. Once he covered Death’s hands with his own—the soul in a cocoon of bones and remains; Harry felt a rush of ice in his limbs, winter biting his spine. A blast of stinging coldness latched onto him; an iciness so acute that it was like being burned from the inside. Iced stalagmites—freezing thorns—pierced right through Harry’s core. He sucked in a sharp breath, the impact as violent as a punch to the gut.

In this gloomy cave, a pulse desecrated the mortuary silence of the Limbo. A beating heart . Living things had no right in the realm of Death. After one last glance to his old friend, Harry was no longer dead.

Chapter Text

It doesn't matter to me how many summers I live to return: this one summer we have entered eternity.*

Chapter Text

“Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?”*

It was only from the conversation between Mrs.Cole and Martha that Harry knew his room was number 27. While on the stairs, a hissing sound reached him, and he preferred to follow it, betting that he would find Tom at the other end. Each step was a reminder of his goal: reshape fate. Even if he didn’t know how he would manage to change anything. He wasn't even convinced that this life was truly real. He walked as if in a dream, the only time he had walked this corridor was when he visited Dumbledore's memory... And now here he was, thrown back fifty years before he was born. He let out a long sigh as he wondered why he'd gotten himself involved in Death's harebrained scheme.

His thoughts halted when he got near the sound. Harry guessed it was a snake that was speaking—his worry for his capacity to understand it will come later.

“ —talking about the name of hatchling. ”

It seemed that Tom already had a spy who had tipped him off about Dumbledore's interest…

Harry's eyes widened slightly as he noticed the number 27 written on the half-open door in front of him. Bloody hell, he was going to have to share a room with the future Dark Lord! He sighed again, his desire to leave only growing with every second he spent here. 

Eventually Harry collected himself and knocked on the door before opening it further. It was distaste at first sight. Each child assessed the other.

Tom pressed the snake against his chest, a cold warning in his dark gaze. He was seated on a single, neatly made bed, with only a gray comforter made of scratchy wool for sheets.

Harry made no move, frozen in the doorway. He didn’t know how to approach a soon-to-be Dark Lord without making mistakes. Where was his Gryffindor bravery when he needed it?

He began with the stupidest thing to say, “Hello?”

The snake poked its head between Tom’s finger and traded a suspicious gaze with him. Harry’s hands covered his mouth after he realized he had spoken in Parseltongue. Well, maybe it will ease the atmosphere, right?... Right?

“Another ssspeaker?” The adder hissed, its forked tongue tasting the air in Harry’s direction.

Harry’s soul was old—ancient, really—but he was in the body of a child with an unfinished brain where not all the neural connections were ready to work. 

So, instead of taking a deep breath, he blurted, “Yeah … There are not many of us.”

In a brisk motion, the adder escaped Tom’s grasp to slide near Harry. Its tongue darted like a machine gun. The snake was small, but when it raised itself to its full height, the head reached Harry’s navel. “Sssmells dead.”

“It’s death who led me here.”

Harry stared at the serpent, which had its head cocked to the side, clueless.

Tom stood up, his brows knitted together, but didn't approach Harry. Even for a child, Tom was … intense . His straight posture, his narrowed gaze, his steps sliding on the floor without sound. He was a predator. A snake.

‘I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless?’ Harry recalled in his mind, a brief flash of his training with the headmaster.

Then an epiphany hit Harry: Tom was not a loner, he had companions. The snakes. They raised him.

Tom Riddle: a crossover between Oliver Twist and Mowgli. Great.

The room was dripping in magic—one too familiar to Harry. It leaked in a flow of darkness and coldness. The stream prodded Harry curiously, but cautiously. Time seemed to freeze. Harry gulped, he wasn’t used to that feeling anymore.

Using every fiber of restraint he possessed, Harry's magic didn’t retaliate. During roughly twenty years, this particular magic had hurt him. It was a reflex to attack when he sensed it, but he did not. Fortunately.

Even if Voldemort was a despicable character, Harry didn’t want to wound a child. Accidentally or not. He would need to avoid slipping near Tom, and to remember that the boy facing him was not yet the frenzied murderer he knew.

The cold and dark stream continued his examination for a long time, enough for Harry to relax his body a bit. Now under control, he released a tiny part of his magic—a wild and hot living thing that danced joyfully in the room.

Their gazes crossed.

In swirling shadows and burning ice, they were two sides of a coin. Opposite and yet the same. Many emotions flashed in Tom’s eyes: fascination, confusion, anger … and pain. Torn by the thrill of meeting a magically gifted peer just like him and his hurt of no longer being as unique as he believed himself to be. Among all these contradicting emotions, a dim light unfurled in his eyes and magic.

The wooden boards in the hallway creaked under footsteps, voices following them. Immediately, Tom retracted his magic, snatched his snake and hid it under his shirt. He said nothing and returned to his bed, his face frozen in a blank expression.

“He scares the other children.”

“You mean he is a bully?”

“I think he must be, but it’s very hard to catch him at it.”

Harry scowled when a hand rested on his shoulder. Actually, he held conflicted feelings for Dumbledore. He had been his guiding light, but also the man who had led him to his death. He had been the beacon through the darkness that led him to crash into the deadly reefs of the coast. 

He had also been the one who, beyond his death, had put Harry on the Hallows' trail. He was the one who had really tried to find a way for Harry to die, but not permanently. 

Even after so much time, Harry couldn’t forget how the man had manipulated him for the greater good. He couldn’t brush off what Dumbledore did to him, to his family, to Hogwarts—condemning James and Lily by depriving them of the Cloak, raising two generations of students into child soldiers … The list goes on and on. 

Dumbledore was not a good man, but he was not a bad man either. He was just willing to gamble a few lives to save the rest of the world. And just because of this skewed morality, Harry didn't know if he would ever be able to fully forgive his former headmaster… 

“Tom? You’ve got a visitor,” Mrs. Cole said, before a hiccup interrupted her. She tried to disguise it with a cough. “This is Mr. Dumberton—sorry, Dunderbore. He’s come to tell you—well, I’ll let him do it. Henry?”

Mrs. Cole attempted to drive Harry away, but Dumbledore made a soft gesture to intervene. “I believe, Mrs. Cole, that Henry also has qualities we’re looking for.”

Even before Mrs. Cole could protest, Dumbledore’s wand was out of his sleeve. A non-verbal spell directed to the matron that gave her a foggy stare. She backed away with shaky legs.

The magic in the air grew with the distinct tone of darkness It paraded around, subtly proud. “That. I can do that too,” Tom said. “Also, people can’t lie to me.”

"Impressive, but... the truth can be as dangerous as any weapon," Dumbledore warned, his blue eyes cautiously assessing the boy sitting on the bed. "On the other hand, lies can be sweeter than any honey."

Harry’s blood boiled immediately. “A knife can help you cook or slash someone’s throat. Sugar can be a reward or used to mask the taste of poison. Everything depends on the intention behind. Sir,” Harry added at the end as an afterthought.

He hadn’t planned to square up Dumbledore. It was a brave, but a stupid move. The teacher gently pressed Harry’s shoulder with a thoughtful sound, and walked past him to sit on the second bed of the room.

“So, speak the truth seems reasonable,” he mused. His blue eyes lingered between Tom and Harry. “I’m Professor Dumbledore. I came here to offer both of you a place at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

Well, now Harry will have to go to school? On second thought... maybe that way he could keep an eye on Tom?

A pecking noise came from the window. The three wizards looked at an owl, and the parchment attached to its leg. With a sweep of Dumbledore’s wand, the parchment untied and slipped under the little embrasure of the window, then landed on the mattress right beside the teacher. Dumbledore read the name on the front and his smile dimmed. He reached for another letter in one of his pockets and compared the two of them.

“… Witchcraft and Wizardry?” Tom whispered.

Harry knew that the long silence in the room was because Tom had been stunned by the announcement.

“Yes, magic, Tom. You’re a wizard,” Dumbledore explained with a kind smile. He handed a sealed missive to the boy. “That will give you a few answers.”

Tom snatched it as quickly as Harry could catch a Golden Snitch. Dumbledore handed an identical letter to Harry—the one that had just arrived by owl. Still on the doorway, Harry decided to walk in the room. Two steps in, and he faced Dumbledore. 

Blue eyes analyzed Harry from head to toe. “You do not seem surprised. Did you know?”

The wind whistled outside, and Harry believed he heard a chuckle from Death. What could he say? He was incapable of lying. “I don’t want to sound ominous, but I know many things,” Harry grumbled, his green eyes on the acceptance letter from Hogwarts. “Do we need to respond by owl or—”

“The supplies. I don’t have any money. Sir,” Tom interrupted, now standing close to Harry.

“I take it that both of you accept my proposal?”

Both boys responded with a little jerk of their heads. Dumbledore couldn't have been more pleased. For his sake, Harry ignored the long magical introduction, like: where the Leaky Cauldron or what’s Diagon Alley…

“—There is also a fund from Hogwarts at our bank for those who require assistance to buy books and robes. You might have to buy some of your spellbooks and so secondhand.”

Harry blinked. “Gringotts?”

“You’re familiar with? Goblins—the creatures who rule it—aren’t … pleasant. I can help you with—”

Again, both boys said at the same time, “no. Sir.”

They shared a look. Harry’s eyes were bulged, and Tom responded at him with a bestial smile—with too many sharp teeth.

Harry had only refused because the scenario had suddenly changed. He remembered Dumbledore had given a pouch to Tom but, now, the professor somehow insisted on accompanying them at Gringotts…

“ My Hallows… ” Death whispered in Harry’s thoughts. “ Don’t forget, your new name is Peverell. ”

It was without a smile that Dumbledore paid his farewell quietly, “If you think so, I will see you soon at Hogwarts.”

The only touch of color in the gray graveyard of Wool disappeared; leaving behind two ancient mortal enemies, whose was now standing side by side without murdering intention in the air. How strange…

Chapter Text

“Let the rain come.

Let rain wash us in our ruins,

wash the corpses, wash our history.”*

Shortly after Dumbledore’s departure, another staff member dragged Harry to a medical inspection. It was not a surprise, but he had kept his scrawny body and all of his scars. That was enough to make his new caregiver frown, except that she was not here to find proof of abuse or anything like that. In his new story, Harry escaped a near-death experience from a German raid, so the woman searched for any pulmonary complications from smoke inhalation, recent wounds or parasites that Harry could have cought during his trip.

From the point of view of a mid-century nurse at the beginning of the war, Harry was in pretty good shape—summarized by a strong beating heart and four working limbs.

She asked him many questions, which Harry was incapable of answering clearly. How can he know if his body has already been infected with chickenpox! … So, he didn’t lie. He said that he didn’t know. 

After the tenth identical reply, the woman stopped and just wrote with an annoyed scratch on her clipboard: ‘Amnesia/Concussion.’ She took another long look at Harry’s scarred face and added: ‘Shock may have damaged cognitive functions.’

Playing dumb? Harry would roll with it. The caregiver presented him a small bag with the bare minimum of clothes inside—the same kind of grayish tunic every orphan wore here … and a gas mask.

Being dead was not that bad, but Harry didn’t really like the pain that came before it—he didn't want to imagine the suffering induced by biochemical weapons. He would keep that mask close during his time in London. Even if air raids and bombings that would cause the greatest damage in the next few years. Maybe practicing Protego wandless soon would be a good way to ensure survival.

… With the gas mask in his hands, he decided to revise his Bubble-Head Charm too.

A ringing bell. “Dinner,” explained the nurse for Harry, who didn't move, clearly clueless on where to go.

With an exasperated sigh, she drove him out of the infirmary. They  walked down an endless hallway with the same checkerboard tiled floor—everything looked identical here.

She dropped him at a modest canteen, lined with a few long tables dressed in blank tablecloths. In a corner, alongside the windows, there were two tables different from the rest, smaller and round.  One was full of young children—toddlers, really. The other one was reserved for serving the food. From what he could see, Harry concluded that each table had an age group. There was no mixing; the oldest didn't sit with the youngest or vice versa.

The room resonated with a lively hubbub (quite normal for somewhere full of teenagers and kids), but it wasn’t as joyful as in the Great Hall.

A stream of boys grabbed Harry and led him to the table with all the food. Some of them looked at him and greeted him with small smiles. After a bit, Harry checked around, but did not see Tom among the crowd.

With his bag on his shoulder and a steaming bowl of soup, Harry seated with the other children of his age group.

One of them, a ginger boy, leaned towards Harry, “You. You’re the fourth, this month. That only leaves Tom’s room—” Harry heard a sudden silence around him. “Tom is your roommate, right?”

Another child, a chubby blond boy, imitated the posture of the first one. With a conspiratorial whisper, he added, “stay away from him. A weirdo that one.”

“Dangerous,” a brunette girl corrected with a frown on her nose.

Silence fell on the table as Tom appeared. Expressionless, but again with a cold warning in his dark eyes directed at the first boy who had spoken.

He dragged an empty chair with him and put it beside Harry, pushing away another child with just a look. Harry found himself like a buffer between Tom and the redhead who warned him in the first place.

“Already talking about your rabbit, Billy? Or I’m too early?”

The now named Billy blushed and turned his panicked gaze onto Harry.  “No one wants to accuse him, but he hung it. I know it’s him who did it.”

“You only think that because you and your cronies killed one of my snakes before.”

“Those beasts!” Billy growled, “I will smash them again!”

To illustrate what he was saying, Billy slapped both of his hands on the table. Without missing a bit, Harry let his magic work. The bowl of soup made a wonderful backflip and landed on Billy’s face. Not too hot to hurt him, it was just to make him shut up—both to protect him and for Harry’s sake.

The other children squealed in surprise before they began to laugh—much more cruelly than cheerfully. Tom’s knuckles were white, his hand pressed forcefully around his spoon. His magic was almost palpable in the air, sharp with a threatening edge of coldness.

A member of the staff gravitated to their table to reprimand Billy severely. After that, the rest of the diner was quiet. Even after a few minutes, Tom’s grip on the spoon didn’t relax , so Harry did the first thing that came to mind: he let another portion of his magic go wild.

It probed the shadows, from which emerged a feeling of mourning, still fresh from the loss of one of the reptiles that they appreciated more than anything else here . Through them, Harry felt on his tongue a bitter taste of never shed tears, and, in his heart, the thunderous beat of revenge.

It took time, but the darkness retracted, curled up in the afire embrace. A faint flush spread on top of Tom’s hollowed cheeks, as if warmed from the inside. His shoulders loosened and he started to eat, his knuckles not white anymore.

Their table stayed like that, the quietest until the end of their meal. Harry ignored Billy’s angry look and the fact he was the first of his friends to quickly escape from the room.

Slowly, one by one, each group of children was conducted out of the canteen in ten minute intervals.

When their table’s turn came, Harry followed. A daily timetable of the orphanage was beginning to be constructed in his mind: free time, dinner and, now, shower.

They arrived at a collective bathroom, large enough to accommodate about ten children at a time. Each stall was individual, barely what was needed for a bit of privacy. Harry paid zero attention to the mirrors and to his reflection, which was trying to catch his eyes.

He leaves his bag and clothes on a hook before entering the last free shower—

The door of his stall closed behind him in a loud snap.

Harry’s bag was thrown over the door. His few clothes spilled out on the tiled floor of his shower.

A red head peeked out above the divider. Before Harry could understand what was happening, Billy and his cronies were armed with large buckets of water.

They gave him a cold shower, with big ice cubes viciously dropping on Harry’s head.

The children threw their buckets in Harry’s stall and after their mischief was accomplished, Harry heard them sprint away with fearful screams.

Harry didn’t move, thunderstruck. Only his chattering teeth and his soaked clothes were proof of the mean prank. The childish temptation to stay there and ask Death to kill him right then and there was powerful, but, before he could act, the door opened again.

“ I scared ’em off, ” Tom hissed. “You need to make them fear you too. It’s the only way to survive here.”

Harry picked his stuff from the wet floor and shrugged. “There’s always another solution—”

Hands covered his mouth. Tom looked around and pushed Harry further into the stall, closing the door shut with a sharp kick.

“Hogwarts begins in a month. By then, they’re gonna have plenty of time. Mark my words: this is just the start, and it only grows worse. I know how it works here.”

Harry blinked and tried to talk, but Tom’s hands still gagged him. Avoiding any abrupt gestures, he gripped Tom’s wrists, and pushed them smoothly away. “Before that, I will already be somewhere else.”

Quick realization flashed in dark eyes. “ Running away? ” Tom whispered in Parseltongue.

Harry nodded, and shadows cloaked his skin; a forgotten scream from a broken heart and hushed remains of hurtful years. In Tom’s dark eyes, there was a light. Something akin to when he had sensed Harry’s magic for the first time. At that time, Harry hadn’t figured out what it was; but now, as he observed it again—this feeling that Tom was trying to choke—Harry was certain that this light… was a tiny hope. At this moment Tom was just an unloved child, who finally saw a way out.

“Children! Lights out!” A staff member announced.

Both boys returned promptly to the room they shared. Harry threw his pile of soaked clothes on his mattress and focused on channeling his magic into a Hot Air charm. Without noise, a wind plastered all of his clothes against the wall and dried them completely.

The achievement left Harry dizzy. This was, again, the fault of his brand new child body. With his many lives, his magical core only grew over time, and, now that he crash landed in the body of a child, the two didn't match—it was like putting a racing car engine on a lawnmower.

He really needed a wand if he wanted to attempt advanced spells, or his magic would backfire on his body. He hoped that a wand would balance his magic out.

As Harry put on a newly warm top, his hands a bit shaky, Tom’s hoarse voice asked, “where?”

“I don’t care. Anywhere? As long as it’s not this rotting hell.”

A silence. “I will go with you.”

“As if I was giving you a choice,” Harry laughs.

Suddenly, Harry was pushed face first onto his mattress, someone straddling his back. A cold breath brushed his neck. “I said: I’m coming with you. Whether you like it or not.”

With the help of his magic, already ready to fight, Harry sent a faint Jelly-Legs Curse to destabilize Tom—At this rate his body would really break down from channeling so much magic. In a shove and a growl, Harry inverted their positions. On top, Harry forced Tom to stay still on his back, clutching  his hands fiercely on Tom’s shoulders. 

“You don’t understand. I would not have  left you there. I would have dragged you with me regardless of what you had to say about it.”

Comprehension flashed on Tom’s face, his angry curled lips morphed into a much more cunning grin. Both boys shared a heavy breath.

“I’ve already got some ideas,” Harry offered.

“Me too.”

That night, neither of the boys slept, and, when the sun rose, they sported dark circles under their eyes and glorious smiles. They would get the hell out of there.

Chapter Text

"The blood on my teeth begins to taste like a poem, like religion, like the way you look at me."

Chapter Text

"I am not a creature that was born. I am a fire that was set."

“ Harry! ” Death called loudly inside his thoughts.

Harry sat up in a jerky motion. Everything spinned around him. He had a splitting headache. It was night but … why did the black and white tiles of the orphanage glow with an orange hue? Then, as if to reply, the whole building shook because of a roaring detonation.

He tried to get up from his bed… Impossible. His wrists were tied to the frame. Around him, two women from the staff were busy with two other children—they had foggy gazes, unaware of their surroundings. The four of them were in a hurry, leaving Harry behind.

Alone.

Already magically exhausted, Harry hastily dipped into his thin reserves to unbind whatever was holding him down. Once on his feet, Harry struggled to be completely in control of his numb limbs.

“What’s happening—?!” Harry shouted, but another explosion covered his voice.

The windows of the infirmary shattered into pieces from the blast. Harry barely had time to protect his face with his arms.

“Air raid. The Blitz—and the war— is starting early! ” Harry hated that Death said that as excited as a child talking about Christmas. “Go outside or you’ll end up crushed under the rubble. ”

Harry’s legs sprung into action. At the back of his mind, he heard the air split as Death mowed down souls all around them—fuck, he even heard the other immortal actually panting!

“Focus, friend. You can’t save everyone. ”

“But here! The children!” Harry roared as he ran against the flow of orphans.

“I’m a little busy right now. Why aren’t you out already? Do you want me to come early for you or something? ”

Around him, there was only chaos, flames and kids crying; an apocalyptic landscape. On his way to the upper floors, he made sure that every young child was with a partner and knew where to go to be safe for the night. 

On the second floor, Harry stormed into his room, but he discovered it empty. Tom was maybe already outside…? With a look inside the shabby wardrobe, Harry found there all the outfits and tiny trinkets stolen by Tom and his magpie tendencies, left as he had planned so as not to arouse suspicion of them running away. Even the bed was still neatly made… Would Tom have managed to escape after the disaster at the church? Another shockwave shook the walls of Wool’s orphanage. Not from the burst of a bomb, but from an explosion of raw darkness and magic.

Harry’s heart skipped a beat. Tom was still here. Something terribly wrong was happening.

With one last look, something caught his eyes. He pocketed it.

Harry started running again, his magic acting like a Point Me spell; a hunting dog that tracked down the trail of the other magic. It guided him to the top floor. Right to the hatch that went up to the attic, precisely. Chains and large planks of wood nailed to the very ceiling blocked the opening. There was drumming against it: kicks and assaults of raw magic. Nothing seemed to make them move. Harry’s blood boiled. They trapped a kid in the attic! They abandoned him with an air raid ongoing!

All tools were scattered, left behind after they achieved the dirty work. Harry grabbed a crowbar and stabbed it fiercely into the boards.

“Step back!” Harry shouted to be heard even with the chaos running wild.

Some planks clattered on the floor, but before Harry could remove more of them, the roar of flame burst around him. A fire was spreading from the floors below, it was already devouring the stairs and rushing towards Harry.

Determined, and with a loud cough and tears in his eyes, Harry propped a hand up toward the hatch. Every pinch of his magic was projected in a blast that sent away the last planks of wood.

The hatch was thrown open.

Before Harry’s legs could give out, someone grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and hoisted him into the attic. The burning heat of the fire still licked Harry’s back as he laid on the wood floor. Tom’s face hovered in his vision. His dark eyes still reflected his deep cold fury at being trapped.

“You’re here,” Tom said, his voice hoarse, faintly surprised. “That makes things easier…”

He takes the crowbar Harry had kept and rushed into the depths of the attic. Harry got up just in time to see Tom hit the only round window. The glass broke on the first try. Harry approached quickly, his legs shaky. Both were breathless, staring into the void. 

“No other choice.”

“Why didn’t you do that earlier?” Harry asked, not sure if his body could still work after a fall from the roof of the orphanage.

Tom glared at him. “I am wondering about the same thing now. ”

Then, before Harry could answer, Tom managed to push him over the window. Maybe he cried out in his fall, but in any case the impact took his breath away. About twenty meters below, the ground was as soft as a sponge, and prevented Harry from ending up smashed like a bug on a windshield. He recognized the faint purple halo of a Softening spell.

He barely straightened when Tom fell beside him. Harry agreed that Tom deserved his victorious smile: the kid easily earned his genius title. Even without having been to Hogwarts, he was performing first-year spells without a wand or knowing the incantation—as if transfiguring the ground was not already enough of a feat.

“You pushed me!” Harry accused suddenly.

“Someone had to try,” Tom said, shameless.

“It’s the first time you did this?!”

Tom shrugged but his back tensed. “Really? If you didn’t notice—”

The roof of the orphanage collapsed, interrupting what Tom was saying. Both boys stayed silent for a bit, watching, entranced as Wool's graveyard orphanage burnt. It was a distant explosion that made them look away. Tom dismissed his magic from the ground, gripped Harry’s sleeve, and started to run.

Harry realized the raid had caught everyone by surprise. In the street, British soldiers directed panicked civilians to the nearest Underground entrance.

“The Leaky Cauldron is too far!” Harry screamed between two other explosions. “We’ll be a pile of burning limbs before reaching it.”

“There, they will find us!” Tom argued as they passed a gate for the tube.

Tom was right about that… Harry didn’t want to imagine what would happen if Mrs. Cole caught them again. Maybe she would think that the air raid was their fault?

“It won’t stop until morning! We have to take refuge for the rest of the night underground.”

Tom took a deep breath, as his eyelid twitched over his suspicious gaze. “All night? … The next station then.”

Running in the street full of holes and rubble was tiresome. Many times, Harry steadied Tom so he did not stumble. After a corner they fell to a deeper level of Hell. Beside screams, explosions and roars of fire, there was another new sound: gun shots.

Tom swallowed loudly. “Peverell … don’t look down …”

Unfortunately, Harry had already seen. He gripped Tom’s wrist more firmly and led the way this time. “You too. We should hurry, we can’t stay here.”

They were hugging the walls, so soldiers without British uniforms couldn’t see them. Several times, they narrowly missed being crushed by falling debris. They survived this thanks to Harry’s overdeveloped reflexes and Tom’s virtually inexhaustible reserves of magic.

“Is the next station near?” Harry asked in a hasty whisper, after another piece of concrete almost reduced their brains to mush.

“Only a few more streets.”

When they rounded another corner, they fell face to face with a group of armed men. They asked something in German, but without any prompt answer they pointed their guns at the boys. At this moment Harry saw the short—really short—compilation of this life.

Time seemed to pause: Harry pushed Tom back and jumped forward, his hands held in front of him radiating with the golden flickers of a Shield Charm. Bullets crashed against the barrier in a deafening sound. Harry’s vision swam with white dots.

The shield broke with a last bullet, which pierced Harry’s skin. The pain and the impact made him stumble. In his last moment of clarity, he threw a last glance at Tom, still behind him. The other boy’s eyes widened when they landed on Harry’s bloodied chest. In the dusk of his dark gaze, emotions burst like a supernova in the cosmos. With a howl of wind, terrifying shadows erupted : here to make the night of everyone a nightmare. The darkness in the shape of giant snakes lunged at the throats of the men. Monstrous jaws snapped their necks with large gushes of blood and a dreadful noise of broken bones. Men fell heavily to the ground like puppets whose strings were severed.

Tom gasped, hands on his knees, his face broken into sweats. Harry gripped a wall to not sway, he was almost missing Voldemort and his predictable Unforgivable… Then, he realized that all his confrontations with the past Dark Lord had been just child’s play! For fuck’s sake his eleven-year-old counterpart had just killed five men without a wand or magical education!

“Tell me they’re dead,” Tom wheezed, trying to catch his breath.

“Can’t be more dead than that...” Harry winced when he contracted his lungs to speak.

Tom hurried to the fallen soldiers and searched their pockets. Well, Harry could add 'corpse robber' to his long list of Tom’s qualities. Everything that held any tiny monetary value was kept, but, when Tom found a knife, he used it immediately to cut the soldier’s clothes. Now, his hands full of rags, he threw them to Harry.

“Press on your wound to stop the blood flow,” he commanded, as he looked one last time at the bodies, to be sure he had already taken every interesting object.

Harry didn’t have the strength to protest, so he did what Tom had said. Once the soldiers cleared of all valuables, Tom approached Harry, and brushed away the gory rags. His face grew paler, and his eyes circled between Harry’s chest and face several times. They went from wide open to suspiciously squirming.

“Can you walk?” he asked, his voice tense.

“Yeah … fine.”

For the first few meters, Harry continued to keep his balance thanks to the walls, but Tom had enough. He flung Harry’s arm on his shoulder to speed up the pace.

“… Are you alright?”

Tom’s jaw throbbed. “No.”

“They were going to shoot us down, we just defended ourselves—”

“I don’t care about that bunch of bastards! ” Tom hissed with his magic pulsing threateningly around him. “This-You! I—”

The perfectly composed young Tom Riddle struggled to find his words. Harry laughed. A miserable small thing in this riotous chaos, but Harry sensed Tom’s grip grow stronger.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” Harry said humourlessly after a bit.

“Don’t push me. I haven’t yet abandoned your corpse to rot because I may still need you for my plans.”

“If you say so…” Harry mused.

“I mean it.” Tom took a deep breath and sighed. “But even if I did that … you wouldn’t die, would you?”

Harry frowned. He followed Tom’s eyes and held up the rags to look closer at his wound. Suddenly, he realized that something vital was missing inside his body: a drumming beat. The first peek of immortality seen by Tom, or the proof of Harry’s abyssal stupidity.

“That…” Harry swallowed—hard. “That doesn’t hurt as much as you might think.”

Tom stopped walking and began to laugh. It started as a faint chuckle, but it became madder and madder. “And-And… You don’t lie! You never lie —”

“Tom! Please, stop!”

His maddened laughter abruptly stopped. “Say it again.”

“W-What?!”

“My name. In our tongue.” Tom’s face hovered near Harry’s, a dangerous glint in his dark gaze. Something feral—

“We don’t have time! We need to get the hell out of here!”

They shared a breath. Tom was about to reply, but another explosion made both boys rock hard on their feet. They sprinted until the Underground gates emerged in their views. As they went down in the near darkness by the steel stairs of the escalator, Tom whispered, “you will tell me everything.”

Chapter Text

"I've had so many knives stuck into me,

when they hand me a flower I can't quite

make out what it is."

Dark times reveal both the best and the worst in people. Someone had taken an old gramophone with them to play soft music in the underground. It was comforting … while it lasted. The owner of the gramophone and another man got into an altercation, where the other man found no recourse other  than to smash the device on the floor.
 
Meanwhile, Harry and Tom jumped on the subway rails to flee the station and sink into the tunnels. They only stopped to rest once the light of the station became a small white dot in the darkness of the subways. If they hid there no one would come to disturb them.

Tom would sometimes create tiny wisps with his magic to light up their surroundings. They would float for a few moments in the air like bright silver snowflakes.
 
“Tell me how. In detail. Right now.” Harry groaned as Tom touched the bloody hole in his chest. “Does magic make me invulnerable too?”

“Err… Magic can do a lot of things. But not this. It has its own laws and limits.” Harry closed his eyes to think clearly. “In short, if you get shot in the heart like I did, don’t expect to be able to breathe again.”

“So why you, and not me?” Tom pointed out with an angry frown and his voice laced with jealousy.

Harry chuckled. “Poor life choices, I guess?”
 
Harry licked his dry lips and tried to summon the bullet out. He felt something move in his chest, and a sharp hiss of pain escaped his throat. Yeah, he’d rather suffer than focus on the riot of his thoughts. He was rushing into an existential breakdown, wondering if he’d become the new catalyst for Tom’s obsessive behavior toward death.
 
“You don’t die, but you feel pain,” Tom noted, his head cocked to the side, as if he were looking at the most fascinating sight on earth right now.
 
This time, Tom extended his own magic to graze the wound. Shadows followed the lava stream of Harry’s magic around the silent heart, and searched inside for all the answers Tom didn’t have. Without warning, the bullet made its way out. It was propelled at full speed and hit the opposite wall. Harry bit his fist to stifle his pain-filled scream.
 
“I need to understand something,” Tom continued as if nothing had happened, “you didn’t pass out this time. So why—”

Harry swore. “That bloody hurt! You could have warned me!”

"You were hesitant. I only helped.”
 
And like any other human being devoid of empathy, this idiot just smirked. His ability to cover himself behind a service rendered to inflict pain on others was beyond Harry. It left him dumbfounded.
 
“Don’t do that again,” Harry grumbled.

Tom ignored him. “Why did you black out at church? I saw you struggling with the priest. Did he hit you on the head? Because I assumed that even if you do not require a beating heart, you do actually need a brain.”
 
Harry blinked. He visualized himself with a half open skull, still able to walk like a zombie. He made a mental note to tell Death about this issue… Just to be sure.
 
“I have a fairly good pain tolerance—” Harry saw Tom's gaze sweep across his scars with mixed feelings on his face. “There I tried something… And failed ’cause I asked far too much of myself. I was exhausted, from a magical standpoint.”

At that, Tom frowned and looked away. “… Yet, I felt your magic afterwards.”
 
“Well, think of it as an overheated engine. Magic never leaves us.” Harry laughed weakly as he spotted Tom’s figure coming closer, somewhat interested. He continued to babble, “remember when Dumbledore came? He used a wand. It supports our powers. Not many of us can wield our magic without it. It takes a lot of conditions and training—”

“Your parents. They had magic too. That’s how you can tell.”
 
A sad smile spread across Harry’s lips. He couldn’t help but hear the hint of jealousy and anger in Tom’s muffled hiss. “Yes … but they weren’t the ones who explained to me how our world worked. I never had a chance to meet them. Alive, at least.”
 
Tom fell silent, his bad mood oozing into the air. All the bright snowflakes he had created crashed to the ground one by one, deepening the darkness of the tunnel.

Harry searched for what he could do to cheer him up, but, as he moved to sit properly on the floor, the rustle of paper in his pocket reminded him of something.

“Lumos.”
 
The little ball of light flickered dimly. It hovered over Harry’s head as he held out the Hogwarts letter belonging to Tom. The other boy didn’t react immediately, so Harry explained, “When I was looking for you, I started in our room. Then I realized you weren’t going to get your stuff back like you planned and … anyway, take it. Tomorrow you’ll need it for our shopping trip.”
 
Tom’s eyes shone possessively, he tentatively reached out a hand but quickly retracted it. He squinted,  suspicious. “What do you want?”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“What. Do. You. Want. In. Exchange?” Tom insisted as if Harry was a complete fool.

"... Nothing?”

“No one gives something away for nothing. There’s always a price to pay.”
 
Harry’s blood boiled in his system. His ball of light flashed like a tiny sun. His anger was not directed at Tom, but towards the world. This world, which was never kind enough to a child and only taught him the hard way.
 
Screw you Dumbledore, Harry thought furiously as if his thought could reach the realm of Death or the current living professor. I’m going to do the right thing: feel sorry for Voldemort. I’m going to cry so hard for him that I can only comfort myself by using your fucking beard as a handkerchief!
 
How could people be surprised by the rise of a bloodthirsty Dark Lord if he’s always been treated like a monster?
 
“If it makes you happy to have it, then take it. It’s more than enough.”
 
Tom squinted and grabbed the letter as quickly as a snake striking its prey. He clutched it to his chest, looking defiantly at Harry to make sure he wouldn’t go back on his word. Harry said nothing, just smiled sadly.
 
He knew the emotional value of the first Hogwarts letter. After his first year, he had kept his with him every summer at the Dursleys, as if to have a physical reminder that it wasn’t all a dream. Or a hallucination caused by Dudley or Vernon hitting him too hard and putting him in a coma.
 
For the two orphans, magic was all they owned.
 
Harry watched the other boy read his letter again. He gently stroked the golden Hogwarts Express ticket, then focused on his school supply list. It was only by his furrowed brow that Harry guessed he had a problem.

“Is it the toad or the pointy hat that bothers you?” 

“Neither,” Tom answered quickly. And then after a long silence interrupted by a quiet sigh, he confided, “both… And the broomstick.”
 
Then tiny lights spread around them. Bright ice crystals hovering around the penny-sized sun Harry had created. In the dimmer light, Harry saw Tom’s pale skin begin to bloom with bruises on his face. There were also several cuts of varying depths on his hands.
 
“Come near me, please.” Harry patted the spot next to him with a smile.

Tom raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Just to fix you up.”

“I can do it myself.”

“Not properly,” Harry snorted. “The only healing magic you can do on yourself is to get some rest. Otherwise, it will only be superficial.”
 
With no movement from Tom, but his dark eyes fixed on him, Harry took this as an invitation to expound. Harry sighed, every pleasant thing was turning into something excessively complicated with Tom. He needed some time to find the right words.
 
“When someone else heals you, they add a little of their own magic into you. They make up for what the other person lacks,” Harry explained, using his quite limited knowledge of healing magic.

Limited specially because healing involved the realm of life… Although it was intrinsically related, it didn’t completely fit with his status as a Master of Death.
 
"... So, if you heal me, I will keep some of your magic in me?”
 
Harry checked the 'magpie-like' box on his list of Tom’s exquisite qualities.
 
He laughed weakly before answering, “pretty close. Yes.”

“Do it,” Tom ordered, as he hurriedly sat closer to Harry.
 
Slowly, Harry held out his hands to Tom. He didn’t comment on the fact that the boy flinched defensively at first. Even more slowly, Harry placed his hands on Tom’s hollow cheeks and he warned him, “the feeling is funny, but it’s normal.”
 
Then, when Tom nodded, Harry whispered the incantation, “episkey.” Immediately afterward, he felt his head spinning and his limbs tingling, but he saw Tom’s wounds disappear one by one.
 
He released Tom to lean his back heavily against the tunnel wall. His own magic was busy sealing the gap in his chest. Maybe healing Tom wasn’t the smartest choice? Too bad. Harry didn’t care and he certainly wouldn’t regret it. By tomorrow morning, he’ll be better.

“What does that mean?”

“Huh?”

“Ehpistkee. Or Luhmoos,” Tom repeated tentatively.
 
Harry found Tom’s acute curiosity both adorable and exhausting. He also couldn’t deny that the other boy was paying attention to every detail. Despite being exhausted, Harry cracked his neck to gather his last bit of strength and began correcting the pronunciation of the incantations. Then he would go on to a long lecture on the usefulness of spells. Judging by Tom’s attentive gaze, Harry couldn’t stop, so he continued. The subject of spells drifted to wands, then books, writing on parchment scrolls, and the horrible handwriting you get with your first try a quill… In the light they had created, Tom glowed with life, because Harry did more than making him dream. He promised him another world.
 

 
The next morning, they knew they had overslept because of the rumble of the tracks.
 
They quickly went from huddled together to upright. The lights they had created the night before had long since faded, so they screamed when they saw two huge headlights speeding towards  them.
 
Harry could see only one way to prevent the subway from crushing them. Even if it had already failed… He held on to Tom. He directed all his might at the Leaky Cauldron.
With the hook in place behind his navel, Harry allowed himself a split second to hope his body could handle the strain this time.
 
“Watch out! Hold on tight!”
 
They were pulled back. Tom yelped in surprise. And then they appeared in another place. Harry’s vision was blurry for a few seconds, but it was a miracle: he hadn’t passed out yet and managed to hold everyone’s limbs in place.
 
Tom staggered for a moment—his face was so pale you’d think he’d forgotten his blood underground—and before Harry saw it coming, Tom threw up on his shoes.
Well, if he still dared to become a Dark Lord after that, Harry would gladly blackmail him with that memory preserved in a Pensieve … if only future wars could be stopped by one innocent childhood memory. After all, hope brings life.
Tom continued to sway on his feet, almost on the verge of falling, so Harry rushed to support him.
 
He managed to croak, “Never again. Ever…”

“Woken up by the Tube? Totally agree.”
 
Harry let out a laugh as Tom grumbled out curses through clenched teeth. Harry was sparing the information that apparition was a common means of transportation for wizards… Tom would find out soon enough.
 
At first, Harry thought he had miscalculated. The street was totally different from the one he knew: the houses still in flames and the piles of rubble were a big part of it, but, after taking another look, he saw the much more familiar wooden sign of the Leaky Cauldron. He pointed it out so Tom could see it too.
 
“Everything is ruined here. How can you be sure it’s not the case on the wizarding side too?”

Harry shrugged. “Magic? Give it a try.”
 
Though Tom didn’t loosen the frown on his face—not really convinced— he took the lead and entered the inn first.
 
Inside, unlike the street, everything was exactly as Harry remembered. Even if the Leaky Cauldron he knew was fifty years in the future … the timeline sometimes gave him headaches. Anyway! As always, the Leaky remained small, dingy and welcoming! Nothing had changed, except for a much younger version of Tom the bartender. He threw a tight smile at the two boys, pity softening the corners of his eyes. Yes, those two were probably not a pretty sight. While Tom was full of soot and gore, dressed in his ragged Sunday clothes;  Harry had his too-small shoes full of vomit and a ravaged chest… Definitely not a pleasant picture to behold.
 
Suddenly, the warm air of the inn felt like an arctic breeze as a woman stood up and rushed towards them. Harry’s jaw dropped to the floor.
 
This woman was the perfect embodiment of a Pureblood who was halfway between a mother drowning in grief after losing her child at birth and a bride found hanging after the groom left her at the altar on her wedding day. All this was enhanced by a dusty and precious Victorian fashion style; her face veiled by a richly ornamented mourning lace which only revealed her lips painted in a deep red.
 
“Harry!” Death screamed in a tide of ruffles and lace.
 
The woman’s body grabbed Harry to lift him off the ground and spin him around in a tight, bone-crushing embrace, exactly the same force a mother would use when she found her child after he had been missing for years. Death was in a maternal mood, right? It’s not something common, but it’s not unheard of. Harry could deal with that. It was disconcerting at first, but now—especially now—he welcomed it warmly.
 
“Hands off,” came the slow warning behind Death, who continued to strangle Harry with her affection. Harry choked on his own saliva because of Tom and his gall to tell Death anything.
 
Without releasing her grip, Death stopped spinning around. She leaned down to Tom’s eye level, with a very sweet smile on her lips—no one is strong enough to resist Death in this mood— “and you are a sweet little threat, aren’t you?” she cooed softly.
 
Tom’s eyes went wide, his mouth closed, and he… blushed. “I’m not—!” He glanced frantically at Harry, but he didn’t notice, too busy hiding his face and laughter in Death’s icy neck.
 
'Sensitive to Death’s praise,' box checked.
 
The immortal being held Harry’s scrawny body in one of her arms and placed a feather-light hand on Tom’s shoulder, to guide them into the booth she previously occupied.
 
She presented them with a key. “Harry, I have something to tell you about today … but first, both of you, get comfortable. A shower, fresh clothes, a little more sleep if you want. Take your time and come back here when you feel like eating.”
 
See? Mother hen. Harry gave Death a peck on the cheek, picked up the key, and gently slipped out of her embrace. He was ready to run for a shower, but Tom stood frozen in place, staring at Death with an indecipherable expression… Harry could describe it as shocked. He grabbed Tom’s hand and dragged him to their room. Closing the door behind them was the counterspell that broke Tom’s daze.

He shook his head, his eyes still wide. “Who is she?!”

“An old friend.”

Harry threw off his shirt, and saw that his chest had not a trace of the bullet wound. His own magic couldn’t have fixed that overnight. There was only one person left who could have done this.

“You healed me?” asked Harry, a tad stunned.

“Yes. Only to practice.” After that, Tom made a tactical retreat into the bathroom.

Harry rolled his eyes. “If you say so…”
 
He sat down on one of the beds and tossed his shoes in the same corner where his shirt laid in a ball. He vowed never to wear anything gray again—including in the lives that would follow this one.
 
When Harry opened his eyes again, he assumed he had fallen asleep, because Tom was already washed and wearing a fresh set of wizard’s clothes.

Wait a minute. “What exactly are you doing?”

Tom didn’t move his hand away from Harry’s chest. “I am feeling your heartbeat again.”
 
If someone had told Harry that there would be a day when Voldemort would seem to appreciate that he was alive… Harry got up, found some fresh clothes, and walked out of the room to take a well-deserved shower. After that, Harry came out of the bathroom drying his hair so as not to wet the clothes he was wearing. Tom watched him for a long time from the threshold of their room, a deep frown pinching his lips.
 
“Is everything okay?”

“No.” Tom’s scowl deepens. “That’s what I thought…”

“What?”

“Your face.”

“What about my face?” Harry frowned as he placed a hand on his own cheek.

“It’s better with blood on it.”
 
He turned and walked through the door back to the busiest floor of the Cauldron where Death was waiting for them, a scowl still on his lips, obviously very displeased. Was this … a threat? Or just the kind of compliment that only Tom and his twisted mind could make? Harry didn’t have the answer, and he wasn’t about to look for it now.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

"Charm me. Furiously.

Torment me. In detail."

There was a soothing quality in sinking into the shelves of Flourish and Blotts. Apart from the chaos of the main area, where the editions needed by the students were stored, the rest of the aisles were silent. Surely isolated by a Silencing Charm, so the other customers couldn't be affected by the cries of teenagers—totally ecstatic about their summer and the imminent return to Hogwarts.

Harry found Tom with his nose buried in a third year edition of Defense Against the Dark Arts. Either way, Harry wasn't surprised. What intrigued him was that, around Tom, there was no basket or any other purchase.

Harry handed him an ice cream from Florean Fortescue's, a little something picked up on the way to celebrate the good news from Gringott's. “Still haven't bought your supplies yet?”

Without looking up from his reading, Tom raised his wrist. The loose sleeve of his robe rolled up to his elbow and exposed his holstered wand. Not having finished growing yet, the tip of Tom's wand protruded several centimetres until it reached the beginning of his fingers.

"That's all?... Wait. How did you get the holster?" 

The dragon hide used for crafting is incredibly expensive, but the biggest cost of this item is the enormous charm inventory applied to it, thus making them resistant to invocations, to any damage, and to the wear and tear of time. It was usually a gift given to mark the end of studies at Hogwarts—something that Harry had never been able to do. Of all his many lives, he had chosen to never return and study there; the memory of the Great hall being used to line up the fallen during the Battle of Hogwarts still haunted him.

Tom allowed himself a few more lines of reading before closing his book. He leaned against one of the shelves, judged the ice cream up and down, then rubbed his eyelids in exasperation.

He hissed something in Parseltongue, something Harry could barely decipher as, 'Great, I'll have to sell it now.' Then he would move his hand away from his eyes and speak more clearly, "Olivander gave it to me. Where is your friend?"

"Uh ok...? I asked her to run an errand for me. So why haven't you bought anything yet besides your wand?"

"Why? Because plans have changed. We're staying at the Leaky Cauldron. A room costs a few Sickles a week. Between the two of us—" He glared hatefully at the ice cream. "We'll have just enough to stay here until the start of the school year if we use our scholarships from Hogwarts."

Originally, the plan consisted of two steps: move quickly at Diagon Alley to get their school supplies. Then, afterwards, they would bury themselves deep in the countryside in order to flee the conflict that was taking place in the cities. At the time, the plan suited their magical and financial limitations when they were still at the orphanage, but now... everything had changed.

"Don't you want to start with the ice cream first? You're melting it just by the way you look at it."

When Harry saw one of Tom's eyelids twitch, he knew what to expect—that included the sudden darkness that hung over the bookstore shelf.

"Are you doing this on purpose? I'm telling you that we barely have enough money for a room here and you use your money—not even for your school supplies, but for ice cream! Are you just stupid or careless?"

Harry shrugged off the insult. "Maybe both, who knows? In the meantime I have it now, and can't get a refund. Eat, I'm sure it will do you good considering how grumpy you are..."

"You're infuriating," Tom said with a long suffering sigh.

"Eat it… Or I will."

Tom glared at Harry, but grabbed the ice cream, grumbling, "you and your nonsense ."

Harry waited for Tom to stop glaring at him and take a few bites. Harry's cheeks were getting sore from the uncontrollable smile that stretched across his lips.

He resumed, "the book you were reading, is it interesting?"

Bringing up the subject of the books seemed to soften Tom a bit. "Very. The ones introducing the basics of potions are too…" He trailed off and his shoulders slumped slightly. "I memorized as much as I could—"

Harry interrupted, "take them."

"I have already told you, we don't have enough..." Tom's eyes sharpened. " Would you know how to steal them? "

"What! No! I'll buy them!"

The other boy raised an eyebrow as he took another bite of his ice cream, as if asking Harry to elaborate. At this point, Harry couldn't contain his smile anymore. He took out of his pocket a bag from Gringotts filled with galleons and displayed it gloriously in front of Tom... who choked on his ice cream. His next reaction was... well, surprising?

He let the book and his ice cream fall on the floor, summoned his wand in hand and dragged Harry out of the bookshop at full speed. "I told you not to do anything stupid without me! Damn it, Peverell!"

"But I didn't do anything!" cried Harry taken aback.

" 'Cause for you rob the same bank again is not totally stupid?!"

"Riddle!" cried Harry who continued to run, dragged by force. "Riddle, stop! Damn it!—Please! Stop! Tom! "

The effect was immediate. Tom stopped dead in his tracks. How he had managed to lead them so quickly in the middle of Knockturn Alley remained a mystery.

"This money is mine. It belongs to me. Not because I stole it!" Harry was panting, his heart racing. "Do you understand? We can take and buy what we want. Even go where we want! Everything is fine."

Tom's face remained frozen in the same expression of bewilderment. Exactly as shocked as when he first met Death.

To prove his point, Harry reached into one of his robe's pockets and pulled out two small golden keys. "Look! Do you know what this is?"

"Keys. From Gringotts." Tom recognized the bank crest, but didn't say openly that he didn't know how that explained anything.

"I didn't know that I met a certain condition to inherit an atrocious sum of money. Not from my parents, but from an ancestor. Now it belongs to me. One of these keys opens my new vault, which contains a part of this inheritance."

Tom took a sharp breath. "And the other one? What does it open?"

Harry held out the concerned key. "Yours."

A beat of silence. "Mine?" repeated Tom hoarsely. “I don't have a vault.”

"Now, yes. I've put some money aside for you. I wanted to make sure you would never have to go back to Wool—"

"It's destroyed," Tom said dryly.

"Not for long. I asked my old friend if she could find a contractor who could rebuild it fast enough with a bunker there the kids—"

"Do you feel sorry for them?" Tom growled, "do you feel pity for me too? Is that the reason for the money? I don't need it if it's because you're crying over my life Peverell!"

Unlike all the other times Tom had been angry, his fury was not cold. It was hot, furious. Emotional. It shot through the atmosphere without sparing Harry, who felt contaminated by it.

Tom retraced his steps, at Harry's level he shoved him with his shoulder. This was too much, the straw that broke the camel's back. 

"Riddle!" Harry screamed at the top of his lungs. "You don't seem to want to understand that  human beings can be nice! For you, everything comes with a price! So take that money because that's what I owe you!"

Tom wasn't slowing his steps, but his shoulders tensed. "You owe me nothing!"

"Oh yeah, really?" Harry retorted sarcastically. "Because as far as I know, you're the one who closed the damn hole in my chest. Am I wrong? Are you not the one who constantly makes my heart beat?"

Tom suddenly turned to Harry, his eyes slightly wide.

"What! You thought I wouldn't know? If my heart stops, it's final."

Because he didn't need it. Death's magic was enough to make his body function as if nothing had happened. What Tom was doing was an impressive spell work. A heart massage that worked all the time thanks to the constant supply of some of Tom's magic. A genius sprinkled with magical ability that was beyond comprehension.

"I don't—I didn't…"

"You're not going to admit it? Alright. So what? You're also going to claim that you killed those soldiers just for fun? Coming from you that would be almost believable—"

"They shot you right in front of me!" cried Tom. "At the church I thought I had already seen you dead once and I didn't hesitate to burn the priest's face. Why should I have stopped myself from doing worse to them than that?!"

"Shit!" Harry gasped in shock. "Is that why they locked you up? "

Tom's eyes flashed wildly. "And? If I had to do it again, I wouldn't change anything…If only to see that jerk screaming again." He paused for a moment to look away. As if to find a way to ground himself in reality, he gripped his wand tighter. "When the air raid started, you had already been unconscious for two days. They weren't coming for me... So, I knew they wouldn't get you out of there either— "

Harry interrupted him by hugging him. Something that contrasted all of these screams. It was comforting. Tom remained frozen in his arms, totally still, his breath cut off.

"Why don't you want to see that we just care about each other?" Harry whispered.

"No," he croaked. "I just need you to…" his voice died, at a loss for words to add. "I don't. I really don't care."

"If you don't, I do. I care about you."

Tom grew even stiffer in Harry's arms. "Peverell. Don't be weak. "

"This is not a weakness and I will prove you wrong… Not now. Not tomorrow. But one day, you'll see."

Harry moved away without completely detaching himself. In front of Tom, he showed the key to the vault he had opened for him and slipped it into Tom's robe pocket. "Keep it. A reminder of why I gave it to you until that day comes." 

The rest of the day passed in near silence.

Without consulting each other, they began to buy their school supplies. Harry wondered if he'd pushed things too far when he saw that Tom preferred to bury himself in his silence rather than ask him questions about what they were buying.

Sometimes, Harry would try to explain why this ingredient was useful, or how this trunk would be useful to Tom with its special compartment fitted to hold a whole library as large as the one at Hogwarts... But nothing worked, Tom only answered each time with a vague nod and went to occupy himself elsewhere. It was even reflected in his magic. A distant shadow that loomed close to Harry without him being able to reach it. The only good thing about his behaviour was that he didn't protest when Harry took charge of paying.

On his way out of Madam Malkin's Dresses for All Occasions—clothes were a family affair for the Malkins obviously, for there he met the mother of the Madam Malkin he knew in the 90’s— Harry saw in the distance a warm orange light illuminating the sign decorated with hanging Quaffles. He was curious to see the broomsticks from that era. Since they had finished their shopping, he suggested that Tom meet him at the inn after he had had a look around the store, but Tom continued his silence and refused, still shaking his head vaguely.

Maybe Harry liked him better when he was angry. But he was willing to give him the time he needed to digest what they had talked about. He was even willing to admit that he didn't approach the conversation with finesse...

The interior of the Quidditch store smelled of new leather and wood wax. The wooden floor creaked pleasantly under their footsteps, Harry could also hear a crowd cheering for a point scored from a radio that was broadcasting a game. Seeing the brooms on display, Harry rushed to get a closer look. He grabbed a CleanSweep and judged it more closely.

"So... wizards really do fly on brooms?" 

Harry flinches, unprepared to hear Tom's voice. The broom flew out of his hand and took the rest of the models on display with it.

In a moment of sheer panic, Harry forgot his magic. He rushed to catch the brooms before a domino effect occurred—and also, before the manager could ban him from the store. Harry quickly grabbed the fleeing brooms by their handles, stopping them dead in their tracks and in their potential devastation of the store. He breathed a sigh of relief, his arms full of brooms. Disaster was averted. Or not…

"I saw you! I've seen it all!" Came the booming voice of the manager.

Harry swallowed as he heard the floorboards suddenly creak much more eerily than when they entered the store. From the end of the aisle came a paunchy man with a smile that was more appropriate when you hit the jackpot than when you have a kid wrecking your store.

"Haven't seen anything like this since Llwellyn released a Bludger and caught him jumping over my counter! Look, now he's playing for the Caerphilly Catapults. I have an eye for this kind of thing, kid. And let me tell you that: you're fast. Fast as hell!"

"Thanks...?" Harry mumbled, as the stares of the other patrons began to fall on him.

"What are you? A first year? Wait. Don't move. We can't let the potential go to waste—"

The manager's words were lost on the crowd that was swarming around them as he turned back to his counter.

An uneasy feeling crept up on Harry. Really, at that moment, the store, so welcoming, seemed too narrow and suffocating. He got rid of the brooms and turned to Tom. The dark eyes studied Harry's expression for a brief second before acting. "

'Scuse us, sir!"

He wrapped his hand around Harry's wrist and led him quickly to the exit, splitting the crowd without regard to the scandalized gasps behind him as he shoved people out of his way like a rude child. 

"I hear our parents calling us!" Tom pushed Harry out and poked his head through the door one last time. "We'll come back later!"

With that, they took long strides away from the hustle and bustle of Diagon Alley to the main public area of the Cauldron. Harry dropped like he was made of lead onto a vacant booth seat away from the noisy bar.

After breathing deeply for a while, he got rid of his glasses to massage his eyelids. "I hate crowds."

"I noticed..."

Harry had a faint exhausted laugh. What could escape Tom and his big genius brain to begin with? 

"With strangers around you, you behave strangely. Just like your magic. It becomes volatile... Ready to fight. "

Harry opened his eyes again, and Tom took his place facing him. Even without his glasses, Harry could clearly see Tom's sharp eyes.

"You have a lot of secrets," he hissed conspiratorially, leaning forward. "So many that I'll need to raid the stationery store to get enough miles of parchment to list everything."

"What? Being undead isn't enough for you?"

Tom pointed an accusing finger at Harry. "That. That's when I'm digging where I shouldn't. Your damn humor to deflect the conversation."

In response, Harry covered part of his face with the back of his hand. Exposing his own chicken scratch handwriting scarred into his skin where it read, ‘I must not tell lies’.

"Who knew? Being cursed develops the wit" 

Tom had a spasm in his jaw, as if he was holding back very hard from biting something. He glared at the menu of the Cauldron. He pulled out his wand and with a sharp tap on it sent an order to the kitchen.

"I'll lie for the both of us then," he hissed.

Harry sighed. He knew what that meant. "Don't offer this to me expecting a counterpart. Instead, tell me directly what you want."

"What I want?" asked Tom. He leaned closer to Harry after a pause. "To inspect you like clockwork. Take apart your entire mechanism piece by piece. Find out how your gears tick." And then, he smirked. "Is that possible?"

Harry was silent for a moment, inwardly praying that Tom was only speaking figuratively. "You really don't want to ask me instead?"

Tom frowned with his sharp, suspicious black eyes. "Fine. Do you know why Olivander gave me the holster? 'Cause a family was before me. When I heard the Wandmaker mention the wood and the core, I realized that you had given me the component parts of my wand—" At this he unconsciously stroked the latter. "The right ones on top of that. How did you even know?"

Harry was cleaning his glasses in his robe to save time. His thoughts were racing again as he wondered if he would also be Tom's new trigger with his obsession with prophecies and divination—as if the whole death thing wasn't enough.

Putting on his glasses, Harry said, "I've said it before. I just know a lot of things."

Tom grunted and his hand tightened around his wand. No doubt eager to test all his new curses that he had learned earlier in the day. "I hate you. You and your half-truths."

"Cursed. Remember?"

"If I were you, I would be very careful about asking me to remember anything," Tom said in a low threatening voice. "I can memorize a whole shelf of books without any trouble, so just imagine the day when I get tired of what you're hiding from me? That day I'll drown you. Dip you so deep under all the little revelations you've accidentally dropped that you won't even be able to breathe ."

According to Harry, all the bookworms in the world suddenly became much more dangerous. He jerked back in his seat as the ordered plates appeared on their table. For good measure, Tom stabbed his meat and arched an eyebrow at Harry, daring him to retaliate.

Harry pulled out his wand…and ordered lavender tea from the menu. What he had promised himself if he got out of Gringott's alive. His nerves were worn out.

"Did Olivander tell you that you were destined to achieve great things?"

Wary, Tom responded only with a nod.

"There. That's the point. Between the day I talked about and the day you're actually speaking about, you need to hope that mine comes before yours."

"What if it's the other way around? If I pierce your secrets before... I refuse to say such nonsense," he hissed irritatedly. He cut a piece of his meat and chewed it fiercely, giving Harry a death glare. "How could proving that you care about me be so important? What happens if you don't make it before I put my finger on the truth?"

Harry's tea appeared before him, but this time he didn't flinch. His intensely green eyes plunged into those that would one day turn red. The smell of lavender wafted across their table as Tom's meat dripped with blood.

"Things will happen...terrible things."

"And you think you can stop them from happening?"

"No. I've been warned that I can't stop them occurring, unfortunately... But I keep hoping I can. Or, at least, that I can prevent the worst."

Tom stood still for several moments, his thoughtful gaze remaining in Harry's. "And these terrible things, I'm the main one responsible for them," he deduced. "What I can't figure out is the connection between that, what you're hiding from me, and the fact that you're trying to prove to me that you mean well."

Harry linked his hands around his cup. The lenses of his glasses were fogged with condensation from the tea, making the green of his eyes misty. Ghostly.

"There will be times when you are lost. And every time, it will be me who finds you." Around them, the sounds of the inn seemed to have fallen silent. The smell of lavender turned to that of mold and the liquid filmed with frost. "Times when you'll need to remind yourself that the only weakness is refusing to be helped. And I'll be there for that, in the times when you need it the most."

A bone-chilling coldness announced Death's arrival. Without the two boys giving her a glance she settled down beside Harry. When she put a hand on Harry's shoulder, he knew it was time. He instinctively raised the Deathstick and pointed it at Tom. The pupils of his dark eyes narrowed, as if in imminent danger.

Death's other hand curled around Harry's hand on the handle of his wand. She leaned into his ear and whispered, "if you think this is the way you want to take... Then do it. Do it now."

Harry pointed his own wand in the direction of his own face.

"What are you doing?!" Tom suddenly cried out.

"Dying, Tom ."

"What?! No, you can't! I forbid you to die!"

"Oh? Do you? Try me."

Tom leapt to his feet, his arm already outstretched to dispossess Harry of his wand, but a green spell drowned the Cauldron in its light.

The sparks of the deadly spell glowed in Harry's green, unearthly eyes as he winked at Tom. With a last breath he whispered, "we'll meet again."

In the general panic no one saw Harry's body slump on the table, and Tom's face turn livid as Death disappeared with a laugh and the corpse of her master.

Tom did not move. A child lost among the uncontrollable flow of customers who jostled to reach the exit. He remained motionless, an equally uncontrollable flow of emotions tearing at his chest. He didn't understand, everything had happened too fast! He didn't hallucinate Peverell's existence! ... But there was nothing left. No evidence.

Even his cup was gone. Just like his trunk containing his belongings that he had bought today and kept miniaturized on him. Or his wand. Really, it was as if Peverell had never existed.

This must be one of his tasteless jokes, Tom thought. Not a funny joke as usual. He abandoned his plate, his appetite strangely suppressed.

That night, Tom did not sleep a wink. He spent it watching the door of their room, waiting for a trickle of light to penetrate the darkness and reveal Harry's scrawny figure in the crack.

When the July dawn cradled the room, Tom still believed that Harry would return with a smile so big that it would distort the scar on his cheek, eye and forehead.

"Harry can't die," he said as he walked back into Diagon Alley. "He must be hidden."

In the alley of stores, a hand clutched Tom's shoulder. The owner of the quidditch store. He too remembered Harry. He too was looking for him. He was dragging Tom inside to try to get more information, he was worried about the news that was spreading: rumors about a terrible accident that had happened at the Cauldron.

"No, nothing happened," Tom denied as he looked at the exposed brooms that Harry had managed to catch before they escaped. "Nothing happened. Really nothing happened at the Cauldron."

"Well, if you say so...These are the latest models. Your friend would make an excellent seeker. I'm willing to give you a discount if you buy one as a gift."

Tom's expression darkened. "I don't have any—" He paused.

The hand in his pocket found something there. He was pulling out the key Harry had slipped into it.

Tom would grab a broom. When it was time to pay, the manager would tell him to ask Harry to stop by the store so they could talk.

Tom nodded and clutched the craft-wrapped broom like a lifeline. "He'll be back. He promised me we'd meet again."

Amid the shock and his denial, there was something else. Something Tom couldn't quite name. Harry's absence was digging deep into his chest. Tom was trying to figure out how to name the regret. The regret of another's life extinguished before his eyes.

Chapter Text

Winter will end, spring will return.

The small pestering breezes

that I so loved, the idiot yellow flowers—

Spring will return, a dream

based on a falsehood:

that the dead return.*

The ghostly King Cross station welcomed Harry. For him, dying had become as common as going home, but one detail made him pause: the absence of Death. Usually, the immortal was there for his arrival—Harry never thought he would ever develop a sort of quasi-domestic relationship with Death.

He didn't stay long thinking about this change in their habits, because a sudden warmth in his hand caught his attention. In the palm of his hand, he found the soul fragment that seemed to lose its light with each additional second.

Was it possible that the fragment was destroying itself or...? Harry panicked. He looked around, searching for an answer. His eyes stopped on his other hand as he realized that his wand had followed him into Death's realm. Upon spotting it, a flash of memories about the Horcruxes and their containers rushed through his thoughts, providing him with the solution. Willing to risk any consequences, he locked the soul fragment in the Resurrection Stone. The solution would remain temporary, he could not afford to leave the soul in one of the Hallows.

The stone embedded in the handle of his wand made it buzz, the sensation reminding Harry of a snorting dog. After it seemed to accommodate the extra passenger, it stood still for a few seconds; then with Harry's hand still clasped around its handle, it suddenly pulled. Hard. Harry stumbled on his immaterial legs, but followed the direction his wand pointed. He left the King Cross replica behind and went into Limbo.

He knew he could slow down when he saw the huge, squelletic figure of Death in the distance, talking to another wandering soul.

At their level, the woman's voice became more audible to Harry, "they have always been there!"

"Don't be afraid, Merope. Nothing will happen to them."

Hearing the woman's name, Harry let his jaw hang in surprise. Tom's mother. He tried to muster up a good-natured smile, but it faltered when Merope's crossed eyes fell on him. The woman gave off a fierce look that would make a pack of werewolves run away with their tails between their legs.

"I don't know what you want exactly, but I've got my eye on you," she threatened before disappearing.

Well, Tom can always brag that he didn't inherit his immensely friendly nature from his father's side.

Death savored one last blood-curdling laugh as they rubbed their hands together, causing the bones of their knuckles to click against each other, "I think they got that from Cadmus, he was always arrogant enough not to fear me." They turned their empty eye sockets toward Harry. "The next one isn't far away." They pointed in the direction and they walked side by side. "Coming back to the mortal world was... how can I describe that?... Hum, entertaining? Oh yes. Very interesting."

Harry slowed his pace to better scrutinize Death, he didn't expect his friend to find anything fun. "It's unexpected that you would appreciate humanity."

"Appreciate? You're wrong. I like life, old friend. I love it so much that I'm always the last one to accompany it on its last breath. I am the rest after the trials, the soothing after the suffering, and the end for a new beginning... Knowing this, do you still think I don't love life?"

"I didn't mean to upset you," Harry apologized, a little ashamed that he hadn't considered that perspective.

Death clapped their bony hands together. "Perfect! Then you won't mind if I continue to follow you into the mortal realm?"

Harry had just been tricked. He came to a complete stop. "What? No!—"

"No objections? I knew you'd see my point. I've already got it covered!" Death resumed their steps, their hand resting between Harry's shoulder blades, urging him to move forward in concert. "Time is running out! We are already late. Perhaps if we hurry we can get there just a week later?"

Completely baffled by the total change of subject, Harry tried to reattach the wagons by asking, "what did we miss?"

"The murder of Myrtle Warren," Death announced. "Our dear Tom committed it much sooner than we expected. Hence our delay."

"... Do you think I could have prevented it?" asked Harry, unsure.

"Some events are just bound to happen. All you can do is deal with the consequences."

"Maybe I should have killed him after all," Harry said reluctantly, with mixed emotions on his face.

Death was silent for a few moments. Their voices became cautious, " It s little too late to regret your choice. You' ve already chosen the long road of patience... but I thought you understood that at the Cauldron."

"Yes, I did! Well... I mean... " Harry tried to explain, and no matter how immaterial his body was, his cheeks darkened as if he was blushing from the rashness of his actions. "Well okay! Not really! but I acted on a hunch!" He said defensively.

"A hunch. He calls it a hunch," Death huffed. "How dense can you be sometimes... Anyway, here we are."

The new soul fragment seemed larger than the previous one, it also possessed a rectangular shape. Harry assumed it was mimicking the shape of the diary.

This time Death did not stop Harry. The immortal only kept their hand on Harry's back as he carefully retrieved the piece of soul.

The wind howled through the Limbo, carrying with it the echo of a sound forbidden in this place. Harry felt his limbs tingle with frostbite, his lungs burned, and a film of powdery snow covered his body as it tried to mimic skin. Death covered Harry's hand with a bony one, and together they returned to the realm of the living.

Same as last time, Harry crashed face down, but, instead of licking the pavement, this time he felt dirt against his cheek.

A hand with lovely, chubby fingers reached out before his eyes. Death and her many faces sounded like an echo of her declaration of adoration for humanity. Her opaque white, pupil-less eyes stood out against her skin, which was as dark as the night that hung around them.

"Welcome back to the mortal realm my friend," she hummed in a voice that was both eerie and distantly cheerful. 

Harry accepted Death's hand to help himself up. Even if gravity wasn't hammering him as much as the first time, his body felt like it had been put through a grinder. However, he was ready to move on, as he enjoyed his new size. Hooray! He no longer had the build of a child: a real relief.

Harry assessed the environment around him. Behind Death he could see a carriage harnessed to Thestrals, which meant that behind him— he turned around and looked with his own eyes at the gates leading to Hogwarts.

How was Death supposed to follow him inside? How was he even going to get into the school?

"I've already arranged everything, just follow my lead," Death said with a wicked smile. 

The gate to Hogwarts opened as a thunderstorm broke out. Harry had almost missed the rotten weather in Scotland...

Death and Harry entered the school in a downpour. Despite the horror movie weather, Harry couldn't help but marvel at the energy of the place. The old stones sang with their rocky whispers, the ancient trees stirred their branches in a ripple that bathed each of their leaves in rain, and the children created a rousing cacophony with their energy. There was something warmly alive and preciously magical about Hogwarts. A place Harry has always considered to be his first home.

After a corridor, they passed a group of wizards wearing the official scarlet robes of the Aurors, some of whom naturally greeted Death with a friendly grunt without stopping her. Harry was silently shocked to see members of the Ministry's enforcement service roaming the Hogwarts grounds.

'Don't forget that a murderer is on the loose and that several students had been petrified before. The Ministry would have preferred to focus all their men on the fight against Grindelwald, but they couldn't afford to ignore the problems here any longer... Well, not without angering the parents.'

They were in another corridor that Harry knew well, and as he had expected, he saw at the end the huge closed doors leading to the Great Hall. Well, he didn't have much time to look at them, because without stopping to walk, Death opened them - almost unhinged - with a flick of her wrist. The wood of the doors slammed against the stone walls of the Hall with a sound that would probably have deafened a giant. 

Harry held back a sigh, Death could deny it all she wanted, she genuinely liked making dramatic entrances.

Inside, a curious and sudden silence greeted them. Harry took a quick look at the decorations and bit his tongue to keep from laughing: he came back to life on Halloween night.

It couldn't have been a coincidence, Death had probably planned it.

Speaking of his friend, she continued walking across the room and Harry followed her at the same pace. He preferred to keep his attention riveted on the teachers' table. Even then, he was not safe from a bad flashback, reminding him of the state of the Great Hall after the Battle of Hogwarts.

When a man stood up from the Headmaster's chair, Harry wondered if that man was the inspiration for Dumbledore’s future hairstyle. He had long hair as white as the thick beard that covered his neck. Even for his advanced age, he looked impressive and... respectable? Harry couldn't tell if it was from his azure and gold outfit, which exuded the craftsmanship of skilled weavers, or from the way he held his head, which was more befitting a wise king than a school director.

"Headmaster Dippet, I hope I haven't overstretched your patience. Yours and your students'," Death greeted with the splendour of a deity arriving on its celebration day. 

"Auror Morcades!" recognized then Dippet with his eyebrows high on his forehead. "...Or rather ex-Auror, if I am to believe your presence here."

Harry hid his laughter in a cough. 'Auror? You're really going to have to explain to me how you were able to make it look like you're an Auror.'

"You couldn't have kept us waiting for any less," Dippet resumed, not paying any attention to Harry's coughing and his clothes, currently creating a puddle at his feet. "Not after the tragic accident that befell our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher..."

'Death? Don't tell me you had anything to do with it ,' Harry mentally complained.

'Not at all. The moving stairs are just sometimes an inconsiderate choice. Especially, when you're distracted.' Death continued aloud to Dippet, "Tragic, indeed. Leaving my post amid the Grindelwald debacle was not the easiest thing to do, but I did reach a compromise with the administration. They are allowing me a year to install stability in the school setting and allow you to comfortably prepare for the next year."

At that moment, Harry understood—and so did the rest of the Hogwarts student body, judging by the chatter that was spreading like wildfire in the hall—that Death was going to be the new DADA teacher.

Harry glanced at his friend from under his eyelashes with both panic and betrayal in his eyes. "Really? Ex-Auror and teacher? Reaper isn't enough of a job for you? How bored were you exactly?!"

"Let me have some fun. My psychopomps will take care of the souls as well as I would for a while."

Suddenly, Harry wondered if the professorship was jinxed because of this particular moment in the timeline...

The sensation of several gazes aimed at him made him look up at the professor's table. He found not only Dippet, but also Dumbledore, staring at him. In his blue eyes, Harry found a flash of interest tinged with curiosity. The Professor of Transfiguration put his cutlery aside and leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, totally attentive to the conversation.

Death placed a reassuring hand on Harry's shoulder, grounding him. "And this is Mister Peverell. His situation is quite exceptional, Headmaster. I can't go into it publicly, but you should know that he should have been a student of yours. Our paths crossed during my last assignment under unfortunate circumstances."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Grindelwald was implied to be the cause of Harry's disappearance.

Dippet walked around the teachers' table—Dumbledore following in his footsteps—approaching Death. The Headmaster invited them to follow him out of the hall.

As Harry became aware of the way people now interacted with Death, he wondered if the immortal had a way of dimming her unique aura that made mortals irrepressibly want to flee from her. 

It was as Harry looked back into the great hall that he met his eyes.

Towards the end of the Slytherin table, black eyes rimmed with a red hue that could be attributed to the flickering light of Halloween candles met Harry's gaze. Tom's face was sickly pale, but his lips were contorted into an expression of furious anger. Focusing on the thick darkness that was emanating from him, Harry was able to tell that he was in a tremendous murderous mood. The impression was reinforced by the other students around him who were cowering in on themselves, their gazes plunged into their plates as if not to face this bloodthirsty version of their house prefect.

Faced with this realization, Harry could only think of one thing: there was absolutely no way he would let the Sorting Hat send him to Slytherin!

With Tom in this state, Harry would be unable to close his eyes without fearing a Crucio thrown into his sleep. He didn't know the reason behind Tom's behavior—although he already had a few guesses, one of which was that he had died before his eyes—but if Harry knew one thing, it was that he had to stay away. Very far away from Tom. Maybe he couldn't die, but he could suffer, and Harry wasn't going to allow Tom to remind him of that.

Of course, he didn't expect Tom to jump into his arms out of joy, but... it was a bit of an extreme reaction, wasn't it? Harry didn't know what, but something was wrong. 

'Gryffindor's courage, my arse,' Harry thought very loudly as he climbed the principal's stairs after the gargoyle gave them access. 'Not now in myself, at any rate.'

Death stifled a laugh into her sleeve. 'Careful what you wish for, my friend.'

Dippet invited them to take their seats and motioned to some perfectly inviting chairs, with their large padded seats and neutral brown color. Dumbledore stood next to Dippet, no doubt accepted as part of the case because of the mention of Grindelwald earlier in the conversation.

With another gesture, Dippet also invited Death to say more about Harry's presence.

Death was putting her foot down. "Our investigations have uncovered the brutal disappearance of several children of high magical potential in recent years around the world. My latest assignment from the Ministry led me to a training camp... It was fortunately dismantled with the help of the MACUSA."

As Death's speech progressed, Dumbledore's expression darkened. He kept his hand in front of his mouth and preferred to look away from Death. He turned his back and lost his gaze to the office window and the dark landscape around Hogwarts.

"I remember you, my boy," Dumbledore said, in a weak, thoughtful voice. "I never imagined... I thought... Perhaps you don't remember me, though. How long has it been? Now, almost five years? Almost five years since I met you and Mr. Riddle at the orphanage..."

This seemed to surprise Dippet, the director raised his eyebrows and glanced at his teacher. "So you're confirming that this child is enrolled at Hogwarts?"

Dumbledore moved his hand away from his mouth, "In a strange way, but yes. His letter arrived at the same time I did. It was as if Hogwarts had just discovered its existence... I wonder if..."

The blue eyes rested on Harry. He could feel the suspicion, but, more importantly, a sharp curiosity, together with all the questions that burned on Dumbledore's lips. Then, suddenly, Harry startled when he felt a touch in his subconscious. He jumped to his feet, violently expelled Dumbledore from his thoughts, and pointed his wand at the professor.

"Don't even try it with me. Sir," Harry growled, his magic crackling with sparks around the fingers bound around his wand. "If you have any questions, ask. Otherwise stay away from what's going on in my head. You might not be able to digest what you find there."

Death laughed charmingly and put a hand on Harry's to make him lower his wand. "Dumbledore, need I remind you that using your Legilimens ability on a minor—and against their will and that of their guardian too—may be severely punishable by law?"

"Albus..." Dippet grumbled softly, massaging his eyelids. "We have enough to worry about with the Hogwarts Board of Governors right now. Spare me that, please."

The professor looked disconcerted by the turn of events, almost confused. "I— My sincere apologies. Being a natural, I sometimes intrude unintentionally when... No matter. It won't happen again. On the other hand, Mister Peverell, Hogwarts sanctions just as severely a threat made against a teacher."

"Of course, Sir," Harry grumbled through his teeth as he put his wand away.

Dippet scanned Harry from head to toe before addressing Death. "You were talking about a camp. A training camp. What exactly were these children training for?"

"What a question!" she scoffed. Death's misty eyes remained on the Headmaster, but she pointed to Dumbledore with a sharp jerk of her chin. "They were being trained to kill him of course! It is common knowledge in our department that a blood pact prevents them from fighting each other." She took a breath and turned her face towards Dumbledore. "I'm sorry to break it to you in this way, but Grindelwald is looking for a way around that."

Dumbledore's face broke down and his shoulders slumped. He breathed Grindelwald's name from his lips, both scandalized and in such a sad way that Harry felt a little compassion for the man standing in front of him; but Harry also restrained himself from raging, would he also become the new trigger for Albus' obsession with child soldiers? 

At the expression on Dippet's lips, this revelation left him pretty reluctant. "I'm ready to welcome any magical child... But the case of Mister Peverell seems to me... Sensitive." This time, his eyes sharpened and pierced Harry's. "Mister Peverell, to put it bluntly, how do you feel about having daily contact with the man you were being trained to kill? For that will be the case, and I will not tolerate any violent acts within the walls of Hogwarts."

In a moment of silence, Harry wondered if he could joke and ask which man exactly was being referred to: Tom or Dumbledore? But he kept his seriousness, after all, he was gambling his place at Hogwarts there.

"I think, Headmaster Dippet, that if Auror Morcades has taken the responsibility of bringing me here, it is because she feels I am capable of behaving fairly and respectfully. I am also sorry for my reaction, Professor Dumbledore... I just... Let's just say I've had some very bad and painful experiences regarding psychic invasions. It has a way of robbing me of my patience."

When Harry looked up to judge the adults standing before him, Harry recognized the expressions on their faces. A mixture of pity that pinched their brows and an opaque filter over their eyes that screamed that they were saddened by Harry, or, more accurately, the traumatized child in front of them.

Death gave him a blinding smile and gently patted his thigh, as if to say that he had done the right thing. The same toothy smile turned to the other two older wizards. "Upon his return, Henry underwent several evaluations, including a diagnosis of his mental state by a Mind Healer. They confirmed his ability to follow a conventional school course."

"Perhaps there is a way to get Headmaster Dippet the report, if it will reassure him?" Harry cautiously suggested to Death, watching out of the corner of his eye for Dippet's reaction.

"If you agree... I can arrange to get a copy. What do you say, Headmaster, would that appease you? Knowing that I am currently Mister Peverell's magical guardian, and therefore responsible for him... This is due to his rather.... exceptional life path."

'Careful Death, you're starting to act like a mother hen ,' Harry teased gently through their psychic connection.

'You'll be the first one to come to my quarters and have a hot chocolate with me.'

Meanwhile Dippet was consulting with Dumbledore in a low voice, both seeking the other's approval. Finally Dippet slowly gestured with his hand, as if swatting away an annoying fly.

"The Mind Healers' findings are too personal for me to stick my nose into a potential student's. I'll settle for the word of Mister Peverell, your guaranteed ex-Auror Morcades, and..." Dippet stood up, his hands crossed behind his back as he made slowly his way to a shelf filled with knickknacks. From a shadowy corner, Dippet pulled out the Sorting Hat. The ratty hat drew in its folds the essentials of a face: squinty eyes and a grumpy mouth. "And I'll mostly settle for the Hogwarts judgment, itself."

The impressive and calm Headmaster approached Harry at a slow pace, Harry did not know if the wizard was walking slowly so as not to provoke an unfortunate reflex similar to Dumbledore's attack or if the Headmaster was just a slow person by nature.

He brought the Sorting Hat up to Harry's eye level, "Do you know how Hogwarts works, Mister Peverell?"

"You mean the houses? Yes. I know."

"Then let's see if you belong to one of them, shall we."

Harry inclined his head, a silent invitation for the hat to be put on. As the old leather covered Harry's ears, an old, grumpy voice echoed in the distance of his mind.

A thin smile sprang to Harry's lips, 'Sorry to wake you. I came back to bother you .'

'Indeed. A habit with you, Harry. Will you listen to me this time? Have you ever thought about what would have happened if you'd gone down the path I advised? '

'You're in my head. You know I've had plenty of time to think about it... To think about a lot of things, for that matter.'

The Sorting Hat laughed vocally. 'Oh yes, I'm in your head and see everything you're talking about. Don't you think you've matured since the last time we met? '

'I'm still stupid on and off... but not all the time either. Does that count? '

'You say more than I need. I think I understand better where the long years away from us have taken you... If I tell you Slytherin, what will you say?'

Harry bit his lips. 'Well, that I'll probably have a bad night? But I'll stand by your judgment this time. Might as well give Fate a chance.'

'Good. Very good.' The Sorting Hat was almost gloating in his thoughts before he let out a loud cry, "Hufflepuff!"

The light from the Headmaster's office blinded Harry's wide-eyed gaze.

This was unexpected.

At least from the raised eyebrows of Dumbledore and Dippet, the surprise was shared. The two men shared a glance and suddenly seemed lighter with warmer smiles.

After all, why would they be suspicious of a badger? Harry simply handed back the Sorting Hat, boiling inside. He hated being misjudged.

Chapter Text

"[…] from underneath

the rubble, sing

a rebel song."*

The arrival of the Head of Hufflepuff House was accompanied by a fanfare of clanking, screeching steel. In the field of prosthetics, even the future Moody could not compete with Professor Kettleburn. It was all the more disconcerting when the professor held out his metal claw for Harry to shake his hand after a summary of the situation by Dippet.

"Very sad circumstances to join us, but we are always happy to welcome a new companion to our burrow." He then quickly greeted Death, while congratulating her for her new position before turning back to Dippet. "If you don't mind, it's already past curfew and these days I find it risky to linger in the hallways at night."

The headmadter pointed to the door, his lips pursed, but agreeing with the teacher. Death, who had remained seated, gave Harry one last smile and resumed her conversation with Dippet and Dumbledore, as Kettleburn nudged Harry to leave the office.

As they made their way to the kitchens, Harry tried to forget Dippet and Dumbledore's prejudice against his new house.

"You're chirping like a hippogriff... What I can't figure out is why: did they flatter you or are you about to butcher a face?"

Harry replied with a grimace at first. "Let's just say wearing yellow has a double edge..."

"That!" Kettleburn's claw made a whole bunch of cracking noises as it rotated on itself. "That'll never change," he grumbled. "Remember, the hat has its own motivation, and it will always be to help you onto the right path."

"It's not so much the sorting that I question, but rather the way people perceive us."

"Well, our home can be viewed in two different ways. A pack of misfits or a bunch of merrymakers—sometimes a mixture of both. Either way, not really attractive from an outsider's perspective. No one sees the point of becoming a badger... except those who have become one."

"Yes, I can see that..."

The delicious smell of the kitchens interrupted Harry's train of thought. Even at night, he could hear the house elves working behind the stoves to prepare the next day's meals—Hermione would have been so mad to hear that...

Kettleburn led Harry into a shady stone recess where barrels were stored. The professor showed his teeth in a smile that was meant to be reassuring, probably amused by Harry judging the place. Harry's eyebrows furrowed as if to ask what they were doing there.

"Keep in mind the barrel and the pace, it's the only way in or you'll end up good and smelling like vinegar for a week."

"Is that the password? A barrel to knock?... Does it change often?"

Kettleburn's eyes went wide. "Do you change the locks on your house often?"

"Uh, never?"

"That's my point."

To get Harry to remember the password (not very complicated, as the professor pointed out, just type the rhythm of ‘Helga Hufflepuff’), he hammered it a little slower with his clamp. The barrels then rolled to the side, revealing a passage.

"Go ahead!" Kettleburn encouragingly said. "Don't be shy! One of the prefects must already be waiting for you. I''ll see you in the morning when you're a bit fresher, since I''ll need to know which electives you want to take so that I can assign you a timetable"

"Of course. Thank you, sir."

The head of the house grumbled something Harry didn't hear as he headed down the tunnel, which seemed to slope gently downward as if to access a real burrow; the lush vegetation of the tunnel and the warm light at the end made it especially pleasant—as much as a hole going underground could be.

The soft light, reminiscent of the last rays of sunlight on a summer afternoon, greeted Harry as he finally stepped into the common room.

He stood in awe of where he had just arrived. The Gryffindor tower would always hold a dear place in his heart, but the Badger basement would soon compete with it…

Harry was accustomed to the cramped quarters of a tower, so he didn't expect to see such a large room used only as a living space. In the middle of the light wood floor, which reminded him of honey, there was a deep circular pit. Inside, some of the younger badgers were slumped against the edge, resting their backs on cushions, looking soft as marshmallows. In the center, the ghost of the house, Fat Friar, was telling a story—something funny judging by the laughter of the audience around him—while sitting in a rocking chair of oversized proportions.

A change in the sunlight made Harry's eyes go up to the ceiling. He blinked once, then twice...

Above the heads of the students and the ghost were the gigantic roots of a tree, from which hung a whole bunch of lanterns of different sizes and shapes, as well as various hangings and curtains that clung to the ceiling thanks to some thick ivy. The volume created on the ceiling by the fabrics made it possible to completely forget that the room was located underground. The whole thing had the feel of an enchanted cabin in the woods, so deeply symbiotic with the earth that it became fantastical.

"Amazing, right?" whispered a deep voice with a clipped Scottish accent.

Lost in contemplating the common room, Harry hadn't noticed the other student leaning against the wall next to the entrance.

He approached Harry and whispered a little lower, "we didn't expect you to join us. Just in case, our prefects asked me to take their place if we were to welcome you. They're busy managing the others. Follow me, you don't want to stay here… not with the first years. They are hectic enough as it is."

As they climbed a flight of stairs with convoluted railings made of rough, uncarved tree branches, Harry's shoulders tensed. He felt a film of electricity vibrate against his skin and then split as if to allow him access.

The other Hufflepuff commented on this fact, "a little bit jumpy, aren’t you? Relax. It's just a Silencing Bubble Charm. Powerful enough to isolate the floor."

And indeed, the isolation bubble was definitely needed. Compared to the quietness of the ground floor, Harry's eardrums were now ringing from the high volume. He could hear music—a sort of rock ancestor—that matched the general aura of chaos.

Another pit was carved out among the wooden planks, except that the large center spot was not occupied by a rocking chair. On this floor, it was occupied by multiple round tables. They were all empty, except for the largest one where more than a dozen students were gathered around. Most of them were standing, arguing, and trying to shout louder than their neighbors.

It was at this point that Harry noticed that there was more than just yellow lining or badger crests on the school robes.

"I thought it was forbidden to enter any other common room than your own." Harry was careful not to add, ‘and especially impossible to get into the badger one if you weren't one yourself.’

The student who had greeted him looked away and cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. "Extenuating circumstances. I think you'll figure it out soon enough… Every badger was okay with that, they know it’s for the safety of Hogwarts."

"Safety?—Oh. Yeah, err, I already see what you’re talking about."

Or at least, the reasons that could explain a gathering of this magnitude in what Harry imagined to be some sort of inter-house alliance…

Between the Basilisk attacks and the current terrifying situation of Europe under the threat of Grindelwald, Harry thought it was only natural that the students of Hogwarts should seek an united front. Now, what Harry wanted to know was what would be their next move.

"We're already up to nine statues decorating the infirmary, Septimus! Trust me, at the tenth one, we'll be floo straight back home!"

"If the Ministry was really worried about it, they would have closed the school immediately after the first one!"

"Both of you are half troll to be so stupid?!" a Gryffindor girl shouted angrily. "Myrtle is dead! We have a murderer on the loose—as if a serial-petrifier wasn’t enough!" 

"But that's Septimus' point, Tolga," stated another girl, who was presumably her twin, who was wearing Hufflepuff colors. "The Ministry is actually crumbling under problems, and it's us who suffer from the consequences… Even after a week without solving the case, they still haven't closed the school because they need our parents at work. Not at home, busy taking care of us—"

"Everyone! Be quiet!" interrupted an authoritative bark.

A large figure stood up from a wide chair in front of one of the room's fireplaces. For a brief moment, Harry thought he was hallucinating: Alastor, already ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody, was coming out of the darkness, his staff clattering against the wooden floor.

The sight made Harry frown. He was sure he had heard rumours that the origin of Moody's injuries dated back to the First Wizarding War. Was this another of the minor changes caused by his appearance in the past? Or were the rumours wrong? 

Moody's intimidating and fierce appearance gave prominence to his prefect badge, as if to reflect his authority in the Badger's house. It was beyond Harry that others could belittle Hufflepuff when Moody was the perfect embodiment of the badger you don't want to mess with.

"Funny!" Moody laughed with a rough voice. "Even I couldn't even imagine the new guy joining us under the yellow banner."

The hushed whisper and laughs were interrupted by a squeak. An older Slytherin was stepping away from the table, pressing her wrist against her chest.

"Dory'? Is everything alright?" a Gryffindor asked worringly, as he gently hugged her waist.

Dory' glanced at the assembly who now dared not utter a word. "Yes. Just…surprised. The next meeting was not until this weekend; I don't understand—I have to hurry up to get there at the same time as the others!"

She gave the Gryffindor a quick kiss and sprinted towards the stairs.

Another Hufflepuff girl pulled herself out of Septimus' arms and held Dory back to hand her a small mirror. "Call Charis. She can tell you where the others are. Don't break communication until you get there."

Dory, the Syltherin, took the mirror and quickly hugged the Hufflepuff. "You're the best 'Ella. I'll catch you later." She gave one last hurried wave to the party before leaving for good.

Another Syltherin crossed her arms over her chest, eyebrows furrowed as she glared at the stairs. "As if we don't have enough problems without them."

"Euphemia..."

Harry's neck cracked as he turned to another Gryffindor—there were many, six in all. All it took was this particular first name and seeing who was speaking to figure out who these two people were.

Damn, Harry was going to have a stroke: he was in the presence of his grandparents.

"Don't 'Euphemia' me, Fleamont! Just because Dorea is the only one capable of getting into their demented cult doesn't mean we should encourage her to dive deeper to go fishing information."

"Not like there's much use for it anyway," scoffed an older Hufflepuff.

"Pay attention to Mad-Eye and shut up, Umbridge," snarled the student with the thick Scottish accent who had welcomed Harry. "You're certainly not the one who's gonna help us figure out what's going on right now."

"Keep it up, I could almost believe you're worried about it," Umbridge sneered in return. He crossed his arms over the table to lean forward. "Admit it, you don't care about the petrified students or the murder. It's just our little ones getting into fist fights that worry you, right? But you know what, McGonagall, I've got a news for you, if your sister wasn't a little lioness pest who roared at the wrong people we wouldn't be here—"

Another Gryffindor pulled out his wand in a big, threatening gesture and pointed it so close to Umbridge's face that he had to cross his eyes to watch the tip. This other Gryffindor too, had a thick Scottish accent, "I dare you to repeat what you just said about my sister."

His grandparents, a relative of the pink toad, Moody... Yes, great, Harry was also in the same year as his former head of house's brothers. 

Before any other wand could be whipped out, Moody was pounding the ground with his staff again. "Enough!" he growled. "I said enough! Put those wands away! McGonagall, Umbridge, you'll settle your differences later."

Going back in time, Harry was already prepared to run into some ancestors or young versions of people he knew, but at this point it was starting to look like a nightmare.

Another Hufflepuff was coming out of the dining area, a steaming mug in her hands. She joined Moody's side, another perfect badge pinned on her school uniform. She stood out from anyone in the room with her bee-yellow hair streaked with black, somehow Harry couldn't help but compare her to Tonks with her goofy hair colors.

"A little decency, folks! Come on!" she commanded cheerfully with a fist on her hips. "Maybe our new friend will be interested in the other club. Who knows?" Then, she arched an eyebrow in Harry's direction. "What's your name, New Guy?"

"Ha-Henry. Henry Peverell."

"Peverell?" Dorea's boyfriend repeated, before turning to Euphemia's. "Hey, Fleamont. Doesn't that ring a bell?"

"Now that you mention it… I think my dad already mentioned it." He asked Harry, "maybe Charlus or I know your parents?"

"Even I don't know them." Harry shrugged and said, "they're dead."

Both Potters' faces immediately broke down.

Beside Fleamont, a tall Hufflepuff with crew-cut blond hair patted his shoulder. "Still all delicate, eh?"

"Perfect! Another orphan! Just hope he doesn't turn out like the other one," Tolga grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

There was an awkward silence where a few of the students around the table gave the Gryffindor girl a disapproving look, almost shocked at her lack of empathy or bluntness.

"Don't listen to Tolga, New Guy. She's been like that since Riddle rejected her," another redhead who was not Septimus—Harry assumed he was a Prewett—tried to joke awkwardly.

Tolga immediately turned red, as she grumbled some curses.

Her twin, stifled a laugh into her sleeve as she gave her sister a gentle poke. "No, you're wrong... She has always been as pleasant as a Jarvey—"

“Tahlia!”

The first to laugh was the Hufflepuff with the bee-yellow hair. "Well, who will go and ask him?"

"Merlin… You’re a prefect now. Behave." Mad-Eye sighed as he nudged her ribs with a light tap of his staff.

"But Merlin is right!—"

It took a few seconds for Harry to fully process the information that the girl in question was actually named Merlin and not that the boys swore by the name of the legendary wizard.

"Since the banquet ended, everyone has been talking about him or the new DADA teacher!" a Hufflepuff—who had remained silent until then—suddenly exlaimed.

According to Harry he has not been silent by his own volition. Several wands were now pointed discreetly in his direction, ready to silence him at the slightest wrong word. The wands followed his path as he walked around the table and slapped Harry on the back in greeting.

"By the way, I'm Egon! Ignore the others—they are just rude not to introduce themselves. So? Did the owl with your letter get lost on the way? Or did you miss the train four times in a row?"

"No, I definitely got my letter when I was eleven… like all of you. I just never made my way to King Cross."

The other students exchanged a few frowns and wondered in hushed tones about what Harry had meant by that, but, before any more questions could be asked, the isolation bubble allowed a new arrival into the floor. The Ravenclaw girl was totally out of breath, as if she had run all over the castle to find them as fast as possible.

"I heard Morcades talking to Dippet ! W-when, when…" She struggled to catch her breath. "The librarian threw me out! s-so…" Another deep breath. "I was on my way to join you a-and…!"

"Damn it, breathe, Lucretia! or you'll pass out," advised the supposed Prewett Gryffindor while he was approaching her.

"I couldn't resist spying on them a little!" she resumed, ignoring him as she was now jumping up and down, her eyes shining. "And you'll never guess! The new guy. He was kidnapped when he was younger, and trained by Grindelwald!"

It didn't take much to start a rumor, and now, all the ingredients had just been spilled over.

The Potters gave an outraged grunt, as if their own family had been insulted, for the rest, their reactions were divided between gasps of surprise and low-voiced curses. Harry sighed, wondering if Death had done it on purpose.

"Morcades is a little bit too chatty sometimes," Harry grumbled, taking a step forward so that he could be seen out of McGonagall's shadow.

The Ravenclaw, Lucretia, gave a little cry of surprise when she noticed Harry's presence. She immediately clamped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide open, revealing a mixture of confusion and apology, as if she regretted revealing what she had heard. The damage was already done, and Harry would not hold it against her, especially if Death had provoked it on purpose.

For the rest of the assembly, the news was too big to ignore, but no one dared speak in Harry's presence, at least not until he said something about it. Which he wasn't going to do. So he preferred to find a way to get out of there and let the group speculate in his absence.

"Well…Would someone please tell me where the dorms are?"

Mad-Eye would break away from Merlin and began walk down the stairs. "Follow me. I'll show you where you can get settled." He would turn to the others. "Merlin, you watch them. No more drama until I get back. Clear?"

Harry followed Moody downstairs after the others had given various sounds of acknowledgement—ranging from enthusiastic chirps to grunts of deep boredom. Their voices were muffled after the silencing bubble closed behind them.

The ground floor was now completely empty and immersed in a twilight atmosphere.

"Look, I cannot imagine what it looks like from the outside," Moody said, scratching his jaw, looking like he didn't exactly know where to begin. "Probably quite intense as an introduction… The general opinion was split on your sorting, but you were expected to be at least a Gryffindor or a Syltherin. That's why we had our group discussion in our common room tonight… It was not in our plans to include you in this. Especially not for your first night here."

Harry nodded. "Indeed, it is a lot. I never thought I'd step in on something like this… But now, I know. I can see that you are up to something and I need to understand. So explain to me, what exactly is going on here?"

"In short, at the beginning of the year, after the first petrification, we set up a watch group with the Gryffindors. Well, that's how everything started…"

"And it looks like a little more than that now."

Moody laughed hoarsely as he cracked his neck. "That's just the origin story, new guy. After the third victim, Lucretia—the ravenclaw you just met—found out a pattern: they were all Muggleborns... After that, her theory has been proven right. It kept on fitting for each new victim—we have been at almost one per week since September."

"I was right, it's much more... ” Harry remained silent for a few moments to consider Moody's words. When he resumed, he said slowly, “you’re convinced that the attacks are motivated by blood status, if I understand correctly? You went from a watch group to a detective agency? Then—Wait a minute. Everyone here tonight is against the Pure-Blood philosophy?"

"That's... That's a good question, but a complicated one." Moody took a long moment to study Harry, his prosthetic eye whirring, analyzing every aspect of Harry's face and particularly targeting his gaze, as if he could read the intentions behind it. Whatever he found there seemed to encourage him to be honest. "Before that, some of us were questioning the ideology of our parents and the usefulness of relying solely on the bloodline of our family. This case has only amplified this questioning." Moody paused briefly while shaking his head. "I think I think we've gone from a watch group to a demolition crew."

"A demolition crew?" Harry parroted, clueless.

"We no longer want to hold on to what we have, but dismantle what exists to change what awaits us... I think that at first we were all united only to defend our last years of carefree life. When the hypothesis of targeted attacks was raised, everyone saw what they were trying to defend disappear. It was no longer a prank that had gone wrong, but an affirmation that we had become adults with bigger problems than a failed potion test. We can see it now.

“We can see that teachers favor the names of old families and are harsher on those who are not, or that the ministry lets things drag on here because the victims are not children from prominent families... Personally, I want to change that, and I imagine many of us do too. But for that to happen, it all starts here. If we let these attacks pass it would be like agreeing to continue the tradition of denigrating others because of their blood. The victims were all precious wizards or witches; or even just someone’s friends or siblings... And I think that all this makes us de facto opponents of the Pureblood mentality. Or at least, I know it upsets a lot of them here, when I tell them that the origin of magical blood doesn't matter, and that it's no less valuable than theirs." In conclusion, Moody shrugged, as if he didn't mind that his opinion was frowned upon by the Purebloods at Hogwarts.

Harry was taking advantage of having to walk down another flight of stairs to digest what Moody had just told him. It was huge and awesome at the same time. However, he couldn't help but wonder why it never paid off.

Why, in his younger years, did he never hear about this general desire among the older generation to change society?

Would this ancient need have been the origin of this generation's involvement in the Order of the Phoenix later on?

Harry didn't know what it was yet, but he was certain that in the immediate future of this timeline something was going to erode the general urge to pursue this goal.

Aside from that, he found it sadly interesting that Myrtle's death was not in vain; it was one of the final catalysts to spark the protest. It was good for Harry to know that he was not alone in realizing that their world needed change.

"I like the way you put it. It's ambitious, but nonetheless I think it's a fair goal worth trying for, even if more than a lifetime would be needed to get there..."

"Please, don't take us for fools. We are aware that we will not be the ones to benefit from these changes, perhaps we will not even see while we are still alive… But  what I wish is that we do not remain passive in front of what happens around us. If we take action, maybe future witches and wizards will follow our path."

Harry found it amusing to hear this when he himself came from a future where nothing had changed, yet he was still trying to reshape fate. Why would he settle for preventing wars when he was sure he had the power to change the entire course of events?

"It's no longer just a goal you're talking about, it's hope… and when you think about it, it is a good motivator. It makes people believe in the future, in the aftermath of the dark times. It makes them think about the reconstruction after the destruction. Listening to you, I want to believe in it too…"

Moody approved with a grunt. "Either way, everything is pretty much destroyed already, and Grindelwald doesn't make our job easier. The only thing he's kept and strengthened is fear and hatred of others."

Harry watched the corridor they were walking down; dark enough with only small lights mimicking the twilight of the ground floor to move around without fear of tripping over the paving. On either side there were huge barrels lined up, big enough to hold a student of Moody's size without him having to bend over.

"In short, everything is probably related to a question of the origin of the families' magical blood… but, there is still something I don't understand. Dorea spies on another group—why? Do you think they are involved in the petrifications? Or the murder?"

Moody's mechanical eye whirred in its socket, inspecting Harry from head to toe. "We are not sure yet... The group we're talking about is very selective and on the Slytherin side. We assume that it existed in secret before ours, but it has become more active this year. Enough that it is starting to get noticed. Especially the younger members. They are the ones who are particularly… fierce , in their way to express their views on the Muggleborns."

The wires were slowly connecting in Harry's mind.

"Fierce? Are you referring to what Umbridge mentioned? How can fighting with the Gryffindors be aimed at the Muggleborns? And why isn't anyone stopping them, anyway? Don't the teachers intervene?"

"Think of it as open warfare that the teachers would rather ignore. I can understand them… they have enough on their plate with a dead student and the petrification business threatening the school. But yes, the younger Syltherins lead multiple fights. Especially against children from Pure-Blood families who befriended Muggleborns. Referring to them as Blood Traitors—bullshit, if you want my opinion… Lately, it's become quite common to see third and fourth years involved in illegal duels, or for those even younger to fight barehanded since their spell arsenals are too limited."

Harry took off his glasses to massage his eyelids. An open warfare, taking place in front of the teachers' eyes without them interfering: pure madness. Maybe he was still dead and this was all a figment of his imagination? In any case, he knew the origin of this general supremacist mania. And he needed to stop it.

Moody's staff stopped hitting the ground, Harry understood that they had reached their destination. Still using his staff, Moody applied pressure to the flat face of one of the giant barrels until a soft click sounded. The panel slowly opened, revealing the inside of the barrel that had been spelled with an extension charm, allowing a fully furnished bedroom to fit inside. Harry squinted, at the back of the room was a window that revealed a sunny meadow landscape.

Although it was a lovely view, the light was too strong for Harry, who was used to the twilight atmosphere of the hallway. He quickly pointed his wand at the window and projected the idea of a forest in the middle of the night. Immediately, the sun rays faded and the pale rays of a full moon came through the window to cradle the room. 

"Once inside, close the door and choose a password by hitting it. Preferably a different rhythm than the one we use to enter our common room. I'll leave you to think about our discussion... Come see me if you want to know more about it or if you're interested."

He took a step back as Harry slid inside the barrel, then, before the door closed, Harry heard, "By the way, welcome to the Badgers."

Chapter Text

"If you kept the small rules,

you could break the big ones."*

"Is that an ... apron?"

The Hufflepuffs who rose the earliest were surprised to find the kitchen in a state of turmoil never seen before. Like a ship's crew, some of the house elves were singing along, while others were trying to push the younger students out of the kitchen, who were attracted by the singing and the commotion.

Among the pots that levitated from one stove to another and the jars of jam that dematerialized to appear on the tables of the Great Hall, was Harry, wand in hand, also singing and following the instructions of the house elf at the head of the kitchens.

He turned to the voice that had called out to him, a half-smile on his lip distorting the scar that split his floury cheek. "Yeah, it's a lot easier to wipe your hands than to use a Cleaning Charm every time." 

Behind Moody's perplexed look, Harry caught a glimpse of Merlin's curvy little figure bending in half as she leaned on Egon's shoulder. Even with the high-pitched squealing voices of the house elves, anyone could hear the two of them cackling with laughter. 

Tahlia took pity on the situation. She tried to get past the barrage of house elves by pulling out her wand, showing that she too could help. They would only let her through after she had bewitched one of the giant wooden spoons that was used to stir the huge pot of gravy for the lunch and freed one of the elves from his task.

She pursed her lips, as if to rebuke a smile and sought Harry's gaze. "I think Mad-Eye didn't want to know the practical reason for carrying it, but rather why you're helping in the kitchen."

"Why not?" Harry unrolled a long pie dough on one of the tables and tossed a Severing Charm to make strips of it. "Aside from the fact that housework is a great exercise in wielding our magic, I thought you were looking to change things."   

Tahlia's delicate brow frowned slightly, Her eyelids, still half closed from her recent awakening, covered her blurry gaze as she searched for an adequate answer.

She was dazed long enough for a first year to step forward and also show his usefulness: he loudly uttered the spell used to clean the dishes and threw it at the sink that was beginning to overflow with dirty utensils and pots.  

Even if the house elves were also gifted with magic, they were barely enough in number to handle everything in the kitchen at once, especially if one excluded those busy managing the barricade that filtered the curious Hufflepuff from those who now actually wanted to help.

Before anyone could object, the kitchens were flooded with first years more than determined to participate in the kitchen activity. The house elf in charge of supervising the kitchens was squealing directions to his fellow elves, and, even if the instructions were never directly addressed to the students, they would follow them too—meticulously.

Harry lowered his wand and watched the surprising new turn of events.

Some of the house elves seemed particularly uncomfortable being assisted, especially when the teenagers started asking them what they could do after they had completed a task. However, this new angle proved one of Harry's points, that everyday tasks allow one to better manipulate their magic or discover unsuspected uses for it.

A group of third years was excited to see one of the older elves levitate and manipulate a dozen knives so that they could slice through huge amounts of bread. On the other side of the kitchen, a first year student was trying to duplicate an elf's technique of hollowing out a pumpkin and then squeezing the pulp to extract the juice.

The sound of Moody's staff preceded his voice, all the more hoarse in the morning, "you just created monsters. You know that, right?"

"Me?" asked Harry, a bit fazed. "I didn't think… It's just that I didn't get much sleep last night. I was thinking about—" He waved his hand between him and Moody. "Everything. I got tired of it. I tried to read to clear my head, but my eyes kept replaying the same sentence over and over... so I came here. I enjoy the company of house elves. They remind me of dear friends; one of them was an active defender of creature rights." Harry shook his head, laughing faintly, "We've come full circle. We're back to the equality issue you were talking about and that I was trying to detach my thoughts from."

"Myself, when I am obsessed with a subject, nothing can keep me from seeing it in the smallest detail…" Moody paused for a moment to observe the joyous chaos unfolding before them. "And you think it has a real purpose?"

"What has a purpose? Applying magic under different conditions than in a classroom or pruning your tolerance criteria?"

Moody let out a grunt and his prosthetic eye seemed to lose some of its colour. "You know what? Don't pay attention to what I say. I overestimated myself. I need a cup of tea before we get into that kind of debate. Or maybe a glass of firewhiskey... "

A white-coloured spell was cast in the direction of Moody's ribs.

"Don't you think it's a little too early for that?" Tahlia admonished.

"I think it's especially too early for you to assault me with a Stinging Hex." Moody growled, as he massaged the affected spot while glaring at Tahlia.

Umbridge winced as he watched with disdain the elves and the younger ones busily peeling potatoes.

He clicked his tongue curtly. "Now what? You expect me to believe that scrubbing toilets is the new path to excel with our magic? You've got to be kidding me."

The tall Hufflepuff with the blond crew-cut hair, whose name Harry didn't know yet, laughed heartily as he spun Umbridge around and shoved him in the direction of the Great Hall. "Speaking of drinks, go get your coffee instead, Orford. You're not bearable until the third cup."

Umbridge snorted haughtily, but chose to take the advice.

Far enough away, Moody turned around. His magical prosthetic eye whirring as he scanned the kitchen at lightning speed, before landing on the tall blond Hufflepuff. "I can give it a shot. The younger ones seem to find it useful… Algic, go get Robert, find your sisters and their friends. I think they'll like—"

"No! No!" The house elf in charge of the kitchen suddenly squealed. "Enough! They is enough!"

Another elf, hearing this, stopped what he was doing. With his spindly hands, he clutched the collar of his pillowcase embossed with the Hogwarts crest. "Salty is knowing that Bubbly is in need of help."

The house elf in charge of the kitchens was jumping down from his command post—a tureen, big enough to reach Harry's knees—but Algic was already crouched down next to Salty, asking him where they could go instead.

Harry took a step to find out more, but Moody's staff blocked his path.

"Leave it," the prefect said. "They'll do fine without you. Merlin is already waiting for you, she has volunteered to lead you around the castle until you find your footing. Go have some breakfast with the others. For today, I think you've already done enough."

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but no words escaped. He had done enough? What did he do exactly? Harry kept his question for himself, closed his mouth and just nodded before joining Merlin.

She gave him a smile that brightened her dimpled face. "If you would follow the guide; during the tour, please do not cause any further havoc," she teased with a wink.

Harry, who already knew the way, passed her and returned her wink. "Sorry, no promises."

"That doesn't sound ominous… Not at all."

The last to arrive at their table was Cedrella, elegantly stifling a yawn. She offered tea around her before helping herself, but it wasn't until her cup was filled that she discreetly glanced around, her eyes suddenly looking sharper.

"Something's wrong," she declared, smothering her voice in her steaming cup.

"Ten points to the 'puffs," Egon mocked as he leaned toward Cedrella. "Thanks, everyone noticed. Still trying to impress us with your divination abilities? Or—"

Merlin stopped him from saying more by shoving a piece of toast into his mouth. "You, sometimes," she grumbled. "This is really not the time for that."

Under other circumstances, Harry would probably have laughed, but at this moment—as Merlin had pointed out, it was certainly no time for jokes. The atmosphere in the Great Hall was pretty damn heavy. So much so that the students around them were rolling their shoulders as if to relieve themselves of an imaginary weight or to rid themselves of the glares that were boring into their backs.

Harry could see the source of this unbearable concentration of tension: it radiated from the Syltherin table.

The aura of their magic was buzzing with violent impulses. Every time one of the snakes grabbed a knife, Harry feared it would leap over the table and try to stab someone.

But all this was nothing. Nothing compared to the fact that Tom wasn't there. Harry could handle a crowd of students out for blood. What he might have trouble dealing with, however, was an unpredictable and angsty teenage Dark Lord, who was certainly the cause of this drastic change.

All the alarms in Harry's body were on high alert, so when metal creaks came from behind him, he jumped to his feet, his heart racing.

"Wow! Easy, kid!" Kettleburn appeased, a little taken aback. "Ready?"

"Oh yeah... My additional classes." Harry grabbed his bag. "Err, I haven't thought about it yet."

Harry was following the professor out of the Great Hall when someone bumped into him.

"Sorry!" Harry exclaimed.

"Get out of my way, vermin!" scolded a voice that sounded familiar.

Harry's eyes widened as he recognized the Syltherin in front of him: Dorea. Except this time her face was contorted in a sneer of disgust, more repulsed than she had squished a slug under her shoes.

This was unsettling for Harry, as after the previous night he had expected Dorea to be friendlier to members of other houses... Or maybe this demonstration was part of her cover to infiltrate the group Moody was talking about last night?

She walked around them and hurried away, leaving a piece of parchment on the ground behind her. Kettleburn shrugged and pretended that nothing happened, while Harry levitated the piece of parchment to himself and stuffed it into one of his pockets.

Harry only allowed himself to inspect the parchment once he had finished his long conversation—really long, the Head House took his role very seriously and could be a bit too chatty with a full pot of tea—and also quite far from Kettleburn's hut.

‘They know you aren't who you claim to be ,’ was written in a way that would make one think that several quills had broken from the hastiness of the author. 'The word has already begun to spread. '

Harry imagined that the 'they' defined the Slytherins, but what did that mean? He never claimed to be anyone but himself. And what word exactly? What problem could arise from the assumption that he was not who he said he was if that was the case? Anyway, if the Slytherin attitude this morning was anything to go by, it was nothing but trouble.

"Bad news?"

Harry flipped around, nerves on edge, to see Merlin with a curious expression that magnified her sparkling blue eyes.

"Merlin!" Harry shooted. "You scared me!"

"Sorry. Or not. Well? What's the matter with you? You look like you've met the Bloody Baron."

"Don’t mind me… It's just, err—really, I don’t know. Nothing to be concerned about now."

"Nothing? You sure—Oh! Not my business… I get it," she mumbled. "Um, a portrait told me you were out, so I came as quickly as I could. We can't stay here, otherwise Kettleburn will end up kidnapping you for good, and even if Dumbledore is pretty lenient on lateness, we can't abuse it."

Fortunately, during his sequestration, the Head House had been kind enough to arrange for food to be sent for lunch, otherwise Harry would probably be starving and certainly not able to cope with transfiguration.

As they entered the room, Harry and Merlin tried to go unnoticed because the class had already started, but Dumbledore interrupted what he was writing on the blackboard to turn around and pin them with his eyes.

"Miss Gamp, Mister Peverell. May I ask the reason for your late arrival?"

Merlin grinned broadly as she explained, but Harry didn't hear a word of it as he realized that the students present were Hufflepuffs pairing with Slytherins. The snakes in the room glared at him. Harry almost dreaded that they would transfigure him into a fly and try to pass off the attack as practice or a mistake.

Merlin left Harry's side and took her place next to Egon. This left only one seat in the front row, which Dumbledore designated to Harry. The student at the table turned around—the last Slytherin who hadn't done so before...

Harry should have known better, but swore through his teeth anyway, as Tom gave him a charming smile that promised nothing but terrible pain.

When he dropped heavily into his chair, Harry looked up at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes.

He searched between the distant sound of Dumbledore's speech explaining a part of the theory behind the conjurations and the murderous urges of the magic around him for some semblance of calm.

To isolate himself from the surrounding tension, he tried the first method of meditation offered in the introduction of Death's book—the same one he had read last night to divert his thoughts from his conversation with Moody without success. A simple method for recentring himself, similar to Occlumency, it was based on organizing his thoughts and strengthening his psychic barriers with visualization and breathing exercises. 

It was at the twentieth long exhale that Dumbledore's voice became louder, as if to mark an important time in the lesson.

"Let's see the practical side, shall we? Take your wands out. Today's exercise will consist of Conjuring an inanimate object. You'll find it a lot more difficult than the Bird-Conjuring Charm that Madame Myriadd taught you in second grade. To quote Miss Goshawk and her book, 'for reasons not yet fully understood...two categories of creatures are easier to conjure than anything else: birds and snakes.' And because a reminder is never too much, remember that the elements such as water or fire, are still different concepts from the Conjuration branch." Dumbledore paused to note this information on the board. "Well, go ahead. Stay focused and concentrate only on an object no larger than the size of your hand. I don't want any of you to suffer magical exhaustion when you leave my class because you bit off more than you could chew trying to conjure a chair or an armor—"

Harry was acutely aware of his own magic crackling from his fingertips, he could feel the silky fabric of the invisibility cloak wrapped around the handle of his wand as it remained down, he could only think of one object as Dumbledore had asked... When he opened his eyes, he knew what he would find before him.

On his table lay an exact copy of the tureen used by the elf in charge of the kitchens as a command post. The first object that had crossed his mind while Dumbledore was giving the instructions for the exercise.

He was putting the reactivity of his magic over the habit of his former lives. Conjuring was something practical and useful, but something was bugging him. He wasn't sure if it had always been so easy for him to conjure anything… Even less without the help of a wand. Maybe it was because of the Elder wand?...

Another object appeared on the other side of the table. An elaborate sandglass held by impressive silver forged snakes.

Harry slowly turned his head to meet Tom's defiant gaze, as if to challenge him to surpass what he had created...

Harry then watched back the sandglass for a few seconds and found it truly impressive, but he couldn't help it, he had to take up the challenge—even if it was not to do better. Harry stretched his hand and a gray scratchy wool blanket fell heavily over his tureen.

Opposite him, one of Tom's eyelids twitched as he caught a glimpse of the new object that had just appeared out of thin air. He retorted by raising his wand; this time the hourglass shattered under the weight of several buckets of water and ice cubes that crushed it.

Harry groaned as he saw them, "Seriously?"

When Tom returned his full attention to Harry, his dark eyes flashed dangerously with a deep crimson. "The memories, too?" He leaned in, his voice a blood-curdling whisper, "you'll regret coming here. Deeply."

A long shiver ran up Harry’s spine, as Tom was already turning back in the direction of the blackboard, basically ignoring him.

"Are you kidding me—"

"Impressive," interrupted Dumbledore, who had previously been occupied by another student and therefore only observed the presence of the objects spread out on the table. "Twenty points to Hufflepuff, for managing to complete two Conjurations." Dumbledore would give Harry a kind smile before observing Tom's work. His lips fell back as he noticed the buckets and the shards of glass and sand spilled on the desk. "As for you, Mister Riddle, I expect better from you than to Conjure water, something you learned to do in first year."

There was one thing Harry hated as much as being threatened, and that was people being unfair. With a wave of his wand he made the buckets vanish to clearly reveal the remains of the sandglass.

" Reparo, " he incanted with the appropriate gesture of his wand. Then, the silver snakes were straightened and the grains of sand returned encapsulated in the glass. "He made it too. If you don't mind, Professor Dumbledore, I would like to quote something myself."

The professor straightened up, clearly paying attention. "Go ahead, that will allow me to better judge your theoretical knowledge… even if the practice already seems to be in order."

"I would like to talk about one of Gamp's five laws. Like his principle that you can't create good food from thin air, you can't create complex objects that work perfectly from thin air either. Well, more precisely, the more complex the object created will be, the more convoluted the way it works... My comforter, for example, will warm me up, but perhaps it will do so by appropriating the warmth of those around me. This is usually how cursed objects appear in nature, and also why Gamp recommends that objects created from thin air should only be used once and then vanished."

Dumbledore blinked slowly as he crossed his arms behind his back. "That's right. You also serve me as an introduction for the rest of our lesson. I was going to talk about this after your experiments… But, tell me, why bring up this subtle peculiarity of the branch now?"

Harry, who had seen the creation of the hourglass first hand, turned to Tom, stretching a cheeky grin. "Did you want to explain how you got around an applied law of magic?"

Dumbledore shook his head, and gently mocked his students, "No. That's impossible. The reason behind why the laws exist, is to explain how magic works. No one can twist them to suit their will."

There was a kind of relaxation in the room, a spasm in the magical pressure that was emanating from the other Slytherins who were unconsciously matching the thick fog of darkness that Tom was casting off.

This moment of suspension was marked by the way he looked at Harry, his eyelids remained squinted, but his eyes no longer blazed red. He no longer considered Harry as someone to be murdered as soon as possible, but rather to be studied scrupulously.

So Tom did not turn to Dumbledore, but kept all his attention focused on Harry. "What makes you think that?"

"The way the sand flows." To show what he meant by that, Harry would turn the hourglass over so the sand would fall back down again. "It responds to the law of physics. Not the law of magic."

Dumbledore's laughter died as slowly as his eyes followed the grains gradually falling to the bottom of the hourglass. The students at the surrounding tables craned their necks to get a glimpse of what was going on; they were also a few of the more distant Hufflepuffs standing up to get a better look.

Next to Tom's hourglass, Harry conjured another one, which served to demonstrate the difference between the two: the sand on his hourglass counted down the time by rising upwards.

Tom judged Harry's work for a long time before speaking, "When you conjure a purely decorative object, it has no practical function. But I've found that there is no reason why it cannot have one after it has been created. One that he cannot divert, because it was not part of his making. So yes, the sand flows as expected in my case, because mine is composed. First by something purely aesthetic, then after I added in the dynamic element that created the function."

"And you double the chances of success by betting on sand—an elemental, and therefore meets much less stringent summoning requirements..." Dumbledore paused to observe the rest of the students. "Return to your seats. I remind you that you only have until the end of the hour to conjure an object."

He pulled out his wand and trapped the two hourglasses under a protective dome. "I need to contact the guild, and talk to them about this. Maybe some of them, more qualified in the field than me, are already aware of this kind of… bypass." He stepped away from the table and returned to his desk to address the class again. "I admit to having my curiosity piqued. Could you excuse me for a few moments? I'll leave you under the supervision of the portraits. In case my absence extends to the end of class, for next week I want two scrolls of parchment studying and detailing a Gamp's law of your choice. Well, if you will excuse me."

Harry found it amusing to see the wary excitement shining in Dumbledore's eyes, which was also expressed in his eagerness to return to his personal quarters and make a fire call. At the same time, it was impossible for Harry not to forget the origin of this debacle and this display of nerdy knowledge—thankfully, he had a few lifetimes ahead of him to make up for  the geniuses around him.

The rest of the class went by without a murder attempt. Some students, depending on their respective houses, came to Tom or Harry for advice. Harry had no doubt that Tom's tutelage was in exchange for a future favor, but altruism wasn't one of the values of Slytherin house...

Nearing the end of class, all the students had managed to conjure at least one object, and Harry took advantage of the lull to grab a fresh roll of parchment and start the next assignment—his homework was the least of his priorities, but if he didn't do it, he'd be in more trouble. 

"I think Dumbledore didn't completly understand what you did," Harry said, looking thoughtfully at what he had already written. 

"And I'm sure he'll be able to hear it if you point it out to him."

Harry looked up from his parchment to peer at Tom. "But it's you who—"

"I have other things to do than fight over this. Dumbledore has many qualities, and one of them is misunderstanding me."

"Would I have then also misinterpreted your warm welcome for a threat?" Harry cynically quipped.

The bell rang to mark the end of class.

Tom was the first to stand, but as he stood he masked the fury in his eyes behind his most charmingly psychopathic air.

"Let's see, that was just a statement, and I will wait to see how long you last before you prove me right... you will regret coming here, if only because I ensure that I am never wrong."

He gave Harry one last smile—with corners so sharp they would have been enough to stab him—before blending into the stream of students and leaving the room.

When Harry returned his gaze to his parchment, it was smeared with ink stains that had splattered the few lines he had already written.

He vanished the soiled parchment, then ran a hand through his hair. There were days like this when he wondered why he had gotten involved in this stupid story of hunting horcruxes that came back to haunt him when he had already destroyed them...

The realization hit him with the strength of the Hogwarts Express launched at full speed: how could the horcruxes still exist if he had destroyed them? Or how could he find them in Limbo if Tom wasn't dead yet?

He stared into the void, eyes wide with bewilderment. He hurriedly packed his things into his bag and ran past Merlin and Egon.

They called out to him, "Peverell! Where are you going? Class is over!"

"I know, but I have to see Morcades!"

As he passed, the people in the paintings cursed him for running through the corridors. When he reached the moving stairs, they begged him not to run anymore, or else he would meet the same tragic end of the former DADA teacher. Harry mingled with the stream of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor fourth years who were also heading down to the dungeons—because yes, if Death was going to teach, it was going to be in one of the darkest and most gloomy rooms in the castle.

As he passed through the ground floor, near the Great Hall, during his run, he saw Moody with Euphemia. She was whispering something in his ear. As Harry passed by them, the prefect and the woman who would become his grandmother stopped plotting and gave him a suspicious look.

Passing by them was brief, less than a few seconds, but enough for Harry to perceive the wariness emerging from their magic, it was a lot more dimmed, but identical to what he had sensed from the Slytherins. What the hell was going on here?

Harry didn't notice in his rush that the hallway had become empty of other students.

He didn't suspect either that at the corner of a hallway someone would be waiting for him, wand pointed at his face. "Petrificus Totalus!"

... In fact, the corridors were not totally empty, someone witnessed the assault, as they followed Harry from a distance. They gasped before rushing into the dungeons. 

Chapter Text

Warrior. Hold your monsters close. Turn them into your magic. *

Who knew that being reincarnated was less brutal than falling and hitting the back of your head on the stone floor of the Hogwarts corridors?

Well, Harry knows it now, and he's not going to forget it anytime soon—especially considering how the pain of the shock rippled against the walls of his skull.

As a group of young Slytherins surrounded him with dark looks, he felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Neville, who had suffered a similar fate in their first year. Except that Neville had not been dragged like an old mop for more than a hundred yards, only to have his face half-bathed by the wet tiles of the ground floor toilet...

Noting this point, Harry was amused to think that apparently bullies seemed to have a strong connection to bathrooms in general. 

In another effort to drag him further, Harry's head hit the enameled base of one of the sinks. He tried to protest by wagging his jaw, but only a few pathetic grunts escaped from the back of his throat. They could at least levitate him! ‘Levicorpus’ is not a complicated spell to cast! Or maybe it hasn't been created yet... Either way, Harry felt ridiculous for falling into such a silly ambush.

“The badger weighs more than he looks!” complained one of the Slytherins in a hasty whisper, his face red from the effort of dragging Harry's body. 

“That's not a badger!” scolded the only girl of the group and who with her attitude seemed to be the chief of the band. “He's a filthy mole. Both live underground, but this one is just a vermin we need to get rid of.”

Although Harry's facial expression remained frozen in the same state of shock due to the ambush, it still perfectly reflected his stupor.

A mole? Dorea had also addressed him by calling him a ‘vermin’. What the heck was that all about? 

The gears in Harry's mind were turning at full speed. He had two options. The first one: it would not be difficult to free himself from this spell, which was harmless, especially when Harry was familiar with wandless magic.

The second: he could remain frozen and pay attention to what was happening around him. Anyway, what would it cost him? Apart from a slightly bruised ego? Which in itself, was far from the worst Harry could endure.

So, he remained immobilized by the spell, while two boys from the five Syltherins set him on his feet in one of the stalls at the back of the bathroom.

“Okay, so what do we do now? Do we call the chiefs or do we have some fun first?”

“Of course we have fun first! My father taught me a whole bunch of curses this summer, I need to try them on something other than a—Outch!”

“Goyle, save that for the blood traitors,” said the one leading the band with exasperation, while tucking away her wand after she tossed her stinging jinx. “Maybe we have more interesting things to do with him? Don't you think so?”

Another Slytherin took a step forward, there was something brutal about his face—perhaps because his jaw looked like it was chiseled out of stone to form rough edges. His eyes bore into Harry's. “If we can get him to talk now, it will save the others time. That's what will get us up the ranks.”

The last of the boys, still a little behind, wrinkled his nose as he searched the pockets of his robe. "Crap!" he snarled. "I knew I should have taken the veritaserum with me this morning…"

At the mention of the potion, Harry felt his heart thump harder against his ribs. Maybe it had been a bad idea to think the Slytherins wouldn't do anything serious? However, he was still at their mercy, because he wanted to know what kind of questions they could ask.

"You don't have it? Seriously! We went through Slughorn's personal stash and almost got caught! We did all this and you didn't even think about taking it with you?"

"Don't get pissed off at me. If we were able to capture him with only a second-year spell, it wouldn't be too hard to get our hands on him again." He judged Harry from head to toe. "...Or spike his pumpkin juice."

The leader reluctantly nodded, before turning her attention back to Harry, a familiar sneer creasing her nose and lips. “Truly pathetic. Who can believe he has been trained by Grindelwald?”

“Only if that story is true,” objected the teenager who wanted to steal the veritaserum. “I'm not the only one who suspects that the Ministry made this up when they saw that the Aurors weren't getting any results.”

“I repeat, potion or not, we should make him talk,” said menacingly, the one who looked like a brute as he approached Harry. “I'm sure losing a bone or two would motivate him to tell us who he's working for.”

“But, what if he really is a disciple of the dark wizard?” whined Goyle.

“And what? He'd be here to find more recruits?” hissed the girl as she pulled out her wand again to threaten him. "Get your brain working, if he was really one of us he would be in our house!"

“Anyway, Black seems certain of his move. He and Malfoy got confirmation from above that he was under a false identity. Well,” the thief grew impatient. "We're already late for potions. We need to hurry up and make a decision, because if Charis notices that I skipped class, she's going to skin me alive.”

“Let's call—”

The leader of the gang stopped talking when the clacking of heels suddenly echoed in the hallway. Harry had heard enough and took advantage of the distraction to bring his magic into action. As his muscles flexed, he shot through the group like an arrow, knocking over the girl in his path and then the boy who had been standing back from the beginning, blocking the exit of the cubicle by leaning on it.

The Slytherins gasped before brandishing their wands, their expressions mixed between disgusted faces and sharp smiles thirsty for blood.

It was in the early stages of a one-on-five duel that Death made her entrance. With her fists on her hips, she was accompanied by two Ravenclaws who stood hidden behind her—Harry recognized Lucretia among them. Her thin frame hunched over her shoulders, she swallowed as she judged the scene before her, her eyes wide with panic. 

"Trelawney, Black, thank you. That'll be all, go ahead, it won't take long. A portrait is already assigned to make sure you get back to my classroom safely."

The two blue-robed students didn't hesitate to leave. If Harry trusted his gut, the Slytherins had not only gone after the Gryffindors, but them as well. He had seen Lucretia's reaction, and it was one of someone who knew what those who stood before her were capable of. This made Harry grind his teeth, he was almost tempted to copy Barty Crouch's example and turn the gang into a pack of ferrets—something harmless, but perfectly lethal to their reputations.

Death loudly scratched her throat to refocus attention on her. "If you think that because I'm blind that I don't know your wands are out, you're sorely mistaken."

The group of Slytherins slowly lowered their wands, some almost squinting as they tried to keep an eye on Harry and on Death at the same time. 

"If I run into you again, wand in hand, I'll give you a good reason to have it... Maybe to go capture some Cornish pixies I need?" Death mused in an eerie voice. Seeing that the students didn't move an inch, she added more sternly, "what exactly are you waiting for? An invitation? Get out of here before I change my mind and drag you to the Headmaster's office." 

It took less than a minute before the restroom was completely empty of students, leaving Harry alone with Death. 

He took off his glasses to massage his eyelids. "I'm too old for this crap," He complained.

"And if you think you've seen everything!" playfully quipped Death. "Wait until you see the rest."  

"I can't wait." Harry sighed as he put his glasses back on. "A hint, perhaps?"

"As if, I’m not Fate," she teased, with a mischievous smile. She motioned for Harry to approach. "I thought I heard you were on your way to see me. It's about time you started asking the right questions, but it'll have to wait a little while. I have one more class today. You can attend if you don't want to wait in the hallway."

"To look like the teacher's pet? No thanks!" Harry joked as his friend was already dragging him towards the dungeons. 

"Don't spoil my fun. I was thinking of dueling practices to evaluate their levels—"

"Are you really asking me for educational advice? I'm sure you can come up with someone else, better than me. Obviously."

Death raised her eyebrows, "Dumbledore's Army was a pretty good example of your skills. Or the real army you created…"

"Please don't mention the second one. You know I only have bad memories of it."

"As you wish. But there will come a day when you'll have to accept that it's just as much a part of you as any other."

"And I think that's where it gets complicated… I don't think any of the other lives I've lived so far really belong to me. They're kind of like—I don't know how to explain it... like, err, detached from me?"

They were going deeper into the castle, which is why Death's laughter reverberated all the louder against the walls of the stairs that led to her classroom in the dungeons.

"Finally!" she enthused. "I'm almost tempted to cancel my class to keep you talking."

She grabbed the door handle, but before she opened it, she gently gave Harry's forehead a tap with one finger. "Keep it all in your pretty little head, or just keep thinking about it, but don't lose the thread, hmm?"

"Death..."

"Hello again!" Death exclaimed as she opened the door, not caring about the slow warning in Harry's tone. 

The latter stood back near the entrance as Death walked up the aisle to the center of her classroom. She waved her hands expertly and the tables began to stretch their thick wooden legs and move towards the classroom walls. Students scrambled to retrieve their inkwells and books when they noticed their tables fidgeting to get away.

"Let me pick up where I stopped before I left. Where was I again? ... Um, ah yes! Your former teacher chose to teach you the theoretical path of what awaits you outside: why you should avoid walking in the forest on a full moon night or why you should definitely never talk to a hag at your age—except the one inside the Hogwarts Express, of course!"

A few students turned their heads to their neighbors, wide-eyed upon hearing this fact.

"Avoidance is a good way to defend yourself. Better prevent than cure, isn't it? But let's take a new perspective shall we? If we are realistic, you all already have your heads in imminent danger. You have no chance to avoid them, especially when they come after you in one of the most secure place in England—”

"But what's happening at Hogwarts is not related to the Dark Arts… Is it?" whimpered a Ravenclaw in a thin, slightly panicked voice. 

“When we talk about Dark Arts, I would like to be clear on my definition. It is neither a way of qualifying a type of magic that can corrupt you if you are not prepared for it, nor is it the classification applied by the Ministry. We are talking about the nefarious intention behind anything that is against you... Perhaps this is a rather blurred nuance for you, so I would like to illustrate it. 

“Let's take for example the spells that were classified as Unforgivable Curses in 1717. They were classified as such because of the drift in their uses. If we look at the written records before that time, these spells had a completely different purpose than the one we know today. Before causing the horrors of our time, these spells were intended to heal… Surprising, isn’t it? Whether it was to destroy diseases or persistent curses; to provide a form of outlet through pain for those seeking to escape the hell of their minds; or to allow those with behavioral disorders to better manage them… See where I'm going with this? Yes, I think you do. It is the intention behind any magic that counts, and it is in this understanding that I want to teach you, so that you can grasp the complexity of potential situations that could arise in your future.”

Death crossed her hands behind her back and let a moment of silence float by.

The students, now standing in the middle of the room (since the chairs had followed the tables and lined up against the walls), exchanged mixed looks, unsure of the credibility of their new teacher's words. 

Death's faint eerie laughter interrupted the silence she had set, and with another gesture from her, the only door in the room swung open wide.

The noise startled a few students who turned to see a small army of dummies crossing the threshold of the classroom. The sight was somewhat terrifying, Harry admitted. Even though the dummies looked perfectly harmless, with their worn brown burlap bodies stuffed with straw, they were moving like zombies. That is, they moved slowly, dragging their legs, so much so that their arms were flung from side to side as they walked. Harry was certain that at least one of the students here had just come across the future form of their boggart.  

"This is where my way of teaching will diverge from your former teacher's: theory through practice. You will learn to connect your brain with your body, so that, when confronted with imminent danger, you will not be immobile, paralyzed looking for a solution. You will learn to act. Quickly and well enough to get out of whatever it is that wants to harm you... Now line up and pull out your wands."

‘ So you're giving them the means to run away from you for a little longer? ’ thought Harry.

‘ That's the beauty of life. Even without my guidance, they will seek to escape me. ’

Each student found a dummy to partner with, while Death worked on applying an extension charm to move the walls of the classroom backwards, thus freeing up more space.

When the walls finished moving and each student in the class was standing in front of their dummy with their wand drawn, time seemed to stand still for a brief moment. Harry couldn't help but take a sharp breath that locked his lungs. The air in the room pulsed with magic and was charged with the distinctive smell of ozone that heralded a storm. 

"My instructions are simple, the dummies are set up to attack you with spells and curses you’ll probably not recognize. Don't hold back, I want to see how you react. If it gets to be too much for you and you have to stop the fight, throw red sparks."

She clapped her hands and the dummies all straightened up as one, torsos bulging and arms outstretched with a branch growing in their hands in a grotesque imitation of a wand. 

"Alright!" exclaimed cheerfully Death. "Let's open fire!"

As the last words crossed Death's lips, magical explosions erupted like the day the Weasley twins interrupted the O.W.L. exam with their spectacular fireworks.

Harry had the reflex to immediately throw a shield around himself to avoid any collateral damage. Which in itself was far from a bad idea! The room became a battlefield, with a magical outburst that would probably shake the foundations of Hogwarts.

The lions stood out because they often used direct offensive strategies by using the environment to fight. It was common to see them throw a table or a chair in the direction of a dummy to make it step back or to serve as a shield. Then, it was just as common to find that behind the furniture that had just been thrown were a few Ravenclaws considering the possibilities of counterattacks with other housemates. 

On several occasions, Harry found totally understandable shortcomings in the students. Whether it was in the way they physically dodged a spell, thought too long to remember a counter-spell, or simply mismanaged the stress of the situation…

But besides that, Harry had to be honest, he found that many of them were almost too skilled in dueling for their age. This majority showed a sincere experience in the field and that made Harry's gut tighten. Not to mention the way they fought, they followed Death's instructions to the letter: they didn't hold back. They were fighting like their lives depended on it and it was violent. Almost wild. 

‘Do you plan to do your classes in the form of dueling often? ’

‘Absolutely. I think it's necessary. The teachers here are worried about the students' magical exhaustion, but they need it. Their magical cores are growing, and if they don't spend enough of it, their bodies will become... itchy. I mean, look at the way they're fighting, it's already the case. They don't need a magical puberty crisis on top of everything else that's happening to them. ’

Harry was surprised at the small amount of red sparks being shot. One of the students calling for a time-out was Lucretia, who ran across the room to take refuge by Harry's side, who immediately included her behind his shield. She was just as out of breath as she had been the previous night, but she still gave Harry a thumbs up, as if to thank him for protecting her for a few moments.

"Are you okay?" she finally asked, after she managed to catch her breath.

"Me? I think I should be the one asking you that question."

"It's training, we're safe. The Slytherins, on the other hand, they are... they are not training."

Harry shrugged. "I'm fine. I must have lost a few brain cells on the hallway floor, but it won't matter much."

In response, Lucretia first had an exhausted chuckle. Then, she whispered softly, "do you know what they wanted with you?" 

"I think they just don't like me coming here."

"That's unexpected… Considering your past, I mean. Are you sure that's all—hmm, you know what? I'll find out. Something's been wrong since you got here."

"Oi! Black! We need you over here!" exclaimed a Gryffindor with whom Lucretia had been cooperating since the beginning of the hour.

"No need to howl at the moon, I'm coming Lupin!" She would turn back to Harry. "See ya!" And, without waiting for an answer, she returned to the battlefield. 

As for Harry, he thought he would eventually get used to hearing names from the past pop up, but to no avail. The knowledge that at this very moment a Black was already standing next to a Lupin made his heart ache, and the more he thought about it, the more it pained him to think that he would have to wait much longer before seeing Remus or Sirius again...

When the bell signaled the end of class, all the dummies dropped dead to the floor, leaving the students standing there breathless and sweaty. Some of the students followed the same fate as the dummies and fell to the ground too—bone deep exhausted.

"Excellent! I expected nothing less. At the next class, I will give you some collective feedback."

Death waited for the students to get their things, and, when a small number of them began to make their way to the exit, she pulled a piece of wood from her bun.

With a sudden jolt, Harry realized that it was a wand that Death was pointing in his direction.

"Did you expect us to chat over a cup of tea?" asked Death with sharp smile. 

"Of course I did!" Harry exclaimed, whipping out his wand in turn. "Even, around a hot cocoa to be more specific!"

Without warning, Death cast an unidentifiable spell that hit Harry's shield hard and sent it flying into a million pieces. 

He barely had time to leap to the side and glance at the charred mark the spell had left on the wall he was leaning on a second before.

"Dea— Morcades! You want to kill me!?" 

"Too easy, I want to remind you that you still have work to do here." She punctuated her sentence with another spell that slashed Harry's cheek as he was throwing himself out of its way.

Harry's heart missed a beat as he saw the curse race towards the other students who were now lingering at the entrance to watch the impromptu fight.

In Harry's hands, his wand vibrated—overloaded with magic that was just waiting for a command to jump out. It was as easy as conjuring the tureen. Harry just needed a simple thought, and a new shield was erected between Death's curse and the students who were at the end of its course. This time, the barrier resisted the assault, emanating an intense golden flicker to prove its unscratched state. 

Now assured that the spectators were not threatened by anything, Harry tightened his grip on his wand and his legs darted forward. He slid behind a table and cast a jinx that was probably considered innocent, but had its way of throwing the assailant off balance.

From the laughter he heard, he had managed to hit Death. He risked a glance over the desk to prove it.

"I like the Rapunzel style. It suits you," Harry taunted as he straightened up to run to another shelter. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Death's hair continuing to grow in an unending tide of hair that was drowning her as she was trying to control it with a lot of Severing Charms. Except that among them, one had a different color and was thrown in the direction of Harry's legs. He fell head first, cut off in his tracks and his feet stuck to the ground.

‘One more blow to the head today and my brain will end up coming out of my ears.’

Death abandoned the idea of cutting her hair and tossed it back to clear her face. Casually, she stepped down from her dais, and walked forward, her wand pointed to Harry's face.

‘ You're giving up the fight already? ’

‘ With you, I've never resisted. ’

Death slowly lowered her wand, and put a hand against her cheek. “You really want to make me blush—”

The flash of light from a spell interrupted Death, who immediately stepped aside, except it was the ground that Harry was aiming at. Death slipped, flailing her arms in the air to try to keep her balance on the slippery ground. Harry took advantage of the distraction to vanish his shoes and escape to the opposite side of the classroom.

"Can we stop? I don't wanna hurt you by mistake!" 

"Please don't forget who I am," Death lectured him as she managed to lift the slippery jinx from under her feet. She blew out a few endless strands of hair that came to tickle her face. "I was hoping it would help you blow off some steam."

"This is too serious for me to be distracted!" Harry defended himself.

‘ But, you already are… ’

The echo of Death's voice pierced Harry's thoughts as a dummy came up and grabbed him from behind. It held him so tightly that he couldn't even breathe. Black dots were already appearing in his vision when he managed to get out of the way enough to turn around.

His blood ran cold as he realized that instead of the faceless head of the dummy there was now the illusion of Dolores Umbridge's face. 

‘ That’s all in your mind. ’

Harry’s breath was getting shorter and shorter, so he thrust his wand into the belly of the dummy now dressed in a pale pink suit that gave Harry nightmare visions.

"Incendio!" he roared, unleashing a torrent of flames. 

The dummy immediately relaxed its grip and ran into the classroom as it was reduced to a human torch. 

‘ If you don't want to fight me, let's try those you wouldn't mind hurting. ’

‘ I'm not here to vent anything! I just need to know how the horcruxes got into your realm when I totally destroyed them. Even better, why are they even there if Tom isn’t dead now?! ’

The two immortals stared at each other for several seconds, before Death sighed in irritation, ‘ Is that the first question you have? Not why they project you into the past? ’

“Wh-what? I thought you were the one who made it possible!”

More dummies were straightened up, some also bearing Dolores' face, but Harry could also distinguish Bellatrix's and other Death Eaters'. This was becoming worse and worse.

"Fate has a grudge against you because you’re Luck's favorite..." Death sighed, massaging her brow in exasperation.

The dummies with the faces of Harry's enemies walked in his direction, menacing looks distorting their features. 

‘You take my words too lightly, Harry. What you described to me, this detachment you have from your other lives, is all your own fault, you've been fooling yourself for too long— ’

"Depulso!" Hary chanted with a sudden wave of his wand that catapulted some of the enemies across the room.

The only thing that was able to stop their momentum was the opposite wall as they crashed against it. Those who had escaped the shockwave continued to rush towards Harry; they were casting spells Harry was unfamiliar with—but judging by the black mist that emanated from the marks they left on their targets, it was only a bad omen.

‘—But either way, let's talk about why the horcruxes are in my Limbo, if that's really what you're worried about. As far as I know, you only destroyed their containers, so why shouldn't they belong in a realm ignored by time and dedicated to those who no longer have a physical anchor in the realm of the living? ’

Harry didn't immediately respond to Death, he sent a charm that rocketed the rest of the assailants; they flew up to the ceiling before hitting it with a loud bang.

Before they could hit the floor in their fall, Harry shouted "Immobulus!" to freeze them in a blue light that saturated the room.

The Death Eaters and the multiple copies of Dolores Umbridges hung in the air like cosmonauts drifting through space.

"Okay, okay, dumb question, dumb answer. Thanks, I get it." Harry growled, before kicking a chair hard to purposefully break the leg. 'But what exactly am I supposed to understand? My problem with my lives is different from my original questions about the horcruxes. '

"You're only proving that you're not listening to me."

"And if you weren't just talking in cryptic terms, you'd save us all a lot of trouble!" Harry snarled while transfiguring the chair leg into a replica of Godric's sword. ‘I had no idea what I was getting into when I touched the first one, so you'll excuse me for needing a moment to let the shock of being plunged into the past pass.’

'So you still don't understand why they brought you here, hmm? Don't you even know it's them? Or rather him,' Death asked as she crossed her arms over her chest, her brows furrowed, as if to show that she too was about to lose her temper. "You're really stubborn when you put your mind to it... but you'll have to admit it eventually."

"Admit—" Harry interrupted himself to behead one of the dummies who was throwing himself at him. "Admit what?!" 

‘ All your questions: why do the pieces stay scattered without coming together? Why do they bring you back to the timeline of your first life? Why can't I just send Voldemort to another life? Why can't you just move on?... They all have the same answer! And you already have it, except you have to admit it before we can go any further. ’

Harry's arms froze mid-air as he was about to bring the sword down on one of the Fenrir Greyback dummies; which was just about to slam into him. Harry found himself knocked to the ground, close to being chewed up by a werewolf. 

"Think, Harry! I already told you."

Harry pulled himself together. "I think!—" He slammed his pommel into Fenrir's face and took advantage of his confusion to transfigure him into a puppy. "I think I've heard enough…" he growled, out of breath, as he leapt to his feet.

"No. You just want to hide the truth from yourself."

"I said!—"

‘He is as much a part of you as you are a part of him,’ Death cut him off. ‘ Harry, I know you refuse to accept it, but please, I need you to listen to me! Since that day when he created a horcrux inside your scar, your souls have never been two separate entities... They are intertwined. Not because of an incident or a mistake, but only because your souls have accepted this bond.’

"No!" interjected Harry, sending another Depulso that made the dummies back off. "On the contrary, this was all a mistake. None of us wanted this and we don't share anything now that I've gotten rid of what was in my head!"

‘But, it is far beyond anything, a soul cannot remain incomplete, it will transcend time or space to find what it lacks. You can't keep running away while it's trying to reach you. This is... This is pure torture. You are hurting yourself by doing this.' 

For several long seconds, all that could be heard was Harry's heavy breathing and the blade of his sword slicing the dummies that kept coming back for more in half.

There was no longer the restraint of a simple desire to defend himself; now the blade was impaling itself brutally through skulls or violently ripping open bellies, reflecting the rage that was rising in Harry. It wasn't just that he refused to admit the truth that Death was offering him: he hated it. He hated it from the bottom of his heart.

‘I'm willing to believe many things, Death, but certainly not that I need Voldemort to live.’   

‘ No soul can enjoy another life without being complete. It will just be a specter, unable to embrace the present moment, looking for what it lacks... You just used to call it boredom, Harry— ’

"That's enough. Really, I've heard enough," Harry held back from yelling, he just groaned as he continued to slash his blade, as if to expel all the emotions that gripped his throat and drowned out his vision with red.

When one of the dummies collapsed to the ground again, defeated, Harry was confronted with the austere expression of Death, shrouded in the gloomy shadow of her long black hair.

‘If not this, then perhaps it is your actions that are holding you back? Do you think you can move on to other lives, carrying the burden that you murdered the one you shared your soul with? This soul entertwined with yours, that you were forced to murder piece by piece… Is that what holds you back indefinitely, Harry? Wanting to take revenge on those who led you down a path where all that awaited you was sacrifice? The violence of maiming? To lose your soul indefinitely? '

“Enough,” Harry panted softly as he stood still and his magic buzzed around him, charging at any dummy that came too close and simply ripping it apart.

‘Or maybe this is all just a twisted trial. This whole thing could have been easier... Much simpler. I give you the choice, but I think you need to suffer—even that you enjoy the pain of the process. Because even though you see that you're not entirely responsible for his murder, you can't help but feel your hands dirty with his blood. This trial, this ordeal, you have partly built it yourself... Unconsciously you are looking for a form of redemption—a peace... And deep inside, he knows it too.’

"Enough!" Harry’s roar was accompanied by a shockwave that blew up every dummy in the room.

"By acting on the past, you hope to alter the future. Preventing wars, the death of your loved ones... of course, you have the ability, but what you are trying to deny is the origin of all this. Don't you see that all this is a distress call trying to reach you? Why don't you accept that you are not the only one who wants to avoid repeating the ending that has already happened?" Death's pupiless eyes seemed to darken. She swallowed, before turning her gaze to the entrance of her classroom.

Harry refused to follow her gaze and kept his back firmly presented to the entrance. He drew a long, shaky breath; the knuckles of his hands were white, clasped tightly on the handle of his sword and wand.

‘You're wrong, Death. Voldemort is not sending any distress signals. If he really wants to change something, it's only to better achieve world domination and satisfy his ego... I'm doing all this just to hope for a better future and to finally draw a line in the sand... but in any case, there will come a day when I will have to stop Voldemort. Because if I don't, no one will. No one can change that, it's inevitable. Prophecies or not, intertwined souls or not...' 

Harry turned around, ready to leave the room, but one last thought crossed his mind when he saw Tom standing apart from the other students who had come to huddle behind the barrier Harry had erected to watch the fight.

‘We will inevitably be enemies. Really, nothing can stop us from facing each other.'

‘Above all, nothing can stop the two of you from finding each other… Harry, you're already dead by the hand of the other. Don't you think murdering your own soul once is enough?’

The barrier of light that protected the students turned into golden dust as Harry walked through it. The younger students stepped out of his path.

On his path, he passed by Tom and planted the sword at his feet without stopping. "Keep it. You’ll need it to complete your collection."

Chapter Text

There was a knock at Harry's door just after dinner. As he opened it, small vials containing different iridescent liquids of strange colors were brandished to his face. 

"Which one?" asked Merlin enthusiastically.

"Uh, black?"

"Obsidian? It will go with my highlights... I approve. Oh floo off, let me in!"

Harry barely had the time to step aside, and Merlin was already sneaking inside. She sat cross-legged on the bed with a vanity case, from which she took out all her beauty supplies and arranged them around her. With a flick of her wand, she charmed her various hair brushes that immediately levitated to work on her hair; and, with another flick, different palettes of joyous colored powder gravitated around her. 

"You don't mind me invading your space? It's a war in the girls' bathroom and I don't want to ruin the mood by playing the pesky prefect—I leave that to Moody."

"What about your room? Or Tahlia's, or even Cedrella's? Aren't you friends?" Harry wondered as he decided to settle into the chair at his desk. 

"We get along fine.” Merlin shrugged as she continued to spread her things out on the bed. “Egon's the one I like to hang out with... but he's already at his stupid date."

"I—er, nah," Harry mumbled; holding back with all his might from reacting to the pained note in Merlin's voice that she was obviously trying to hide. "No worries, you can stay here as long as you want. But, uh, is there anything going on tonight?"

"You'd know if you hadn’t locked yourself in your room like a brooding teenager," Merlin teased him before lowering her pocket mirror. 

"Hey! that's not true!"

To prove him wrong, Merlin pointed her powdered brush at Harry's bedroom window, which he had enchanted to show the landscape of a stormy sea, with many waves crashing furiously against the window glass—the room looked like a ship caught in a tempest, minus the swell.

Harry grunted and slumped in his seat, unable to argue with Merlin.  He slowly ran his hand over the scar that marked his forehead before finally biting down on his cheek... ever since he had left Death's classroom, he could not tear his thoughts away from the implication that the scar bore. He had not only carried a piece of his enemy's soul, but it had become bound to his own. 

Without Voldemort, Harry wasn't whole; this simple statement reignited the rage that was boiling in Harry's blood, because it all sounded so wrong. It all seemed like a horrible manipulation by Fate—who else could bind him to the enemy he was destined to kill over and over again? 

"Even if Lucretia hadn't told us, I think we'd have quickly guessed that you've been through some pretty bad stuff..." Merlin empathized, biting her lips.

Harry moved his chair forward to stick it as close to the bed as possible, he occupied his hands by fiddling with one of the small bottles of nail polish Merlin had presented to him on her way in.

"I'm not brooding," Harry insisted with a pointed look towards Merlin. "I just... I've just had a lot to process lately."

"I bet... I know it's none of my business, but if you feel like…um, talking, I'm here—"

Harry arched an eyebrow. "Yeah, you’re here, and you made it pretty clear by claiming my bed as your new vanity table," he chuckled.

"Shh, you! I'm trying to be nice!"

“And thank you very much for that, I feel so much better right now!" he sarcastically retorted with a smile, while throwing his legs on the bed and unscrewing the little bottle he had been fiddling with. "So, I guess everyone's out tonight, and that's despite the fact that there's a serial-petrifier on the loose."

"Avoid that subject. Especially since the party isn't allowed by the house heads." 

"I wonder why..." grumbled Harry, inwardly cursing the lack of rationality of teenagers in general.

With a flick of his wrist, he chased away one of the hair brushes that was trying to tame the cursed devil's snare that was his hair. 

"Don't be like that, we need it. Trips to Hogsmeade, club tournaments, the Frog Choir… everything has been suspended since the beginning of the year. Even the Quidditch matches! All that because of the petrifications! And I won’t even talk about Myrtle’s murder… We're just allowed to get up, eat, go to class, eat, again , go to class, again , eat… again , and go to bed. It's all the same loop every day! It's enough to drive anyone crazy!—Fuck!” Merlin swore as she missed the black line she had tried to draw on her upper eyelid. She made the disaster vanish with a flick of her wand and started again. “You can't even hang out in the hallways to talk to someone without being shooed away by the Aurors…" She complained a bit more calmly to focus entirely on her make-up.

Harry kept the nail polish brush hanging over one of his fingers to better peer at Merlin. Her tone had been miserable, and Harry sympathized. In truth, he understood how boring Hogwarts could be without the activities that punctuated and enlivened daily life—magic or not, Hogwarts was still a school after all.

Also, this temporary suspension of all extra-curricular activities allowed him a better understanding of the behavior of certain groups of students. For example, it would explain the motivation of the young Hufflepuffs to be so eager to participate in the kitchen activities. Harry also wondered if this particular setting was one of the reasons why the Syltherins, for example, were more violent. Fighting against other houses would be their particular way of filling the boredom…

Harry let out a sigh and finished applying the polish to the nail on his hand. "Either way, it's better if I come..."

"Finally! I was becoming worried about how to drag you there," Merlin exclaimed with a smile that brought out her dimples. "Then, this way, you can protect us while playing the knight in shining armor," she added with an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes to mock Harry. 

"This is the treatment I get for using a sword?—No! No need to answer.” 

“Okay, okay! but in exchange you’ll teach me.”

“Yeah, I don't really have any other choice now, obviously… So! Where's the party happening anyway?"

"I will start the bet: in less than an hour, someone will end up nicey-nicey with the giant squid... How the hell can this whole party pass unnoticed?"

The party was in full swing and Harry couldn't help but think back to what Merlin had said earlier: of course, if all the teenagers at Hogwarts had been suppressed from all opportunities to have fun for over two months, they were bound to wildly catch up tonight.

The music was blasting so loudly that the ground shook and the surface of the lake rippled. Students were talking, singing and dancing in groups. No one was wearing their house-colored uniforms, as if for one night all the conflicts had faded into the background and would resume as if nothing had happened the next morning. Harry thought it was wonderful, but couldn't resist worrying about the worst when he saw that on several tables there were bottles of alcohol that had probably been smuggled in the beginning of the school year and have been gathering dust since. 

Among the bottles, he also saw some empty vials where some traces of a blue liquid emanated a dense smoke of the same color. Harry's eyes widened, he was not of Snape's level of expertise, but he was sure it was Alihotsy Draught. Lending an ear and searching over the deafening sound of the music, his suspicion was confirmed: among the crowd he could hear several fits of hysterical laughter. Perfect, a party where potions are used as recreational drugs! With alcohol added into the equation, he feared that some teenagers would become too loose-tongued and that the underlying conflicts of the houses would resurface here... He feared especially that they would be settled tonight. 

"The seventh year Ravenclaws have placed a perimeter around the lake under a Disillusionment Spell coupled with a Silencing Bubble Charm," Merlin explained, as she linked her arm with Harry's to lead him through the crowd and under the mystic light of the Bluebell flames that lit up the party. "We arranged this at the last minute because the elves told us that the professors were having a meeting with the Aurors. We'll be safe until the wee hours!"

Inwardly, Harry prayed that no one had passed the word to Tom, because if he unleashed the Basilisk here, the party would become a hecatomb. Before he could think too much about the potential massacre, Merlin shoved a glass in his hands that had the overwhelming smell of fire whiskey.

"Relax! I promise you, everything will be fine!"

"This is how horror movies start..." Harry grumbled before taking a swig from his glass.

The alcohol burned his throat and palate, but he took a second sip anyway. He wasn't the type to drown his problems in alcohol, but he had to admit that his situation deserved a few drinks... Or maybe a whole bottle if you really thought about it. 

When Harry finally drained his glass, he figured it was a good start to at least put aside his intertwined soul issues with the future supremacist and serial murderer he was destined to assassinate.

It seemed all the more distant when he was dragged along by Merlin to dance. Admittedly, the crowd around him did not allow him to relax, but he was content with this simple moment when he put the weight of the world's fate on his shoulders aside for a few minutes.

After several tunes had played, Harry was shaken out of his bliss by an indescribable feeling of acute alarm that wormed its way into the pit of his stomach. He looked around to realize that he had lost sight of Merlin. He swore and shouted his friend's name, but there was no response from anyone around him—

The Bluebell flames flying over the party faded. The music stopped abruptly and a heavy silence took place around the lake. The students around him stopped dancing and peeled off the smiles on their lips to put on hard, cold faces and tense shoulders.

The lack of panic among them suddenly stressed Harry, it was as if this was all prepared. Something was wrong; really wrong. 

The flash of a spell was projected into the center of the assembly, and in response the ground shook even harder than when the music was playing. The ground rose a few feet to create a small hill that served as a platform. In this way, several students stood above the others and became their new center of attention.

Of those on the dais, Harry recognized Moody and Merlin among them, standing next to Charlus as well as Dorea, but, more surprisingly, they were also standing next to several students that Harry had seen before at the Slytherin table—that also included the girl who ambushed Harry with her buddies earlier today. 

Every student around Harry seemed to have forgotten the festive atmosphere of the last hour and were now vibrating with the same magical aura that Harry had been feeling since he arrived. At first it had only affected the Slytherins, but this hostile wariness seemed to have spread to the other houses. Harry took a step backwards, but his back collided with a row of students who gave him death glares while consciously preventing him from backing up further.

"Hogwarts students, thank you for answering our call. By helping us tonight, you are participating in the effort to ward off one of the dangers facing our school!" announced one of the Slytherins who had amplified his voice by using the Sonorus charm.

Another student—whom Harry immediately identified as a Malfoy because of the almost white blond color of his hair and the way he seemed to enjoy being the center of attention, took over to speak, "our source has confirmed that we have a usurper among us tonight. Although his intentions are still unclear, we, the prefects and leaders of your respective groups, have decided that it is time to get some answers... Or better yet, get rid of the newest threat before it takes root too deeply in our home."

Harry remained totally stunned for several seconds, hesitating between applauding the exceptional coalition effort of the Hogwarts students or pestering against the fact that all their efforts were directed against him. Because yes, it was inevitably him who was being called a usurper here, and if he was not yet certain of it, all the eyes focused on him was the confirmation. All this did not bode well for the rest of the night and Harry would have to get out of this mess.

How? He had no idea yet, but he was going to have to find one... And quickly!

Hands were grabbing him—a disturbing flashback to the time when they had tried to run away with Tom after church resurfaced in Harry's mind. He was being dragged closer to the lake while the earth shook again, swallowing the slope that had been created as a platform.

Out of the blue, his knees were being knocked from behind to force him to kneel, and then other hands were grabbing his shoulders to hold him in that position. When he looked up, he saw the group that had been standing on high approaching him, serious expressions on their faces that frowned and pursed their lips.

Strangely, Harry felt as if the day of his trial that took place just after Voldemort's demise was happening a second time... He could only hope that he wouldn't end up in Azkaban again. 

"So, you're the big guys of the playground?" he laughed.

"Don't underestimate us, vermin," Malfoy replied in a drawling voice. "We are the greatest of tomorrow."

"Err…have you ever thought about finding out if there is a curse on your family? Because I feel like you're all fated to be pompous jerks."

From Malfoy's expression, Harry could easily have believed he had just swallowed a lemon.

Without taking his eyes off of him, Malfoy held out his hand to the other Slytherin who had spoken in introduction. The latter was slipping a small vial into Malfoy’s palm, which Harry recognized immediately.

He sighed. "Oh, come on… why every time I run into one of you, someone tries to drug me—"

The sound of a bottle being uncorked cut Harry off, but before he could react the bottleneck of the Veritaserum was shoved down his throat. His eyes widened in surprise, and he swore that he had probably never fallen so low in his life. 

Behind Moody, Harry heard Merlin gasp, then she whispered hastily, “Moody, do something.” Without a prompt answer, she intensely shook his shoulder. “Mad-Eye, we need to fire the signal—” 

“No, wait.”

“What! And let that happen!? Absolutely not! Fire—”

A hand pinched Harry’s nose to prevent him from breathing and forced him to swallow, but he refused to drink anything; especially a potion that would make him spit out any truth on his account—as far as anyone here was qualified enough to conduct an interrogation under Veritaserum… because even if the potion made the truth come out, it was still the truth that the person under its effect believed in. And how to put this? Let just say that Harry had a particular perception of truth since he had ended up cursed by the blood quill.

The argument between Moody and Merlin continued in the background.

"We said we didn't condone this shit-show— Oomph! What are you doing?!" Merlin shouted in an outraged, furious tone.

Other older students had emerged from the crowd to surround Merlin and pull her back. One of them was trying to gag her with his hand to keep her quiet. A few seconds later, there was a groan of pain; Merlin had bitten the hand that was trying to stop her from speaking.

With her mouth free, she immediately shouted, "Peverell, don’t stay here! Do something!"

As if he could do anything now without starting a general fight! He couldn't let that happen, but if he didn't react either the pack of schoolboys had a chance to discover his secrets, or he would end up dead, probably asphyxiated…

Then at least, if he died now, they'd be left with the embarrassment of not only having to dispose of his corpse, but also having to explain his sudden disappearance. Then he came to wonder if he could really die of asphyxiation—Death would really have to draw the line at his mortality, for he could not decide whether an oxygen-deprived brain would be more crippling than a missing heartbeat. 

Harry's vision was already blurred as the vial was pulled out from his mouth in panic. Not wasting a second, he spat the entire contents of his mouth at Malfoy's face. Perhaps it was his under-oxygenated brain that was making him delirious, but Harry burst into a demented laughter as he met the outraged expression in front of him. 

A rough grunt could be heard among the small group of leaders. With a jab of Moody's staff Malfoy backed off.

"Remind me to keep mistrusting you," Moody growled at Malfoy, as he leaned in to get his eyes on the same level as Harry's. "Sorry to disappoint you New Guy, but you've already drunk some without realizing it."

Harry's laughter died and he swore in a low voice. "The glass of fire whiskey, huh? Well, I needed to be reminded that you’re a sneaky one."

"Is that true Mad-Eye!?” Merlin shooted. “Who do you think you are? Fucking paranoid psycho’!"

"Are you even aware that the use of Veritaserum is heavily restricted and not for nothing?” Harry intervened. “If you are telling the truth with this potion, it’s because one of the effects contracts a particular nerve in the brain. Too much Veritaserum, the nerve explodes, and poof! No more brain."

"I like this idea less and less," Charlus muttered as he stepped back, his face more whiter than a ghost’s.

"Oi! Malfoy! You should almost thank me for spitting it in your face," Harry pushed. "Better that than drag my corpse into the forbidden forest and bury it there. Don't you think so?"

"Can someone make him shut up? I think I'm going to be sick..."

"Hey! You'd better agree on what you want after all!" Harry exclaimed. "You want me to talk or shut up!"

"Start by giving us your name," Moody demanded in an imperturbable tone. "Your real name."

“Ooh, practicing your interrogation skills ahead of time? Good thinking Moody, it will help you become an Auror.” Harry stretched a smile and let his gaze roamed around. "It’s funny to see all of you hanging on my every word now that I’m drugged, even when I’m always telling the truth. Potion or not.”

“What’s your real name?” 

“Peverell. At least that's what it says on my papers. Just… Err, Moody, you want to be an Auror, I’m right? Sorry to disappoint you, but if you think that’s specific enough, you're sticking your finger so deep in your eye that you're going to need a second prosthetic; but not a great deal!—rookie mistake… All that. Go ahead, try again."

"Give me the name your parents gave you when you were born," Moody clarified, not even blinking at the provocation. 

Harry widened his eyes slightly at the question. "You mean that moment when they cut the cord and the parents proudly say the name of their pretty, crinkly baby to the nurse?” he rephrased. “Well, I’ve no fucking idea. For all I know they could have told ‘Ron’ that you wouldn't know what to do with that information."

Moody cracked his neck. "Did you know how to get around the effects of the potion or you’re just naturally a brat?"

"Both."

"I've heard enough," Malfoy interjected, pulling out his wand to point it very close to Harry's face. "We know that the only Peverell around our age died five years ago—"

White noise pierced Harry's eardrums where Malfoy's words blended in the indistinct background noise.

How could everyone at Hogwarts have gotten this information? No one was supposed to even know that there was a Peverell still alive... Harry’s breath caught when he realized that no, he was wrong. Someone did know.

His mouth suddenly turned pasty as he remembered that only one wizard at the time had seen him live and then die before his very eyes. 

"Tom. Tom is your famous source, isn't it?"

"Answer my question and take my lord— my friend ; my friend’s name out of your mouth!" Malfoy snarled.

All along, the answer had been right in front of Harry's eyes and he had been too stupid to see it! This was Tom's plan for revenge. He had done everything in his power to make Harry's life a living hell, all because he had left without giving answers to his questions! Because Harry had chosen to defy him by dying when Tom had expressly forbidden him to do so!

It pissed Harry off that one teenager had enough influence to manipulate an entire school to the point of causing a riot by lying to them and making them think that Harry wasn't who he claimed to be.

"Tom, you bastard..." Harry muttered in a low voice, shaking his head.

Around him, Malfoy continued to drown him in mindless questions, and the students holding Harry back intensified the pressure they were putting on his shoulders as he stirred to get up. One of them must have gotten tired because he cast an Incarcerous Spell that bound Harry's limbs. 

"Let go of me!" Harry growled, "Now!"

"Not until we know what you're doing here!"

"I'm here so no more innocent people will have to die! How's that for a damn answer!?"

"Let's drown him in the lake! Let's get it over with!" Impatiently said one of the students in the crowd who was standing back. 

"If you're so convinced that he's working on Grindelwald's behalf, feed him to the Giant Squid!"

"We don't want a Ministry spy in our classes!"

"Impostor!"

"Drown him! Drown him!" Chorused the students, who were now an angry mob. "Drown him!”

Malfoy lowered his wand to turn and see the crowd of students coming dangerously close, no longer hiding their nefarious intentions.

Even Harry—who had seen Hogwarts students rebel against a murderous Dark Lord and his equally murderous minions—had never seen teenagers so determined to get rid of anyone, no matter who got in their way. This generation of students was more screwed up than any other, in Harry's honest opinion…

Listening more carefully to what they were shooting, he now understood the situation more clearly: the mere fact that there was any doubt about his identity had been the perfect conductor for all the students to blame him for what they most feared or hated—either the reinforcement of the ubiquitous and incompetent Ministry presence or the infiltration of Hogwarts for the benefit of the dark wizard who was currently reducing Europe to ash.

As Malfoy was distracted by the crowd, a flare was fired. Harry watched the red flare rise into the sky, leaving a haze of smoke in its wake that fell opaquely to the ground.

After the rocket exploded in the sky, Harry followed the rocket's trajectory in the opposite direction and descended to the ground, where he found Merlin, breathing heavily and with her arm stretched skyward. The fury in her eyes seemed to be reflected in the way her wand continued to shoot rockets nonstop like an erupting volcano.

Then, a new detonation followed, and heralded another flash of red light. Harry quickly turned his head, to see Charlus in the same position as Merlin. The angry crowd of students froze, partly engulfed by the smoke of the projectiles... From the crowd came new flares. The detonations were so sudden among them that they triggered a general panic; the assembly dispersed and ran en masse to reach the castle.

Amongst the shouts of panic and general confusion, Harry felt the pressure on his shoulders suddenly release and then saw the bullies who were holding him back follow the movement of the crowd. As he followed them with his eyes, he saw Dorea snatch Moody's staff to land a powerful blow at Malfoy's face—he fell to the ground, totally stunned.

"Did you see that one coming? Dare to tell me again that girls can't do the dirty work!" she snarled before forcefully slamming the staff against Moody's chest so he could take it back. She gave him a pained look on a face contracted by disdain. "And to think it was you who didn't trust me. All because I have the same name as Orion. You've disappointed more than a few people tonight, Moody."

Harry decided it was time for him to follow the lead and disappear before things got even worse. He vanished the ropes that bound his limbs to prevent him from running away and stood up massaging his wrists, which bore the marks of his restraints. His eyes met Merlin's, which suddenly became wide-eyed with terror.

“Shit, Robert! The extraction! We couldn't cancel it!” Then, she screamed, “Peverell! Move—"

Merlin's sentence remained incomplete, as she interrupted herself to point her wand at the lake and cast several Stupefies in a row. Harry had just enough time to turn around and see the lights of the Bluebell flames reflecting off the slimy, gelatinous flesh of the Giant Squid.

He was already sprinting in the opposite direction, but the huge tentacle was faster than him. It wrapped itself around Harry's waist in a pressure so powerful that it took his breath away and broke some of his ribs. Less than a second later, Harry hit the black surface of the cold water and found himself being forcefully pulled down to the bottom of the lake, his scream muffled by the water already filling his lungs. 

Chapter Text

Then it came to me, my life. I remembered my life 
the way an axe handle, mid-swing, remembers the 
 tree. *

Underwater no one can hear your screams, and no one can come to help. The tentacle continued to pull Harry down to the bottom of the lake. The water squeezed his whole body with the pressure, and the seaweed whipped his skin. He kept his gaze riveted to the surface, anchored to the red light of the flares and the blue of the flames, but they were fading away, ending up as indistinct specks of dark color among the black water of the lake.

Harry never thought that one day he would wish to be a goldfish animagus...

His thoughts raced by, thinking first of the BubbleHead Charm, but then quickly dismissing it. Using it now would mean no oxygen inside, just water. He also dismissed the idea of trying to Accio some Gillyweed—

The tentacle around his waist tightened its grip, and what little air was left in Harry's lungs was ejected in bubbles. As the speed he was being pulled at increased rapidly, movement caught his attention. In the water, a long, wiry form was slithering.

Harry recognized the shape immediately: the Basilisk. The bloody Basilisk was underwater at the exact same moment he was about to be eaten by the Giant Squid! Great. 

During his descent, something came to bite his ankle: an eel! Well... at least it wasn’t a Grindylow.

He waved his leg to make it let go, before stopping abruptly as a memory arose thanks to the long shape of the snarling little creature : during one of the Goblet of Fire tasks, Krum had opted for a partial-shark transfiguration!

Without thinking further, he let his magic lengthen his neck and limbs, change the texture of his skin, and pierce it behind his ears to let gills develop—the sensation of breathing water was by far the most unpleasant experience, but he preferred that to figuring out whether he was really capable of dying permanently of asphyxiation.

Without being a tiny goldfish or a badass shark, Harry adopted a semi-transfiguration of an eel to slip out of the Giant Squid's grip and flee away from the Basilisk that seemed to be closing in—he almost thanked the lake water for being opaque so that the piercing yellow eyes could not reach him from a distance.

He was being chased by several other tentacles that tried to grab his limbs to recapture him.

Harry avoided them either by dodging or by following Merlin's example and throwing waves of ‘Stupefies’ to make the tentacles move back, but the giant squid seemed more than determined to keep Harry as a playmate for the next few years.

The chase continued for many minutes, the squid blocking Harry's every attempt to get to the surface and forcing him to dive deeper and deeper.

If he continued like that, he would eventually meet the merpeople... A very bad idea. 

Something passed quickly in front of him, before throwing itself on the tentacles which tried to catch Harry. He didn't want to know what it was, so, as a precaution, he closed his eyes, kicked his feet even faster than ever and arched his back to point his hands towards his feet before sending a powerful ‘Depulso' that propelled him away from the lake monster battle.

Far enough away that he couldn't even make out the blurred shape of the squid's tentacles, Harry slowed the flapping of his legs for a moment. Several blurry lights caught his eye in the darkness of the lake.

The situation did not lend itself to curiosity, but, knowing that merpeople did not use anything to light themselves, he could not help but wonder where this strange light could be coming from, so he approached it cautiously.

Closer, he understood that the different lights he had seen shared the same source. They were all windows that looked out onto the same room: the Slytherin common room. He moved even closer, seeing someone at one of them observing the depths of the lake. 

When Harry had his face almost glued to the glass, he first saw his own reflection: a body with monstrously elongated limbs and neck, a vaguely human face with a mouth full of terrorizing teeth that was closer to that of a moray than to that of an simple eel; the only things belonging to his real appearance were his scar (that he could never hide) and his green eyes (with slit pupils, to better see in the darkness of the lake). 

On the other side, the person made a backward movement that refocused Harry's attention on them.

In the common room, Tom stood staring wide-eyed at Harry.

When he saw him, Harry's blood boiled instantly and he screamed in rage before hitting the glass. If he was in this situation it was Tom's fault! And at that moment, that was all Harry could think about—that, and the fact that because of Tom's pursuit of immortality, that jerk had intertwined his soul with Harry's.

It was in a very mature attitude that Harry transfigured his nails, so that they lengthened and formed long, dark claws. He planted them against the glass of the window and let them screech against the surface to leave a clear message… 

On the other side, Tom tilted his head slightly and watched almost curiously as the letters appeared one by one. When the screeching stopped, he could read: ‘.dratsaB .uoy llik annog m'I ’

Tom responded with a predatory smirk as he formed little letters of fire above his head: ' I can't wait. '

Harry's angry growl escaped his mouth in the form of bubbles. Before he could find a way to make Tom wish he had never been born, a movement caught his attention, he didn’t have the time to react or move away, as a tentacle wrapped itself around his waist again to drag him down into the abyss of the lake for good. 

"Oi! Easy!"

Hearing a voice at the bottom of the water was a strange thing, but perhaps not when it was Hagrid's recognizable voice. Of course, if a creature was involved, Hagrid was not so far away.

Then, as if the Giant Squid had understood what Hagrid had said, he partially relaxed his grip around Harry's waist before releasing him into the depths of the lake and close to the half-giant who was in the company of the McGonagall who had greeted Harry on the night of his arrival; a little further back stood some merpeople. 

Since Harry couldn't speak, he held out his hands, palms up and eyes wide, as if to say: ‘What the fuck?’

"Lucretia,” McGonagall responded as if it were a matter of fact while shrugging his shoulders.  “She had seen the shitstorm coming. Since the first petrification she's been placing ears everywhere… maybe even more so after Myrtle's murder." 

"’em really liked each other—everythin’ sad in this story." Hagrid nodded sadly. 

McGonagall sighed into the air bubble that allowed him to breathe. "One murder was enough... No need for that to happen again because everybody is out of their minds."

Of all the things Harry had heard tonight, they were by far the most sensible, he almost held back from shouting a ‘ Thanks Merlin! ’... or something like that.

McGonagall turned to Hagrid. "Well, mission accomplished. You staying?"

"Dunno—yeh better go now. Some o’ the merfolks not like strangers."

Message received: leave as soon as possible before pissing off more creatures tonight.

Harry grinned at Hagrid—as much as his monstrous moray eel mouth allowed it—grabbed McGonagall's wrist and propelled them both to the surface before the merpeople, too, decided to eat them as a midnight snack.

As they ascended to the surface, McGonagall showed the real reason for his presence at the bottom of the lake: he was guiding Harry to the pier where the boats used by the first years arriving at Hogwarts were kept afloat. According to the Hufflepuff, this was the ideal place where they could both emerge without fear of running into other angry students. 

Getting his head out of the water was like getting out of a long nightmare for Harry. His slimy skin made him struggle to get onto the deck, but once he did he let himself lie on his back and lifted the transfiguration that was altering his appearance so that he could finally take a deep breath of air—he coughed immediately. Spitting out the water that had remained in his body.

As his lungs contracted, he could not hold back a hiss of pain in the midst of his cough. It was true that the giant squid had not been gentle he admitted as he pulled up his shirt to see large bruises beginning to bloom over his chest.

McGonagall whistled as he approached. "Gosh, it's going to be a colorful one."

"Care to explain instead? What was—what was all that exactly?!"

Instead of answering, the other Hufflepuff would pull out his wand, but this time Harry would immediately disarm him with a wave of his hand.

"Oh no! That's enough for today! I've been nice so far, but no one is going to point their wand at me again." 

The other boy immediately raised his hands in the air as a sign of peace. "I just wanted to fix you," he would explain calmly before lowering his hands. "But I think I can understand why you're acting this way. If we had to pick you up it's not for nothing… What would you say if I proposed that we don't stay here?"

"Yeah, let's go back to our dorm, but I’ll not give you your wand back."

"If we get attacked, you better be keeping my arse safe."

Harry would cast a disillusionment spell on them for safety and they would head for the kitchens. 

McGonagall's voice was getting quieter in the hallway of the castle, he was almost whispering, "Well let me get this straight, new guy. You might have guessed it already, but everything is more or less political here—thanks to the big brains of the founders who stuck all of England's magical offspring within four walls and were naive enough to think that no conflicts would arise if they placed them in different houses… Sorry, I miss my point. Back to the topic—so since you've been here, it's been a real mess. We think you're legit, but there's a tone of rumors about you and that's why everybody loses their shit. I don't know how, but everyone's projecting their fears onto you… You already get that, right?"

"What could have put me on the trail? That I was held hostage in the crapper or drugged with Veritaserum?" Harry quipped bitterly. 

"Don't take it out on me. I repeat, we think you're legit, okay?—"

"say that to Moody, not me."

"Well, that's something we'll deal with later... Anyway, if you've already figured out that it's total panic, hang on, because it's getting tedious, you see Dorea?" 

"The Slytherin who's in your group, but snoops around in her house's Pure-Blood group, right?"... or ‘the future wife of one of my distant ancestors’, but he didn’t say out loud this specific detail.  

"Someone ratted her out to the group chiefs, Malfoy and Black—Orion Black, to be specific, because there are so many of them!"

Something made Harry wonder, the Walpurgis Knights were led by Tom.

Why didn't McGonagall seem to know about this? Why did he name Malfoy and Black as the leaders? Come to think of it, why hadn't Tom been present on the stage? He was the investigator of that catastrophic night. He should have been there, enjoying the hell he had created specifically to get his vengeance on Harry.

With no immediate answers, Harry stored all these questions in a corner of his head to resume the conversation. That’s... bad," he said in simple conclusion to what McGonagall had said.

"Yeah, like you say! But that's where it gets messy: instead of crucifying her on the spot, they decided to use her as a bridge between their group and ours. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Uh, maybe?"

"No you don't." McGonagall sighed. "Sorry, maybe this is a little too confusing for you. Basically, the Slytherins went so far as to make a temporary alliance with us to get rid of you. Is that any clearer?"

"But when did all this happen?!" Harry exclaimed.

"Today. After dinner, maybe? Why?—And that's not the point! Did you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I don't know who you pissed off, Ministry guys or Dark Wizards—for all I know I don’t care; but you did it well, because now they want you to get out of here. And from what I could see from the bottom of the lake, they want to do it fast. So, I don’t know what you did—and I’m not really sure if I want to know; but you need to fix this."

“Oh thank you for this precious advice! As if I didn’t already know!—”

This time McGonagall stopped walking abruptly to grab Harry's shoulder and swivel him around so that they were face to face. “Listen to me carefully, because I'm pretty sure you didn't take me seriously,” he said in a deep voice that emphasized his accent. "In other words: this place is a fucking powder keg. We’re doing everything in our power to keep it from exploding for the past two months, and I’m not gonna let you be the spark that will burn all our work—so, friendly advice: get this shit done ."

Harry closed his eyes for a moment and took a long breath that embraced all the raw nerves in his ribs. He focused on the pain rather than the irritation growing inside him.

"Nice pep talk, but it's not that easy."

"Honestly, I don't give a shit of how you will manage that, but do it. That’s all…” McGonagall’s shoulders lossen, and he relaxed his grip on Harry. “I can well imagine that it is not easy what I am asking for—really I got that… That’s why I can help; any others you met during your first night here can help too. We all want this mess settled. All you have to do is ask. Maybe we'll not be able to make anything, but… I don’t know, maybe together we can find a solution to your problem…”

Harry pated the hand of the other teenager. “That’s nice. It’s good to know—even if I will not trust Moody anytime soon; thanks. But, I think that I’m the only one who can do anything about this.”

Yeah, like find an angsty teenage Dark Lord and punch his pretty face in hope of breaking the nose he still had for now… 

“You seem like a nice bloke—really; but if I have to choose between you and my sister's safety, my choice is already made.” McGonagall let go of Harry's shoulder and gave him a nudge to invite him to go back to the path, especially since they were already close from the kitchens. 

"Is it really that bad? The fights between the younger years, I mean."

"Just today, there were over a dozen. Five Gryffindors, two Ravenclaws, and a Slytherin are in the infirmary keeping company with those who have been petrified... Lucretia told me about her class with professor Morcades. I hope she will apply her duels to the younger years as well. Exhausting them might be a good way to channel them—" Arriving at the barrels, McGonagall struck the rhythm of the password and watched them roll to the side to open the passage of the common room. He would then turn his attention back to Harry as he held out his hand. "No hard feelings, right?"

"You're worried about your sister...." Harry mimicked the gesture and shook McGonagall's hand. "I can understand how far we're willing to go to protect the ones we love."

McGonagall nodded. "Yeah, you can't even imagine… Call me Robert, by the way. It's not like everyday you help someone to get away with the Giant Squid."

“Ha-Henry. But, I'll go by Harry if you don’t mind.” 

The other Hufflepuff nodded with a small friendly smile and went first to enter the tunnel that led to their common room. When Robert got to the other end and turned around to see who the new guy was, he found himself facing an empty tunnel. Peverell had simply vanished into thin air. By saying that the problems would have to be quickly dealt with, he didn't think Harry would do that the minute after...

It only took Harry a day to be threatened, ambushed and held hostage, before he was dragged into a trap to be drugged before he almost ended up as an appetizer for a giant squid and a basilisk.

Enough is enough.

McGonagall was right. Everything had grown out of control. Harry couldn't let a basilisk roam free to petrify students—or kill them for the unlucky ones, and he couldn't let Tom continue to create chaos in Hogwarts either.

In a way, Harry was willing to accept that Tom was personally angry at him; even willing to accept the personal consequences of his actions, but what he was adamantly against was other teenagers being used as tools in Tom's revenge.

He was going to corner Tom, and that's why Harry was sneaking under his Cloak through the secret passageway of the second floor girls' lavatory after his wand guided him there.

In the long, damp, subterranean gallery that led to the Creepy Chamber , Harry preferred to stay in the dark, fearing to attract the basilisk with light. Even though he had successfully defeated the creature in the past, it was only by sheer luck and Fawkes' intervention that he had made it out alive. This time no phoenix would come to help him, but he knew what was waiting for him. 

At another fork in the path, his wand pointed the way to take, and a hundred yards further on, Harry found the perfectly recognizable door to the Chamber of Secrets. It was almost completely open—as if to let the basilisk through.

He could already see the long walkway decorated on either side with giant stone snakes holding the flaming green torches in their menacing, wide-open jaws. Harry swallowed and stepped into the place, which only reminded him of the events of his second year. He could almost see his blood, the venom, and the ink splatters on the exact same stone floor. 

Like echoes of the past, the lapping water carried the sounds of another time: the voice of the child Harry had been who could not understand the danger he was in; the anguished whimpers of Ginny; the angry hisses of Tom ordering the basilisk to kill... 

Harry stopped as he reached the depths of the room. This time he didn't find Ginny's almost lifeless body... He simply found no one. The room was completely empty. The 'Point Me' spell must have worked correctly, Tom couldn't have been far away! Harry took a moment to look at the huge statue of Salazar—no doubt present only to reassure the huge ego of the man it represented. 

A noise echoed through the Chamber, Harry froze, holding his breath. From what he could hear, whatever was moving was large and crawling across the floor. 

He closed his eyes, his hand tightened on his wand, he was more than certain: behind him was the basilisk.

"I know you're there, Riddle. Call off your pet." 

An unctuously menacing laugh approached Harry, making him startled, but before he could step back, a hand grabbed him by the collar of his still-soaked shirt. The sudden gesture almost made him open his eyes in surprise, but his reason prevailed and his eyelids remained sealed.

At this point he would rather deal with a spell than end up petrified. 

"Isn't that lovely? An unexpected visitor." Tom struck the tip of his wand into Harry's ribs, who grunted in response. "Though I wonder by what miracle you managed to open the passage—would you have followed Zahar? For a Hufflepuff, you're as reckless as a Gryffindor. It's not surprising, though... I always pictured him more as a lion than a badger."

A cold draft caressed Harry's cheek, announcing Death's passing intrusion into the conversation, ‘ ...or perhaps you're just a cub who's been through hell and heaven, the realms leaving him tainted with black and white. ’ 

"People are often confused about me. The Sorting Hat included," Harry said, trying to ignore the last disturbing comment.  

"Obviously," Tom replied dismissively. "It's common to adopt inconsistent attitudes when more than one person coexists in the same body." 

Harry frowned, how could multiple people share one body?.... The horrible memory of Professor Quirrell came back to him. Immediately, a grimace of disgust twisted his face. Was it really what Tom was imagining at that moment? Why would he do this? And why would Harry share his body with anyone? 

A sudden, stinging pain struck Harry's ribs—a hex, generous gift from Tom—it allowed him to focus again on the thread of the conversation and the difficult situation he was in. 

"So?" insisted Tom, in an annoyed tone. "All the effort you put into coming here was just to admit I was right? It didn't take you long to regret coming to Hogwarts... But I am in a magnanimous mood. Agree to leave tonight and with my help you can start a life away from here. Away from my sight. Away from my life," he spat with unabashed disgust.

Harry let out a low dry laugh, why was he here again? Oh yes, because he had a damned saviour symptom that he'd never cured and didn't intend to get rid of. Except right now it wasn't Tom he wanted to help, it was Hogwarts.

"Do you really think so? I love proving you wrong."

His wand vibrated in his hand, an extension of his arm, of his body. The wood against his palm reminded him that he was no longer the twelve year old who had to face a basilisk and a horcrux alone. The blow went off as quickly as lightning, the tip of his wand striking the body in front of him. He heard a muffled hiss of surprise or pain.

"I'm here because you're a raving lunatic," Harry growled through his teeth. "Letting a basilisk loose in a school? Let it petrify the students? And even let it kill one in the process? What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Tom's grip tightened on Harry's shirt collar—any more than that and he'd be choking him. "To hear you accuse me without any evidence, I'd bet you're working for the Ministry… Pathetic." He released his grip on Harry and pushed him backwards roughly, as if pushing a smelly old fleabag away from him. 

Harry wobbled, not quite prepared for the physical strength Tom possessed—the jerk may have had a tall body, but Harry found it hard to imagine him working out to build muscle.

"Their methods have always been more than questionable, but to go so far as to create this... this thing. With his face on top of it! Really pathetic."

"Hey! I'm not a thing! I—"

"What exactly are you then?” Tom interrupted, disgust laced his voice. “A golem? A Muggle-born orphan with permanent transfiguration? Do you even know what you are?”

“I’m—” 

“Could it be that you are acting under the control of the Imperius? But that doesn't explain how you have his memories. Unless... unless they totally erased your memory and replaced it with his? But how—”

"Stop!" Harry shouted, totally baffled by the flow of increasingly incongruous questions.

Tom had put him through hell just because he was frustrated that Harry had disobeyed him by dying, hadn't he? No. No, it was much more complicated than that...

"Stop," Harry repeated. "What are you talking about? Golem? Permanent transfiguration? What's this about? I am me!" 

" Leave us. Guard the door, in case he's already tipped off the Aurors, " Tom hissed at the basilisk.

Only when the sound of the giant snake's body crawling across the ground was far enough away did Harry dare to open his eyes again. The universe seemed to hold its breath as the two teenagers' eyes met. The room was like a balance, for the moment it held in a precarious equilibrium, but with the slightest movement of either of them it would wobble before finally collapsing. 

"I am me," Harry parroted in a much weaker voice as he felt like an abyss opening up beneath his feet. "I’m Harry. Just Harry."

"The only thing you are is that you may turn out to be as stupid as he was," Tom persisted, the glint of cold anger tinting his gaze. "You don't even realise that you're just a mere copy."

Blood-red eyes roamed Harry's face with the same exaggerated slowness of a predator circling its prey to find its weakest points.

Tom's magic whipped around him, a black, opaque mass that thirsted for destruction. In them, Harry found only raw pain and a disgust so deep that it would have been enough to fuel the flames of hell for the rest of eternity. All his feelings destined only for a usurper who dared to assume the features of a late deceased... It was enough to make Harry's shoulders drop. A simple misunderstanding that turned into a disaster? 

Harry's thoughts were racing, how could events have reached such proportions? Was it Tom's paranoia—already acute, of course, but no doubt heightened by his status as an incognito murderer and the recent creation of his horcrux—that had led him to imagine such a twisted scenario as a Ministry spy taking on the guise of a dead teenager to enter Hogwarts and carry out the undercover investigation? Madness. Pure madness. 

"You may be more lost than I thought..." Harry muttered, unable to fully process his discovery.

Hearing this, Tom recoiled. His disgust was all the more evident as it painted itself on his face. "You say that as if you have any idea what those words mean."

Pain. It was faint, hidden behind all those layers of hatred that festered in his voice, but it was there. More present at the words that preceded Harry's promise that he would return in the darkest moments of Tom's life. 

Harry pursed his lips, the anger he had built up during the day curled against his aching ribs, leaving behind only the feeling of his heart sinking deep into his stomach. 

"What happened?" He whispered, "please... tell me what happened after I left."

"Hell… but that’s not what you want to hear." Tom's jaw twitched. "I know perfectly well you're not Peverell, so drop the act, it's not how you'll find the culprit or get a confession out of me."

"But who else can I be?"

"I don't know, and to be honest I don't care," Tom replied coldly, crossing his arms over his chest. "What I care about is that you haven't answered any of my questions. Who are you working for? The Ministry, yes or no? Are Morcades here under a false identity too? Did you organise the murder of DADA's professor to free up the post?"..." He paused for a moment before putting on an even more austere expression. "And more importantly... did he commit suicide because of you?" 

"What!" Harry exclaims, "Hell, no! Nobody forced me to commit suicide!"

"Be careful, stop talking like you're him, my patience is running out."

Harry exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air, "It's so hard to believe that—" He paused as he realised what he was about to say. "Geez," he then suddenly whispered, "yeah, it's probably hard to believe that I've really come back from the dead."

Tom seemed to ignore him. "Whoever you work for was almost right to choose Peverell for your alias. An orphan with a family who lived so far removed from the magical world that no one knew they existed—all because their name persisted thanks to a bastard born out of wedlock..."

A strange gasp of surprise and relief escaped Harry, it wasn't the fact that Tom had combed through his life story that amazed him, but rather that Death had managed to create a backstory so solid that even the future dark lord didn't doubt its veracity for a moment. 

Across from him, Tom scanned Harry's expression briefly.

"You seem surprised that I found out? His memories are grafted onto you. So you should know that we knew each other. Though it was brief, I shared more with him than with anyone else... which is also exactly why the people who created you as his carbon copy made a grave mistake." Tom's voice was getting deeper. More dangerous. "Dig into those memories you stole, look for a ray of green light. You know what this means... and so do I. I was there. Peverell is dead and I'm the only one who knows it. And that, that's very, very bad news for you."

Harry let out a cry of contained exasperation that made his vocal cords vibrate strongly. "But I'm alive! Can't you see that?!"

"Yes," Tom agreed with a condescending look, "whoever you are, yes, you are alive—certainly not for long, though. But you're not Peverell."

Another muffled cry from Harry; he was tempted to bang his head against one of the stone columns in the room... or curse Tom to hell and back.

"I am Peverell!" Harry shouted so loudly that his cry echoed through the galleries, exhausted from repeating the same thing over and over. "I promised you that I would find you, that I would come back! You are my damnation because you cannot even keep your damn soul in one single piece! Because you can't stop yourself from being a magpie and stuffing it in every shiny damn thing you come across!"  

Tom froze abruptly; the expression on his face metamorphosed from a lip pinched with annoyance to a cold mask that reflected absolutely nothing.

At that very moment, every alarm in Harry's body went into code red. He swore through his teeth, that would teach him to lose his temper; if he thought the situation was bad enough, he hadn't added a murderous Tom to the equation.

A pseudo-Ministry agent who understood his connection to the disturbing affairs that plagued Hogwarts was just an annoying fly in the ointment to Tom, but obviously someone knowing his most important secret suddenly became a bigger threat to be eliminated as quickly as possible...

The other teenager kept his distance from Harry, but his free hand from his wand dipped slowly into his robe pocket.

"You know what he had that you don't?” Tom chuckled, as if laughing at his own private joke. "Or rather what you have that he doesn't."  Another chuckle that was starting to take on a crazy edge. "Well, that's to be expected given his death... but he didn't have it before he disappeared."

Then he pulled the replica Gryffindor sword from his pocket in a grand, almost theatrical gesture—of course, he already had an extension charm applied to his robe.

Harry rolled his eyes with a deep sigh, exhausted: he should never have entrusted anything sharp and pointy into the hands of a murderous teenager—what the hell was going through his mind sometimes?—

" Oomph! "

And it was because of Harry's distraction that the pain came before he saw the blow coming. He looked down to see the blade already embedded deep in his chest—he was pretty sure he could feel the tip coming out of his back—and following the blade to the hilt, he found Tom's hands clenched around it.

From the way he was staring at Harry with a huge, satisfied grin, Tom was sure he'd succeeded: getting rid of all his problems in one fell swoop. 

"A beating heart. That was a bit much in your disguise."

Harry's gaze returned to his chest and the blade stuck inside, it wouldn't be the first time someone managed to kill him after all. Pain aside, he felt rather annoyed that the situation had escalated that much.

"Okay, I get it, you obviously didn't appreciate my gift."

The other teenager remained motionless, transfixed. His smirk gradually fading from his lips.

Harry could almost see Tom's brain machine coping with the fact that he had possibly made a huge miscalculation.

Without waiting any longer, Harry clasped his hands around the blade. He withdrew it with a brisk tug without encountering any resistance on the other side—Tom had already removed his hand from the hilt. The sword fell with a clatter of metal to the stone floor of the Chamber.

"Still in a stabby mood? I'm warning you, it's been a pretty shitty day because of your massive propaganda against me, so I'm willing to be understanding about a lot of things, but if you keep this up I'm eventually not going to be able to hold back from fighting back, okay?"

Tom opened and closed his mouth a few times before he managed to formulate in a whisper, "But, he's dead."

"Technically, now; yeah, I'm dead—thanks to you," Harry grunted as he pulled at his shirt to see the extent of the damage before unbuttoning it to get a better look at his wound. He used 'Ferula' to wrap his chest in a tight bandage; that way he wouldn't lose all his blood and guts on the floor. "That shit hurts! Was that really necessary? You can’t go each time on murder rampage for any inconvenience in your life. You know that, right?”

Silence answered him, Tom remained motionless.

Harry had a panic attack as he feared he had permanently broken the other teenager's brain. He approached, slowly reaching out to his shoulder. "Tom? I know this might be a little hard to take—"

This seemed to snap Tom out of his shock. His eyes turned abruptly dark and focused on Harry as a grimace distorted his mouth. "

A little hard to take? You've got to be kidding me!" With a flick of his backhand he jerked Harry's hand away from his shoulder and stepped forward to tower over him menacingly. "Who the hell are you? He passed out five years ago! When you arrived on Samhain night none of my devices reacted! You can't be him!"

"And Morcades dares to say I'm stubborn... " Harry grumbled, rubbing his scar. "Really I'm tired—I don't know what more you need. You tried to murder me when I was honest with you..." He sighed and turned his gaze back to Tom. "Would it convince you if I told you I was drugged with Veritaserum, and probably still under its influence?”

Tom brought his face close to Harry's, his eyelids creased suspiciously. "Only fools think that Veritaserum brings the unmistakable truth.... I don't need it to know when someone is lying to me. And you—as honest as I feel you are, that is just your distorted perception of the truth. You've been convinced that you are him by having his memories, by being so invulnerable... Add the Imperius, and you're just an impressive muppet. There's only one thing that can convince me. One thing no one can imitate."

"Couldn't we have gone straight to that part? It would have saved me from a headache and getting speared."

"Don't be in a hurry: kindly ask my basilisk not to devour you— come here, keep your eyes closed. " 

Harry turned to see the gigantic snake speeding back towards its master. The huge creature circled the two teenagers, trapping them in a circular prison of scales that tightened with each of its movement. 

Tom put his hands on Harry's shoulders and leaned close to his ear to whisper, "Impostor, dare to say you’re him again if you can’t even speak the sacred tongue of the snakes.”

The basilisk brought its gigantic and terrifying head close to the two teenagers.

Stupidly, the first thing Harry looked at were the basilisk's eyes. The piercing yellow eyes made Harry's heart stop for a split second before he noticed that a white opaque film covered them like a cat's third eyelid. The slits in its snout pulsed with its breath, its forked tongue darting through the air as it came dangerously close to the bloody wound in Harry's chest. 

The last time Harry had touched the creature was to pierce its skull, and since that event he had never been a great fan of rampant reptiles—Nagini had not helped in that area either...

Then, as if to contradict him, Harry's mind conjured up a memory from even before his arrival at Hogwarts. Through his vision of the basilisk, Harry saw the blurred image of the boa he had released during his visit to the zoo for Dudley's birthday. 

Harry's hands slowly reached up to brush the jaw of the creature in front of him. " Hey there ," he hissed softly, " You gave me quite a scare earlier in the lake. "

The hands on Harry's shoulders suddenly tightened. Tom's nails almost pierced Harry's clothes to dig into his skin. 

The basilisk made a choppy hissing sound that could be translated as a laugh. " Oh yesss, I recognize your ssmell, you were the little monssster it was trying to catch. If you too are a sspeaker, I don't regret having my fun teassing it to lose you. "

" You have fun with the giant squid? " Harry wondered as he felt Tom's hands squeeze his shoulders harder and harder. 

" We sometimes bicker to passss the time. "

In a sudden rush, the hands on his shoulders spun him around and Harry found himself face to face with Tom. His already naturally pale skin reached a sickly stage and his eyes were wide open at the acceptance that it was indeed Harry who stood before him.

"It's you. It's really you," he said slowly as if he himself couldn't believe his own words. 

"No shit Sherlock."

Tom’s features contorted with sudden fury, he shook Harry hard by the shoulders. "You used the killing curse in front of me! You committed suicide in the middle of the day in a crowded restaurant without anyone finding a body! You disappeared off the face of the earth from one second to the next, you idiot! How did you think I was going to react when I saw your doppelganger show up out of nowhere?! Let me get my sword back—"

"No!" Harry shouted, "I swear, if you touch it again; I will hurt you. You've ruined my day with your stupid plots to get me—or my whatever evil twin—out of here! No need to add a second—a third? I don't even know! Can you believe it? I just lost count of the amount of times someone attempted to kill me today!"

"Me, I ruin your day?" Tom repeated in a low, threatening voice. "You deserved all of it. Your stupid doppelganger or not, you deserved all of it!"

"But what did I do to you?!"

Those were the words too many, the balance lost its precious equilibrium. Abruptly Tom's magic flung itself at Harry, catching him off guard and preventing him from retaliating. It all happened in less than a fraction of a second, malicious magic in the form of menacing black smoke silenced Harry by sticking his tongue against his palate as Tom hissed a command to his giant familiar, "Seize him."

Despite being seriously injured, Harry was racing for his life to escape the chamber, but the basilisk swallowed the distance between them with ease and caught him. The creature bound him with its body in an embrace similar to that of the giant squid... He felt himself being squeezed like a citrus fruit and knew that if he struggled against the basilisk's grip it would only result in him bleeding out faster.

Tom was approaching, his wand and his gaze directed at Harry.

Looking him straight in the eye, Tom said in his deepest voice, "It's your specialty to leave without giving answers. Tonight, I'm going to fix that bad habit of yours.”

A long, cold sweat ran down Harry's spine as the logical course of events became obvious, and he struggled like a madman to escape it. He tried to cry out in protest, but his tongue remained numb, unable to articulate his words properly, "No! Don't! No! Too danger—"

But it was already too late, the spell was already leaving Tom's lips, "Legilimens."

The power of the spell knocked Harry out, his vision already blacked out as he spiralled into the recesses of his own mind with Tom's unwanted presence. His last lucid thought was to wonder when he would see some light again after so much darkness? 

Chapter Text

I never wanted to be saved. 

I wanted someone to follow me down into the darkness.*

In spite of having already been studied for ages, dreams, memories and thoughts are complex areas of magic … Why? Because they share one of the greatest mysteries of magic: Time. 

In all eras when magic has been discovered and used, witches and wizards have tried to understand how to manipulate this powerful and unexplainable branch of their art. 

Humans endowed with magical powers have always wanted to understand how the memory of an entire day could be visualised in less than an hour, how a lifetime's dream could be realised overnight, how a person's darkest thoughts could be revealed in the span of a single glance... Yet time never revealed its mysteries, never allowing wizards to fully understand it, and only letting them play with a spark of its infinite power that they could already barely control.

It was also for this reason that Harry knew that any time spent in his mind would be very relative. Several days in his mindscape were like just a few seconds on the outside. 

… And, he hated to linger there.

If only Tom had used his passive Legilimen abilities to merely skim the stream of his thoughts, Harry could have easily expelled him—just as he had managed to deflect Dumbledore's intrusion. Except no, Tom had decided to infiltrate the deepest part of Harry's mind. The part that Harry was unable to defend solely by himself. 

Accustomed to the surrounding darkness, Harry kept his arms crossed as he focused his gaze on the blurred shape of the other teenager's body that was gradually forming beside him.

When it fully materialised, Tom looked briefly disconcerted as he scanned his surroundings—his dark eyes were imperceptibly larger, like the premise that they would become wide open—but he quickly regained control over his expression and managed it to be as neutral as possible.

Harry could perfectly well grasp the reason behind Tom’s fleeting look of astonishment. Usually, people protected their minds behind barriers that took on different aspects, but often kept the same purpose: remain impenetrable. And—not surprisingly—Harry had chosen the opposite. 

"No mental walls?" asked Tom, staring sceptically at a thin stream of light leaking from under a door—the only object in the dark space around them.

Harry gave a dry laugh and leaned against the frame, before gesturing to the handle. 

"Go on, give it a try."

The shadows moved, revealing Tom's hand in the sparse light as he slowly reached out to grab the handle, but he suddenly stopped—his fingers only inches from touching it.

"This is too easy..." he muttered, before turning sharply his face to Harry, his eyes narrowed. "I hope this is a joke. Is this really how you protect yourself?" 

"Usually it works." Harry shrugged. "People don't tend to be suspicious of the light."

The dim light was barely bright enough for Harry to notice the frown on Tom's face, clearly frustrated by the logic of Harry's mind. 

Tom’s hand fell back, carefully avoiding touching the door. 

"So I was right, an exit. Not an entrance," he concluded for himself in a thoughtful whisper. 

Reluctantly, Tom turned his back on the door and looked around again. Apart from the door, there was nothing else. Only darkness that stretched as far as the eye could see. A landscape that reflected nothing. Somewhere where he could only get lost, with no chance of finding a way out. 

Harry let out a deep sigh as he watched Tom stride away, more than ready to sink into the darkness. He straightened up from the door frame against which he was leaning to follow the other from a distance.  

Tom cleared his throat. His hoarse voice was barely louder than the heavy silence that hung around them. "How long are you going to follow me like this?"

"Until you leave."

"Yet you don't even try to expel me from your mind."

Harry didn't reply immediately. His magical abilities may have been above average, but his occlumency skills were more than lacking—if not to say dreadful, really. That's why he had created this place inside his mind, this exercise didn't require advanced occlumency skills, just a lot of concentration, meditation and a bit of imagination. Sometimes a sufficiently accomplished mental landscape could be enough to confound Legilimens…

In short, this place was not meant to be welcoming, it existed solely for the purpose of keeping all of Harry's secrets and repelling intruders for him. 

"No point in me trying. I simply can't," Harry finally said as he continued to follow Tom through the maze of his own mind. "Maybe this place will do it for me."

"Then what's the point of following me? If it's to dissuade me—"

"To protect you," Harry cut him off, "without me you can end up stuck here or..." His sentence hung in the air, unable to describe the fate of those who tried to infiltrate the deeper part of his mind. “... or worse.”

Even though Harry was used to the darkness of this place and could make out certain shapes in the dark, it was still difficult for him to know exactly where Tom was now as their footsteps took them further and further away from the thin ray of light that peeked from under the door. 

He reached out, touching what he imagined was Tom's elbow. The muscle beneath his fingers twitched, as if ready to defend himself by drawing his wand. 

"Take my hand," Harry ordered softly before Tom could attack him. "I won't help you find what you're looking for, but I won't let you rot here."

There was a delay between Harry's words and the moment he noticed Tom's arm relax. He had imagined until then that Tom would scoff at his warnings, but surprisingly Harry felt fingers intertwining cautiously with his own. 

Several times, as they continued to walk, he felt Tom's thumb graze the scar on the back of his hand.

"You'd save us all this trouble if you weren't running away from me every time."

"I feel like I've spent a lifetime chasing you," Harry joked bitterly in a low voice. "Or maybe you started it, I don't know… Sounds like the chicken or the egg question."

The grip of Tom's fingers tightened on Harry's. "No matter. You left and were just about to do it again."

Harry's gaze rose from the endless expanse of black to flutter over Tom's figure. He searched his expression, looking for the slightest flash of red in his eyes. However, he discerned nothing, not even the tiniest hint of emotions in his voice. The only clue he had was the grip on his hand, which tightened with every step they took. 

Tom's words seemed to echo in the darkness around them, as if Harry had missed something important. 

Harry swallowed before saying out loud the thought that was running through him, "It's not you I'm running from."

This time, it was Tom's whole body that seemed to tense up. "Who then?"

The silence dragged on, the pace slowed, and Harry looked for an answer. There was not even one single soul who could frighten him now. No, what had driven him to spend entire lifetimes looking straight ahead and running, running , had been vague, abstract notions. What awaited him in the future, for example... Or perhaps the truth that had been consuming him since the last breath of his second life: decades of violence created by his own hands and not a single moment had lightened his pain or erased his resentment of the world. 

If Harry was honest with himself, in the end there was still someone he feared: himself . He was terrified by his own tendency to let his feelings consume him. 

He was running away from himself, from who he would become… from the future that would break him like this.

With a heavy heart, Harry's words fell heavily like stones. "Not who. What ." 

A semi-confession that Harry was running from this future he feared more than anything; that  he was looking for a way to escape this end that had driven him straight into insanity.

And, as he contemplated everything that had brought him here, he realised that everything was a blur. Whether it was the path he was taking or the destination he was trying to reach.

He wanted to change the life he had known by making it better, but better for whom? He knew the future, but could he really change the course of events by his mere presence at a time when he was not supposed to exist? And what will happen when he finally has a hold on fate?

The other teenager seemed to understand what Harry was trying to say, because the bones in Harry's hand were now no more than dust—totally crushed by Tom's tight, desperate , grip.

"I've often thought about that day... That day you died." Tom's throat seemed to tighten. "It was not long after you left that I realised that we had not met by chance. It was you…" A shaky breath escaped him, curiosity overriding his survival instinct to keep it quiet. "Only you know how bad it's going to be. And yet, when you found me, you—I still don't understand. Anyone else would have probably killed me in a heartbeat. So why? … Why not you?”

"Because—" I decided to take another path , Harry thought. A decisive choice based on a hunch.

Harry's eyes widened. The memory of that day at the Cauldron came flooding back to him, when Death was pushing him to make a decision on which path to take: eliminate Tom or wait. He took the long, patient road. He chose to take that path... But why? Why did he choose to spare Tom?

Harry suddenly massaged his forehead with a grunt, his last conversation with Death clearly ringing in his ears. ‘ Or maybe this is all just a twisted trial. This whole thing could have been easier... Much simpler. I give you the choice, but I think you need to suffer—even that, you enjoy the pain of the process—’

Harry cursed in a low voice. Yeah, maybe Death wasn't totally wrong about how dense he can be sometimes. 

"Back then, you didn't deserve to die. Even now, despite all the evil you do and will create, you don't deserve to die... And that's because I'm no one to judge when a person's life should end or not." Harry let out an exhausted sigh. "You deserve to live as much as anyone, even if you don't mind taking innocent lives... I—I’ve killed before. Countless times... But I think the first one was when I made the biggest mistake of my life. And since then, I've been looking for some peace..."

Next to him, Harry felt Tom's footsteps slow down, then come to a halt. Tom tugged gently his hand as if to invite him to come closer. He didn't resist. 

Perhaps it was because their bodies were a mere materialisation of themselves, but Harry thought there was something reassuring about feeling Tom's heart pounding against his chest. 

"Did you believe then that I'm your kind of redemption?"

"Maybe," Harry whispered, a bit fazed after feeling Tom's breath tickle his face. 

Tom leaned in, his lips, very close to Harry's ear. Harry could almost feel the half-smile behind Tom’s smooth voice and his tender, cynical tone, "Only you could be foolish enough to seek the salvation of a sinner." 

He was much more than a sinner, Harry thought. He was raised from the ashes of hell and set on the path of destruction. He was an enigma, a riddle. A black sheep. He was not evil, and he was not good. He simply was .

He was simply a hope. A solution. And, it has been in front of Harry all this time. 

Both of them were destined to achieve great things. The first time, yes, everything had been terrible, but it had been great; historic . Two wars that shook the entire history of wizards. Parts of the past that have remained in the memory of several generations that have never stopped retelling the story... 

And what if, this time, instead of opposing, Harry found a way for them to cooperate? 

With this new idea in mind, Harry told himself that if he had to sin to get Tom, then he would be willing to do so. He'd already been in limbo forever, so a little trip by the Infernal City couldn't scare him.

Being trapped in his own mind and rid of his body, there was now a new clarity to Harry's thoughts. It was as if he had finally found the destination he wanted to reach. 

"It doesn't matter what you are. I've already made the wrong decision once, so I need to try."

" Try ?" Tom repeated slowly, as if letting the word sink into his mind. "You didn't just spare me to get peace, but also to create an alternative…” Then after a bit, he asked tightly, stroking the scar on the back of Harry's hand again, “do you really think it will make any difference?"

"No," Harry admitted, a contrite smile on his lips. "I can't change anything. Not on my own. Not now ."

"So... when?"

Harry's bitter smile became tight, a small humourless laugh escaped him. 

"The date is already set," he confided of what he imagined to be the outcome of Death's plan. "Even more, it's you and you alone, who set the date for when we might finally be able to change something... Until then, I'll be nothing more than a visitor. A mere passenger—"

Tom backed away abruptly, his eyes suddenly red. "You're planning to leave again!" he hissed through his teeth.

"Don't you understand?" Harry asked softly. "I don't belong here. I'm barely more than a fleshed ghost, just a farce of a living being. And, until you lose everything, I'll never—"

"Then stop me from losing everything right now!" Tom snarled.

"Are you sure you know what you're asking me?" Harry's free hand slipped between their chests and created a faint orb of light in his palm. He anchored his gaze in Tom's without blinking. “Dare to tell me that you will be able to pay attention to the slightest of my warnings. Even dare to lie to me and pretend that whenever I'll hold you back from making your own choices, you'll resist the urge to fight me.”

Harry's entire life—all his memories, good and bad—flashed through his mind at the speed of light as he continued to stare intently into Tom’s eyes. 

With unimaginable clarity, he saw all the moments he had faced this gaze all the more clearly: that precise moment when the war finally ended as the last spark of life finally left Voldemort's eyes... or that day so near and yet so far, when he met Voldemort again for the first time in that dreary orphanage and magic was singing in the air... or his hazy memories of that murderous gaze hanging over his cradle... 

Tom would never listen to his warnings. Even if Harry wanted to prevent the future from repeating itself, he couldn't divert Tom from the path he had decided to take. He was his own man, and not even Harry could convince him to abandon his plans. Even worse, even if Tom's will were potentially questionable—which it definitely wasn't—Harry was still no one to turn anyone away from Fate's plans.

Harry's only chance—his only hope—was to prove to Tom that he would always be there. That he would remain a constant in his life just as Voldemort had been a constant in his.

A petty hope, but one that could perhaps change the face of the wizarding world.

Facing Harry, Tom locked his jaw and clenched his fist, clearly unable to commit his word to what Harry was asking. 

In the bright red eyes, almost brighter than the ball of light in Harry's hand, there was something akin to a cold fury that burned Harry's own retina. Something that almost held a note of offence, that almost screamed, 'you, don't even dare to do that', or perhaps, 'I can lie in front of the whole world, but not about this... not to you'.

It seemed so clear, and yet Harry preferred to ignore it, convinced that by trying to understand Tom, he was ultimately fabulating answers. 

Harry nodded to himself and waved the light away before resuming, "Even supposing you were able to heed my warnings—and were willing to sacrifice your free will in the process—the moment I’ll disappear again, you would resume your original path. As I said, I’m a mere passenger, my sole influence is not enough. I would like to do more… but it will be impossible until I can stay. For now, I am as chained as you are by fate."

Tom let out a long breath as if trying to expel all the tension that knotted his body, yet his eyes remained lit with their dangerous blood-red glare. 

"Just let me make my own mistakes that will lead to my failure, so that's your plan that will change things then?"

"Yes." Harry added as a kind of hope was blooming in the pit of his stomach, "the fall will be a new beginning."

"You seem to be forgetting something Peverell," Tom scolded in a low voice, his eyes still flashing with a dangerous glint. "What's my interest in all this? What do I gain by letting you change anything?"

Harry studied Tom, facing both the teenager and the future dark lord. He searched the ruby gaze for the resolution that would allow him to finally state out loud the path he had been taking without ever acknowledging it. 

He had so many conflicting feelings towards the one standing in front of him—so much empathy for him when he was younger; so much hatred for him when he was older.

When the fateful day would come, would Harry be able to side with the one he had always considered his enemy? The one he saw himself capable of killing just a few times ago? 

Was there no such thing as a half measure? Harry could only choose between killing Voldemort or siding with him? Is there really no other option? Why wouldn't he be able to stop Voldemort without killing him? 

"I said that you were maybe my redemption. I said that I needed to try . It's all hypothetical, because it won't all be up to me. You too will have to choose if you want it." 

In the heavy darkness, Tom's tension seemed to buzz around him. He let go of Harry's hand to grab him by the shoulders, as if he feared he would vanish again and wanted to hold him back from disappearing. 

"Choose what ? Say it, Peverell!" 

"No… I can't offer you more than the promise I've already made: to find you when you're lost,” Harry responded quietly. “By the time you've really lost everything, you'll probably have figured out what I am—why I know so much—and still, no matter what, you'll call me and I'll come find you one last time. It will only be at this point that the course of events could change... or, not ."

"How—" Tom shook his head and let out a long sigh, seemingly trying to clear his mind to find the question that would give him more information. "How would I know—"

"In the way you see me. I will be many things, but only you’ll know what I mean to you."

The rustle of a cloth. On Harry's shoulder now rested a weight, and soft hair brushed against his cheek. He stood still and silent as the other teenager finally allowed himself a painful moment of vulnerability. 

He who always pushed away the slightest weakness was finally allowing himself a moment of doubt, of uncertainty , hidden in Harry's mind and away from the eyes of the world.

"I'm not the one who decides the end of others, but I can always try to push it back," Harry said as he gently laid his hands on Tom's back, "If I decided to leave my heart in this alleyway littered with corpses, it was only out of kindness... Something you deserve as much as to live." Harry took a sharp breath and then whispered, "That day, the wand was pointed at me, because I saw good in you. Just enough to make me believe in you… And today, enough to hope that I won't defy fate alone." Harry's hands slowly closed, his fingers tightening to grip the fabric of Tom's robe. "So... please, when the time comes, don't make me regret it.”

Lost in the absolute darkness for what felt like days, neither of them seemed ready to break the silence that grew between them—they just let it float, linger where their skins touched; their hands still linked as they had been from the very beginning into nothingness.

The absence of noise seemed to keep encapsulated between their palms that moment when they were not totally at peace with each other, but when they finally reached a moment of truce. They waited for the move of the other, like two orbiting stars trying to avoid colliding.

How many miles had they travelled? How many days had they spent in this dimension that escaped time? A lot. And at the same time, none. Persisting like this would not reveal any of the secrets this place held. 

Harry's low voice broke through the net of silence that had been strangling his throat so far. "Tom…" 

The other boy had no reaction. 

Harry insisted, shaking his arm slightly. "Tom—"

"Stop using that filthy name," he warned in a sharp tone that exuded all the hatred he had for his birth name.

The remark confused Harry for a moment, he almost accidentally let go of Tom's hand... scratch that. 

He remembered that although the name itself was common enough to upset the other teenager, it was the implication of the name that made him loathe it. One of the future biggest supremacists in wizarding history was named after his Muggle father and was thus the proof of his half-blood status.

A brief flash of his second year came back to Harry, when he had faced the horcrux. The diary had already decided on another name and was already being called by something other than ‘Tom Riddle’… Harry wondered how he had missed that. 

"Voldemort, then?" A shiver ran through Harry as he heard noises in the background—the distant echo of a sibilant voice.  

"Of course…" The other teen exasperated the annoyance in his tone, " Of course , you already know that too."

Harry ignored him, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "I should have known better the moment Malfoy called you his Lord… But I was a bit too busy to make the connection." He shifted his gaze in Voldemort's direction. "You'll still have to explain the 'Lord' to me though—well, minus the anagram part."

He didn't need to see to know that Voldemort's gaze was on him, Harry could feel it as clearly as the copy of the Gryffindor sword had pierced his gut. 

"I am a Lord, Peverell," he stressed in a dangerous, low tone that left no room for doubt. "I earned that title not by my blood, but solely by myself."

"I didn't know that killing someone could give you another title than murderer." 

… And, according to this reasoning, Harry would have already been titled Supreme Mugwump long ago. 

A hiss of annoyance shot from Voldemort's lips. "I'll let your stupid remark slide and just conclude that you don't know anything about what happened while you were away… Which is… well, pretty interesting."

Harry's brain short-circuited for a brief moment. How could what he had said have given Voldemort that impression? 

What exactly could he not know about the title? All he knew (and was sure of) was that even Grindelwald was not a Dark Lord, just a dark wizard—fearsome, yes, absolutely; but just a dark wizard. And that's simply because the term Dark Lord was coined by Voldemort. 

Its meaning—if it wasn't already evocative enough—conveyed the terror of the raids and the taboo placed on the man's name itself... and his sense of drama, as well as his overinflated ego, but those last two points were just Harry's opinion on the matter. 

Harry cursed himself as the vague feeling of dread continued to run up his spine. 

Everything about the time before he came into the world was what little information he had gleaned from Dumbledore's memories and from what he had learned on his own over the years. It was just enough for him to roughly understand the context in which he found himself... But every day he spent here proved to him that he definitely didn't know anything. 

Until now, he was completely unaware that the other houses had gathered to fight the petrifying attacks or to search for the person responsible for Myrtle's murder. Nor had he known that previous generations were aware of the Ministry's inaction, or that they had sought to make the wizarding world more tolerant of those who weren't Purebloods...

This left Harry speechless, everything he had mentioned seemed obvious for the time he was in and yet... And yet, he was ignorant and wondered if the past was not Pandora's box. Or rather the ferocious Monster Book of Monsters that was about to devour him because he didn't stroke the back in the right direction. 

When Voldemort spoke again, he had a tender, almost saccharine, note in his mocking whisper, "I'd tell the other one that you know a lot, but not everything."  

He didn't give Harry time to process his last words. He was already tugging at his hand, urging him to resume their endless journey through the space of Harry's mind.

"Wait— Voldemort! " Harry shouted as he was dragged behind the other teen. He could feel the echo of the cold, sibilant voice becoming more and more distinct. "Who's—"

"Bow to death," was suddenly heard not far behind them. 

"Who's there?" exclaimed Voldemort as he turned sharply on his heels to face whoever was approaching them. 

"Shit," breathed Harry. It was him, you tugged this time at the other teen's hand. "You need to get the hell out of—!"

"I said, bow ," hissed the cold voice that had haunted Harry's adolescence.

"Now!" Harry shouted as he was already sprinting, pulling with all his might to take teenage-Voldemort with him. 

The only way they could escape one of Harry's mind safeguards was to go into another part of his landscape... To sink deeper. 

As they ran with all their might to escape the threat, still totally blind in the dark empty universe, Harry forced a hole to open just below their feet.

They fell at full speed before crashing further down. It was with a thud that an earthen floor stopped their fall. 

Against all expectations, despite the fact that all this was taking place in a remote corner of Harry's mind, the landing was just as painful as if their bodies were real. 

This time the landscape was familiar for both teens, and they were in a stratum of Harry’s mind that he hated even more than the one they had just left. 

"What was that?" Voldemort asked in a clipped tone as he straightened up before dusting the dirt off his robes. 

Harry for his part lay still, his back on the ground and his gaze fixed on the sky. He watched for a moment the full moon, which could barely be seen under the ominous canopy of the Forbidden Forest.

"All you need to know is that it should be reason enough for you to get out of here," Harry replied darkly as he slowly got to his feet. 

Voldemort methodically scanned the new environment around him. After the absolute darkness, a strange, denser replica of the dangerous forest behind Hogwarts greeted him. Around them, only the moonlight made it possible to make out the silhouettes of their bodies and the many trees that made up the environment. 

"Your mind is quite strange."

"Thanks. That's the point."

Harry was slightly surprised when Voldemort grabbed his hand again before immediately sinking into the gloomy vegetation.   

"Are you finally going to tell me what you're trying to find by poking around in my mind?"

"Answers," Voldemort replied curtly as he continued to walk forward.

Harry arched an eyebrow. "And you think that's how you're going to get them?"

"Yes," Tom hissed, glaring at Harry. "No one can keep their secret away from me."

"Suit yourself, but going that far isn't going to help—"

"I'm going where I want!"

"As if I could stop you." Harry shrugged. "No, what I mean is that walking endlessly is useless … My memories are just under your feet."

Harry's last words were followed by muffled voices from beneath the ground. Screams of fear, eager whispers, and sobs of joy. The sound of leaves and branches cracking under their feet stopped as they paused their walk, letting the echo of ghostly voices surround them more intensely.

Harry moved closer to Voldemort, their shoulders brushed. He leaned in and whispered, "My mind is a graveyard. Every tree, a grave. How many times are you willing to dig up my body to find the answers you seek?"

Ultimately, Harry didn't care if Voldemort discovered the memories of his past lives. They wouldn't bring him anything anyway… Well, anything, except more questions.  

The only thing that mattered to Harry was making sure that Voldemort didn't find out about the origin of his presence in the past. And—fortunately—the memories of his first life were not here. They were locked and sealed in a much more distant, almost inaccessible place.  

There was a long, heavy silence that lingered and was only broken by a faint whisper, "You're lying."

"Dig, you'll see."

"There's nothing but this, only trees as far as the eye can see. You can't be dead that many times!"

Sure, Harry was stubborn, but anyone could have recognised that Voldemort was more stubborn than him. Especially when Harry kept telling the truth, and each time found himself having to argue with a wall.

Harry was just… so, so , fed up. 

"You don't want to believe that I'm really me. You don't want to believe I can come back from the dead—so what? Is it always the others who lie or is it always you who refuses to hear the truth?"

Harry let go of the other teenager's hand and put some distance between them. He massaged his eyelids. Honestly, he was prepared to do a lot to change the future, but right now he was reaching his first saturation point.

Not only had he been persecuted for several days—which had led to a whole host of terribly deadly and disastrous consequences—but he had also not forgotten that in less than an hour a sword had been thrust into his gut and that he was currently undergoing a mental invasion.

And right now, he felt his nerves itching. With every truth he announced he had to fight to get someone to listen to him... He literally wanted to tear his hair out, did the whole universe take the clear message scarred on his hand as irony or a challenge? 

"What's that over there?" Voldemort called out as he pointed to a mausoleum that was in the distance and half buried by vegetation. 

Recognising the abandoned and decrepit memorial, Harry felt himself becoming as white as his dear Hedwig. 

On second thought, there were two things he didn't want Voldemort to find out: his first life... and also, his second. 

"J-just another..." Harry stuttered, his voice a pitch higher than usual. "No!" he then exclaimed, realising that Voldemort was already rushing towards the creepy little stone building

The teenage dark lord grinned sharply over his shoulder as he opened the door and took a first step inside. "Another memorie? That's all? So you don't mind if I just look inside?"

Knowing that someone was about to see the worst of him in its entirety was the last straw for Harry. 

He felt purely betrayed as he watched the other teenager engulfed by the darkness of the mausoleum. Perhaps it was partly the fault of the shock that left him nailed to the spot for a long, agonising moment... 

He had brought Voldemort here to protect him from his mind's defences. However, in doing so, Harry had made himself vulnerable. 

He had been so focused on protecting the part of his first life that he had simply ignored the second... yeah, he'd even say he'd forgotten about it. Left it somewhere, vaguely protecting it, and hoping that one day it would collapse on itself and its rubble would become dust that he could dispose of in a rubbish bag—or expel it from his brain with a sneeze. 

Several seconds passed without Voldemort coming out, and Harry felt the anger rise in him, hissing like a forgotten kettle on the stove.

For a moment he had thought that maybe, just maybe , he could trust Voldemort... And only now was Harry painfully aware that the bastard had not deserve a shred of his trust.

He had been a fool. 

He imagined the man he had killed for crimes he himself had later reproduced, and it made him see red. All the good he had created in all his other lives to redeem his conscience suddenly seemed to be swept away with a wave of a hand. All as quickly destroyed as a house of cards blown down. He could almost hear the echo of distorted voices saying, ‘ You're no better than him. ’

Inside Harry was a horrible mixture of betrayal, anger, and fear.

He rushed in. Fearing that his past would catch up with him, that Voldemort would use his actions to suit his own plan, that—

One minute he was in the Forbidden Forest, and the next he was standing on the edge of a balcony, staring from afar at the round square before Gringotts. With only one look, Harry knew exactly what that moment was. His eyelids fell shut for a moment, unable to face that vision of horror again, and his shoulders slumped under the weight of shame.

It was a dreary winter's morning, the square was crowded, and many of the shopkeepers were standing outside their shops trying to see what was attracting such a crowd. The rest of the world was deadly silent. 

There was not a sound, not a gasp, not a shout, nothing. 

There were just whispers. A lot of whispers. The kind that serve as indicators of the scale of an event. And judging by the fact that they reigned supreme over the stillness of the square—even though they were mere breaths from trembling lips—what stood before them was huge. Huge and horrible.

Parents emerging from Diagonal Alley abruptly covered their children's view. Several dozen people were rushing out of the human tide to vomit, or run to find someone who could Obliviate them… 

Harry knew that the panic would eventually come, but for now there would only be a horrified and morbid shock.

He gulped loudly, swallowing the lump in his throat. Better than anyone else in the square, he could see what was on display in the middle and what anyone else would have seen if they had stopped looking at the back of the person in front of them. He himself had a panoramic view of the scene, his hands clutched with all their might to the balcony railing where he was standing. He clearly remembered feeling like Caesar at the games, his bloody thumb pointing down and the gladiators already killed by that very same hand. 

A slight movement to his left made him turn his head abruptly. He immediately shuddered in horror as he saw who stood beside him. Not Voldemort, but him. 

His past self. 

Him, taking a moment to render this vision unalterable in his memory. There, etching into his mind every aspect of that day when he would finally begin to set the wizarding world ablaze.

There was something horribly humiliating and disturbing about watching the reflection of what he had been. To witness from the outside his rigid figure in a black cloak, which did not even flinch at the violent exhibition he had shamelessly staged on the public square.

It was all the more terrifying because he seemed unaffected by the vision that stretched out over the balcony. Unfazed by the sight of the mutilated, motionless bodies floating in the air like macabre omens above the onlookers surrounding them... But after all, why should he even bat an eyelash? He was responsible for all this. He was the one who had placed them there and spent weeks torturing those men.  

Harry swallowed and looked at his own trembling hands, still gripping the railing, as if he expected them to be stained red or to feel tacky. 

He took his eyes off his hands when he finally made sure they were still clean, and took another look at the gloomy figure of his past self. He tilted his head slightly, as if trying to make out the expression he had worn at the time, looking for a trace of shame or regret... Anything that might have proved his humanity. 

There, under that hood, where he could see cold-dulled green eyes, he could not distinguish or recognize anything else about him. Even if the face he wore had features previously modified by a glamour charm, there was no expression to animate them. Absolutely nothing. No anger blowing in his pupils or satisfaction stretching his lips. Deep down, Harry knew it. He had simply been there, unrepentant, empty, and only incredibly unsatisfied. 

And like the crowd, like the whole world, Voldemort too remained silent. 

Behind them came a noise, just a little pop! Harry didn't flinch, nor did he turn around. He looked back at the square and contemplated once again some of the bodies he had left in his wake.

He knew in advance that the one who had just appeared was a house elf, and that anyone could have seen him walking with the same confidence as one of the most noble and ancient house heads. His every step could be heard and followed by the clanking of thin metal plates and the crinkling of his dragon-hide garments. Better than anyone, Harry knew that every seam was soaked with magic, every inch of fabric was embroidered with runes. It was a battle dress. An armour.

A warrior in a free army. A revolutionary loaded with Molotov cocktails ready to lay siege to the seat of power. An idealist desperately chasing his goal and arming himself with his newfound convictions.

He was not the only one, nor the only race, who chose to join Harry. Their banner bore neither colour nor name, it was their multiple faces all united with a common goal: to raze what existed. Make Rome crumble.

It had all been a matter of opportunity, Harry was only one of the leaders, a figurehead, but he did not stand out for his initiative in the movement, oh no. He was known to be the most dedicated... or also, the deadliest. Known for always being the kamikaze who ran wholeheartedly into death’s arms. And that's why he was the first to be warned that the next step could begin. He was going to be the dynamite stick they would throw into the anthill. 

He knew the rest. He had already heard the words that would be the origin of the world's upheaval.

Harry raised his voice over the elf's to address Voldemort. He himself felt that there was something heavy... ancient , in his tone, as if the number of millennia he had lived after this moment was finally catching up with him.

"You really don't want to see the rest … I beg you, get out of my mind."

But Voldemort remained as silent as ever on the other side of the tall, black hooded figure that Harry had once been.

The scene of the square slowly bled out of Harry's sight as his past self Apparated elsewhere. It was with that same slowness that the Muggle part of London materialised, almost as if the universe knew in advance what was going to happen and was struggling to prevent it. Yet everything had to follow the script. 

In the phone booth, a voice in the telephone receiver requested, "State your business."

"Appointment with the Minister."

The last trace of humanity, of empathy, that Harry had sought was in that brief moment. When he descended into the bowels of London, walked as if on conquered ground through the corridors and knocked determinedly on an office door. 

The secretary had hardly opened the door when she fell victim of a petrification spell, which made her fall backwards like a statue knocked off its pedestal.

The sound of the spell and the attack was enough for the other door at the back of the secretary's office, leading to the Minister's office, to fly open.

Harry couldn't help but feel the tears welling up as he saw an older version of Hermione standing in the doorway of her office; her wand pointed menacingly at the public danger that he had been. 

Even though her friend was at least ninety years old at the time, she still looked dangerously intelligent. In retrospect, Harry wondered if it was time that had honed her brown eyes. Making them deeper from all the knowledge they had travelled through the lines of books, and darker from the ink of the parchments that had eventually saturated them.   

"Minister Weasley," Harry's memory greeted coldly. "Lower your wand. You definitely don't want to fight against me. "

"Is that a threat?" Hermione retorted fiercely, raising her wand higher.

"A warning."

Hermione was about to reply, but her words died on her lips when the office room was suddenly saturated with magic. 

It appeared as flames that devoured every piece of furniture and licked the walls to the ceiling. Except this fire was unlike anything that could naturally exist. It was cold, as icy as the touch of Death; as colourless as Limbo. Ghostly flames, ready to feed upon the smallest sliver of life they would find. 

The man who had been Harry took a few steps towards Hermione, stepping through the icy inferno of his magic without it affecting him. 

"We had a mutual friend, and in honour of that shared friendship, allow me to inform you, dear minister, that it would be wise to leave." 

"No ..." Hermione breathed weakly as she glanced horrified at the flames around them.

Then in less than a fraction of a second, something made her eyes widen: she had recognised something. She looked back at the man in front of her. 

"This friend, is he the one who was originally the subject of our meeting? The one who gave you a message for me?"

"Precisely." The man's voice softened, and despite the roar of the flames around him, it sounded distinctly clear, "He passes his salute from behind the Veil—"

"He can't be dead!" Hermione exclaimed, cutting him off. " You! You know he’s—"

"He’s dead. I only warn you in his memory and because you really tried to change things. However, you're going to join him soon if you don't leave."

"What happened to you—"

A shudder shook the flames, the signal that the ward surrounding the Ministry, preventing from Apparating inside, had finally fallen.

"Goodbye, Hermione. Hopefully our paths will never cross again."

And with a wave of his hand, he made the one who had been once his friend disappear. Sending her back to the safety of her home, where she would be reunited with Ron.

And just like that, the only act of kindness he had dared to do at that moment had passed... Or perhaps it was the cruellest thing he had ever done? Even now, Harry was still unsure. 

After years of preparation and stealth to fly under the radar of the authorities, the moment he had been waiting for had finally arrived. The corridors of the Ministry echoed with panicked cries. 

The tall figure walked slowly out of the office, simply stepping over the secretary who barred his way, still motionless on the floor.

He marked his wake by the flames that followed him and grew with each new yard that his legs crossed. Nothing was to be left, this was his mission, and he would carry it out until he was satisfied.

In the entrance hall of the Ministry, several dense groups of wizards and witches were being held captive. Bound, gagged and disarmed of their wands. They were all looking apprehensively at the various creatures that would be their new captors: vampires, centaurs, house elves, werewolves, a few Muggle-born wizards … A handful of no-names, a bunch of misfits, who were overthrowing the government that had constantly belittled them.

One of the centaurs, another of the leaders of their ranks, came forward to join Harry's side. 

With a gesture he caught the creatures' attention. "Call off the others. We're going back to headquarters with these ones," he commanded, pointing with his chin at the wizards being held prisoner. 

"I'll take care of the rest," said Harry's memory in an emotionless tone—a very peculiar way of saying that he would burn London to the ground. 

In a matter of seconds, the hall emptied.

Harry turned, mimicking his reflection from the past, and looked at the flames that were now just a huge, hungry monster. Now, with hindsight, he understood that what he had created at the time was a Fiendfyre imbued with Death's magic. No other magical fire would have grown so large without him losing control of it. 

"She warned me of someone who would carry death in his wake... Peverell, is that you ? Are you really going to—"

Harry was sure he heard a kind of fascination tinged with apprehension in the voice. 

The tall figure from Harry's memory took a few steps towards the flames, leaving the two teenagers side by side.

Harry kept his gaze fixed on the flames, but he could still feel Voldemort's intense fixation weighing on him.

"Are you even prepared to hear the truth?" asked Harry sullenly as he slowly took his eyes off the flames to look at the other teenager. "Yes, the one you see is me. What I'm going to become."

The flames continued to grow and roar, becoming the embodiment of the magma belly of the volcano that had destroyed Pompeii.

"Voldemort is your future, the one you have yet to discover," Harry continued, "But I live only through this one, to which I am fated and chained."

Harry's voice was muffled by the final roar of the flames that were about to consume the world forever. They rose one last time in a sudden burst that caused the ceiling to collapse, releasing the monster from its abyss.

"The Secret!" Voldemort exclaimed as he watched aghast the flames escape to spread all over London. "Have you lost your mind?! You'll endanger all of us if Muggles see this!" 

"They will. And the International Statute of Secrecy will be permanently broken. The news will spread so fast that no one will be able to stop it, just as other major magical incidents are going to spread across Britain... " Harry took a long breath, his eyes closed as he could no longer bear the sight of his mistakes. "We can still stop this from happening."

A hand gripped Harry's jaw, long fingers splayed across his cheek and a thumb under his chin as if to force him to lift his head.

He opened his eyes again and saw that Voldemort's face was standing next to his. Harry's breath caught in his throat, he couldn't make out Voldemort's expression, as if he seemed torn between different emotions. There was that angry twitch in his jaw, but his eyes remained dark. As brightly alive with power as the day he'd realised he shared his endless love of magic with Voldemort. 

"Magic entrusted me with the mission to protect her. That is why I am a Lord, Peverell. It is only at her calling that I respond." Voldemort's fingers dug painfully into the flesh of Harry's cheeks. "You are unkillable. You will expose our kind... What am I going to do with you?"

An exhausted, mocking grin stretched Harry's lip. "Nothing. You're just stuck with me."

"Good, because you're stuck with me too, now." Voldemort slowly loosened his grip until it was barely a touch of his fingertips. "If what I just saw is your fate, then I will never let you out of my sight again."

"Careful, or you'll end up with an unhealthy obsession."

"Another one of your predictions? I hate to break the news to you, but I already have. I like power, I like dangerous things, so when I see both at the same time, I know better to keep them close." A red glow flashed through the dark eyes intensely anchored in Harry's. "And you already know how far I'm willing to go to get what I want."

"And what exactly do you want?" 

"Make Magic mighty again."

"I know where this is going..."

"Listen to me carefully because I'm not going to repeat myself! You're not going to burn down the ministry just for fun. No—you're better than that, you're going to do it to wipe out the past... and that's what I plan to do. That's also why you came to me, you know I’m able to do it. You said you wanted to try, Peverell. So let's try and— succeed . Together we can do better, much better , than all this. After, together we’ll build a new era where the secret is not broken, where magic is—"

"That's not what I want! " interrupted Harry, taking a large step back.

His previous anger was mixed with a feeling of dread. Something as suffocating as a devil's snare strangling him in absolute darkness.

Everything around them was nothing but his need to vent his anger, just an outlet after his years in the cage and... 

What if it was all a pretext? 

Just an excuse, because he had really wanted all this? 

Voldemort was silent for a moment, his eyes slowly looking Harry up and down.

"No, that's not what you want," he finally stated. "But only because you don't have a concrete idea of what you really want. You don't crave power. You're just a headless idealist, hoping for a better future than the one you're going to reduce to nothing but ashes in your path." He takes a step forward, taking back the space Harry had put between them. "Maybe I'm just your peace, but I certainly won't let you rest until you see that the only salvation for our world is to end it." Another conquering step. "Like you, I can't die anymore. You can have as many graves as you like, it will not matter because your final coffin will be nothing else than my arms. I will not die until I am sure that you will never return to spread your useless havoc that will endanger Magic. You know better than anyone that this world must burn—it needs to, and deep down you want to set it on fire as much as I do. So let us ignite this world together … Let's destroy it, but in a much more brilliant way than what you could do alone. With me, it will shake, crumble, and fall beautifully; before finally— rise again. We will shape it as we are: magic-loving, powerful and immortal." Then a tender whisper, dark, loving eyes, "So, you see? What you seek and never find—that peace, that truth—is not to prevent the inevitable, but that this end serves a purpose and leads to something better … Greater. "

And then, Voldemort—a feral, victorious, grin on his lips—disappears, vanishing from Harry's mind. Leaving behind him Harry, who stood still, staring into the void and the flames.

He wondered as he looked at them if anything could really blossom after the destruction, if the ashes would manage to nourish the earth rather than just be scattered to the four winds.

The anguish continued to suffocate him, as the realisation slowly made its way into his mind: if it wasn't him destroying this world, Fate would find someone else to get their hands dirty. 

He never imagined for a moment that by going back into the past he would voluntarily take that road again. 

Harry was addressing whoever he would become, the flames, the future he never wanted to see again, "It won't end there, not like that— never again . He's the solution to build an after... I'm sure of it."