Chapter Text
Tom Riddle meets his murderer on a sunny day in early December.
“Stop that, Black,” Tom says, as Orion Black pounces on Theolonius Nott on their way from potions to transfiguration. The pair break into a scuffle in the middle of the corridor and Tom is forced to sidestep the pair as they careen into Avery. “Enough,” Tom snaps.
Orion Black straightens, not bothering to pull his robes up from where they have crumbled and folded on themselves. “Sorry, Mr Prefect,” he says, looking too amused by events. Nott snickers but stops the moment Tom shoots a glare his way. “Oh come on,” Orion grumbles, “It’s not like Slytherin’s monster is going to attack us in the corridor.”
Tom contemplates the pros and cons of setting the basilisk on the Black heir. He must grow still, or too contemplative, because Orion actually looks worried.
“It wouldn’t, would it? We’re Slytherins ,” Orion emphasises the word like it is a magical shield against the petrifications and hauntings that have struck the castle since November. And, in a way, it is. Slytherins are pure of blood. Slytherins are in the house of Salazar himself.
“If there even is a monster,” Druella Rosier sniffs, “They said it was a tragic accident. A misspoken charms error, wasn’t it?”
“A spell accident… twice ?”
“Until proven otherwise. Move, Black, you’re blocking the corridor.”
Orion bounces to one side, all long and loose limbs. He’s in constant motion, like a dog, as he skips back around Nott to sling an arm over Avery. He had, for a moment, looked like he was going to sling an arm over Tom and then decided better.
Maybe, Tom thinks, he will have to leave another victim petrified in the corridor for the wizards to get the point. They do appear remarkably resistant to new ideas. The very concept that power can sit anywhere regardless of one’s purity of blood--
It’s going to be the best revenge, Tom thinks, the day he watches the purebloods grovel on their knees before him.
It’s a nice image. He folds it up, sets it aside for later, knows in his bones that he will see it made reality one day. He will not allow it to remain a mere fantasy.
There’s a loud thump from further down the corridor. An alarmed shriek and a group of Gryffindor girls scatter, looking torn between annoyance and concern. A boy has crashed into the wall beside them in a messy heap.
“I think you’re needed, Mr Prefect,” Orion says, far too brightly. He ignores Tom’s glare at him entirely.
“I think he’s fine,” Tom remarks as the messy heap springs to their feet. A boy in black robes. He is, to put it simply, a mess. From the creased, dusty robes fraying at the hems, his ratty sneakers to his tousled windswept hair—even his glasses are slightly crooked, and he is clutching a bag around his neck that is held together with threads. There’s the scattered content of a student’s bag around him—a whirlwind of papers and a smashed ink bottle. The boy pushes himself up from the wall, leaving ink-stained finger prints on the stone. He looks a bit disorientated.
“Is that mokeskin ?” Druella makes an intrigued noise in the back of her throat.
“Did he hit his head?” Avery asks, as the boy stumbles a little. It does look like he might have run straight into the wall. “Someone should probably take him to the hospital wing--”
He looks like an older student, but it’s hard to tell. The boy is lean and lanky; all skin and bone. As Tom watches him, he spins around a little, gaze passing up and down the corridor, looking lost for a moment before something seems to settle in him. He straightens, gravity tying hooks to his joints as he settles down, and in the back of Tom’s mind he can almost feel the castle just breathe with the boy.
And then green eyes find him.
Shoulders square, chin juts out defiantly; Tom barely sees the boy move but suddenly he’s there in front of him, ink still dripping from his robes. The Gryffindor girls scatter behind the boy, and next to him Tom can sense Avery and Orion stepping back, intimidated by the strange teenager with bright eyes and dishevelled, dust-stained appearance.
“Tom Riddle.”
The boy says his name like a consternation and a prayer. A curse and a benediction. Tom has never heard the rounding vowels and harsh consonants said with such power and emotion behind the words. His name has always been common. A curse, a nothingness he had been forced to attach himself to.
This boy says his name like he's casting a spell, like he's breathing magic. He says Tom's common muggle name like it's something special and Tom wants to hear him say it again.
“Yes?” He asks, already planning how the conversation will go.
The boy instantly derails it. “Draw your wand,” he challenges, “I won't kill you while you're unarmed and defenceless.”
He splutters. The words should sound ridiculous but somehow coming from the lips of the boy who says his name like he is worshipping Tom, it's not even a threat—it's a promise. “ Kill me ?” he mocks, “We don't even know each other. You've yet to introduce yourself to me.”
Next to him Nott snorts. Orion is frowning and Avery looks equally bemused by the exchange.
The boy looks uncomfortable for the briefest moment. Then it's gone. “Harry Potter,” he says, tone a challenge. Stubborn, a tilt of his chin, blazing green eyes, wand in his hand— he is not backing down. “And you ruined my life. Destroyed everyone I held dear. So now I'm going to introduce you to your greatest fear.”
It should sound ludicrous. But the boy— Harry Potter's —words have Tom reaching long fingers for his wand, his heart ticking up a beat.
He is going to die, he realises with a flash of clarity. This boy is deadly serious.
“Why?” he straightens, readying himself. “I haven't done anything to you.”
"Oh, you haven't yet—" Harry Potter says, perfect lips tugging up into a grin, "—but you will." His green eyes flash eerily, vibrantly, reflecting the light of the spell on his wand, the same iridescent sleek green colour Tom recognises even before he hears the incantation from the pretty boy's mouth, "Avada Kedavra."
Tom sees his death in the green eyes of a strange boy and feels it in the air. Like static on a warm summer's night, like the cold bite of frost moments before numbness sets in. He breathes in death, and then the world explodes in front of him.
Rock and stone from the intercepting gargoyle rain down around him. He stumbles back, hands flying up to shield his face. The gargoyle—one of those huge armoured knights—swings out with a sword. He stands between Tom and the boy—Harry—throws out another spell that hits the gargoyle instead of his intended target.
Instead of hitting Tom .
It doesn't escape Tom's notice that the spell had been silent. A lazy flick of his wand, green eyes still locked on Tom.
He uses this moment to scrabble for his own wand, to try and collect himself, to feel the adrenaline rush through him, his wand warm beneath his fingers.
A killing curse.
That boy had shot a killing curse at him.
Tom could still taste the magic in the air. Like grave dirt and rot. He could practically feel the roughness of his gravestone beneath his fingers. He should be wary. Frightened.
He should not be so exhilarated.
The students dive out of the way. Orion is openly laughing, but then Orion has always had the wrong response to violence. The Gryffindor girls shout something about getting a teacher and one vanishes down the corridor. The boy—Potter, Harry—does not appear to notice. He’s sizing up the gargoyle, eyes bright as he contemplates the defence mechanism of Hogwarts brought to life in front of him.
Tom sees him mutter something. Potter’s wand twists and then he rips it through the air, tearing magic straight out of stone. For a moment the stone knight is silhouetted in Tom’s vision—stone illuminated against the light of a veritable cat’s cradle of interwoven magic, a stunning construction of magic and protection and then—
Then Potter brute-forces his way through it, ripping in claws and tearing it to shreds. The stone knight shudders, life draining from it. The stone fades, loses that spark of life, loses that power that protected it so that when the spell Tom recognises as a bone breaker flies towards him: it shatters.
Shards scatter around him. The crunch as the stone hits the floor is loud. It reverberates through him, and Tom barely has the chance to cast a shield charm before another curse hits it. A whip of flame—also illegal, Tom thinks. Dark magic , he breathes in, thrilled.
He’s going to die.
He should not enjoy this.
The boy’s magic is varied. Overpowered and crude and he’s quick. Quicker than Tom; it’s all he can do to keep up. Potter laces curses and jinxes back to back in combinations that should not work. The magic should rebel, should fail to follow on but instead Potter strings the most brutal chains together and throws them at Tom. Tom’s shield shatters and he is forced to physically dive to the side. He stumbles to standing, something warm searing across his cheek. He gasps, hand coming away bloody.
“Tom!” Avery takes a step forwards from a couple of metres away. He looks about to say something else, but Tom reads the panic in his voice and dodges again.
His shoulder hits the wall hard. It hurts, but at least he can feel the pain. He wouldn’t be feeling anything had he remained in the path of the vivid green killing curse.
Tom fires back spells, growing desperate. His casting is messy. He’s shouting his spells, telegraphing his movements and castings. Potter is relentless . He continues forwards, batting aside Tom’s curses like they’re nothing. Potter barely has to move.
He’s almost beautiful, contained and poised in his movements and duelling.
Tom’s spells grow darker. More desperate. Curses and hexes that cannot be knocked aside. But still Potter keeps coming.
This is not the first time during this fight that the thought creeps in. The insidious, terror dread thought. Desperation crawls like a rat up his spine as reality and panic sink in.
He is going to die.
He knows it. He can see Potter’s triumph already written in the other’s flesh, gleaming in messy cursive in the other’s green eyes. The words of the killing curse form on the other’s lips—
They’re interrupted by the arrival of a storm.
Potter whirls away from him. Tom grasps onto the wall, holding on to keep himself standing. Potter’s lips curl in a snarl and he twists, his back to an open window, half-facing Tom, half-facing the source of magic that had appeared like a whirlwind to join the fight.
Dumbledore is glorious.
Tom hates that he looks so magnificent, robes billowing, a fury radiating off Albus Dumbledore as his magic hits them all in a wave. Tom forces himself to stay standing, even as the tidal force threatens to send him to his knees. He’s glad to see Potter stumble, just a bit, knee giving way a little under the power of it.
“Professor,” Potter’s tone is measured. Polite, even. He speaks the title almost familiarly. “Fancy seeing you here,” he adds, seemingly needlessly. A note of wonder, driven to boredom in his tone.
Tom is struck by the knowledge that the boy is still contemplating his chances against not only Tom, but against Tom with Dumbledore there. He thinks he feels flattered—is that the right word for this feeling? The emotion that those furious green eyes elicit in the knowing Tom has that this boy’s one desire is to see him dead?
“Put your wand down,” Dumbledore cautions. And he’s—he’s terrifying . He radiates power in every movement, magic drips off him like molten glass. Any battle against him would be no battle at all.
Potter does not look cowed. He looks…
He looks petulant . “ Now you interfere,” he drawls, lazily. His gaze drifts to Tom and back again, cracking his jaw. He cocks his head sharply to one side, “Give me five more minutes. You don’t have to get involved.”
Dumbledore does not intend to give the boy more time to continue his murder attempt. “Step back. Wand down .”
Potter twists his wand in his hand. It sparks golden and there’s fire wrapped around his hand, and for a moment Tom thinks the fight will continue—
But Potter isn’t an idiot. His hand drops. The flames splutter to ember. He does not allow himself to be disarmed—he tosses his pale coloured wand on the ground. It rolls over the flagstones, coming to a stop in front of Dumbledore. “Fine,” Potter says, “But I’ll kill him eventually.”
“Not while I am at Hogwarts,” Dumbledore says. Gold chains shimmer into existence to clamp down around Potter’s thin wrists and ankles. The old man meets the defiant green gaze of Tom’s would-be-murderer. “All students here are under my protection.”
“Even him?”
Dumbledore’s long fingers summon the boy’s wand wordlessly to his hands. The wood is pale and for a moment it shimmers with the hint of firelight. Dumbledore’s expression grows curious, intrigued, the hint of a frown visible in the creases of his forehead. “Holly is normally protective,” he says.
“Phoenix feather isn’t,” Potter says, a challenge in his tone. “Fire only has one purpose.”
Tom wonders what Dumbledore sees in Potter’s mad green eyes, wonders what emotions, what thoughts are visible in the surface of those swirling thoughts.
Whatever it is, Dumbledore flinches away. “I’m calling in the aurors. Mr Potter, you’re coming with me to the Ministry. Mr Riddle,” his words catch Tom’s attention, “You’re coming with us. The aurors are going to have questions.”
*
The aurors do have questions. Tom has no answers.
(This irritates him more than it should.)
They talk around in circles. Events play over in his mind and in his words. He watches the boy with those furious green eyes attack him over and over again in his head.
Eventually they thank him and leave. Eventually Tom gets his chance to step out into the deep stone of the Ministry.
He has not been here before. It has a different sort of magic from Hogwarts. The castle is a slow, slumbering magic, a warmth that wraps itself around you and holds you carefully. The Ministry is an active hum—like standing next to a hive of bees, all hard at work, magic constantly active and buzzing against his skin.
Even in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the layer of wards and protection over the holding cells sits like the sensation of bugs, scratching over his skin. It sets his teeth on edge and is decidedly unpleasant. Compared to the gaudy colours of the auror cubicles and main desks the cells are grayscale. The colour has been leached from the stone, the light burns nearly white and grey in the shadows of the detention cells.
The boy looks small in the depth of the cell. So much smaller than he was when he confronted Tom with fury and magic and anger. He's curled in on himself, knees to his chest and shivering slightly.
He's asleep, eyes half-lidded and shifting beneath his eyelids. The muscles of his hands twitch in spasms against some unseen enemy.
Tom approaches the cell silently, content to just watch the boy for a moment, but the moment he draws up to the bars the boy stirs.
His eyes flutter open, the green there vivid colour against the bleak grey of the cell. His gaze fixes on Tom and like sparking a match the fury ignites in his eyes. The muscles in his jaw tense, biting down on a litany of words that fly to his lips but do not escape.
What a shame, Tom thinks. He wants to hear the vitriol spill from those pretty lips. He wants to feel the emotion, visceral and physical manifesting in the air around the other boy.
"How are you doing?" Tom is the first to break the silence, tone warm and polite and friendly.
Venomous green eyes narrow to slits, "Do you care?" he asks, bristling, "What do you want, Riddle?"
"So much anger," he mocks, "So unfounded."
He sees more accusations being bitten down. "Who let you through here?" the boy looks around, seeing nobody. Tom had slipped away from the auror asking him questions, seeking answers of his own. The boy curls his lips, smile bittersweet, “Shouldn't you have a teacher holding your hand? Perfect prefect Riddle—what a cute facade you play to all—but I know exactly what you are."
"What I am ?" Tom echoes, "And what am I then, Harry Potter?"
The use of the boy's name is glorious. He trembles, a full body thing of fury and bone deep horror. His eyes flash, his muscles tense and his lips curl back in defiance, chin lifted in Gryffindor bravery. There's so much fight in him. His eyes and posture tell a whole story, if only Tom knew how to read the language scribed into the boy's skin.
"You're—" he starts, drawing breath and preparing an angry rant that Tom somehow knows cycles over and over in Harry's head. The very idea that this boy thinks about him, that his hatred sinks into his thoughts, his dreams—it's heady.
Harry's speech is interrupted. A placid voice calling out his name.
"Mr Riddle." Warnings lace the tone of Albus Dumbledore as he appears at the end of the corridor.
Tom is watching Harry at that moment; he sees so much emotion flash through the boy. Relief, primarily, replaced by a flare of anger. It fades into resignation and a blank, stone-face mask as Dumbledore strides down the corridor.
"Professor," Tom says, lifting his chin, all thin veneer of charm.
"You should not be here, Tom."
"I wanted to find out why he attacked me. I needed to know." He lets his voice waver—all uncertainty and just a note of anxiety and fear. "The aurors said he wasn’t talking… I thought maybe he’d talk to me.”
Tom can feel Dumbledore's gaze, like an ice drill reaching for the dark waters beneath. But he's also aware of sharp green watching him, merely observing. He looks over where the boy has pressed himself back, made himself smaller and shrunk down. Tom feels a flush of disappointment... of irritation—this boy, this marvel, his murderer does not get to be nobody. He does not get to fade into the background.
Potter becomes a different creature with gilded chains wrapped around his limbs. His posture becomes hunched, shoulders tense, chin angled down and eyes skating away from anyone who looks at him. He makes himself smaller, gaze to the ground.
He reminds Tom of the children at the orphanage who were used to fists and belts, the children who curled in on themselves to try and escape notice, so that they might pass by the adults unscathed. He thinks Potter is older than him—of age, at least—but the way he curls in on himself now, he could be any of the younger students being disciplined with wide eyes and trembling limbs.
Tom wants to hit him. He hates the display of weakness—he wants to see the being that had thrown themselves at him with fire and fury. He hates this lesser creature that Potter has fashioned himself into.
"Harry and I were just making polite conversation," Tom says, glibly, "Weren't we, Harry?"
“Come away, Tom,” Dumbledore says. “Professor Slughorn is here to take you back to Hogwarts.”
Tom feels a spark of anger at the man for interrupting. He wants to pin the other down like a butterfly pinned with needles, wants to dig out his answers, to make him talk —
He schools his face into polite respect, ducks his gaze in a little nod—a perfect little charade—
There’s a scoff of laughter from the boy. Both Tom and Dumbledore turn to the boy but he’s already looking away, gaze fixed resolutely on the wall. “The aurors are ready to talk to you, Mr Potter,” Dumbledore says.
Potter does not answer. Does not meet his eyes and does not look at Dumbledore. His face is carved marble. He has the aura of one who has stared into hell's maw and accepted his fate.
No, Tom thinks.
He refuses to let that happen.
*
They move him from the cell to a windowless room with a table and chair. He is chained to the floor, and in the corner of his vision one of the wall blurs to suggest a glamour spell hiding watching eyes.
Harry is tired. He is fatigued in every cell of his body, in every word spoken he feels the weight of gravity dragging him down. He blinks, slow and languid. He longs to curl up and sleep but the lights around him are harsh and unrelenting. The aurors do not stop their questions. They do not stop their spells and tests and probing probing probing —
The world fuzzes before him. Grows bright, his vision hums at the edges and he hears static. He hears golden sand falling and for a moment the world—
—stills—
Then blink, breathe, they’re still questioning and Harry just sits there and plans on how he’s going to get out. The Ministry has not changed from the Ministry in Harry’s time. They are no less intimidating fifty and five years earlier. If anything they’re lazier—their officials rounder cheeked, fresh faced and still blissfully ignorant. Grindelwald has not yet brought a war to their doors. Voldemort has not wiped out nearly all their family lines.
They sit in a stagnant puddle drying out on the pavement. Harry ignores them. The questions turn into a wash of voices that blur together and then fade when they eventually leave him in peace. He feels time crawling over his skin, skittering unpleasantly.
They bore of him—the boy with no name, no history, no past and no future. His name and his birthday are the only thing they have and even that is a lie.
He does not give them the year he was born. 1980 is a little unbelievable to Ministry officials working in the year 1942. They backdate it for him and make up the lies on their own. 1925 is as good a year as any.
“Bad things happen to wizards who mess with time, Harry,” Hermione says in his head, worried, bossy and knowing but Hermione is dead and Harry has done far worse things than mess with time to get here.
Harry is not worried about paradoxes. The very act of killing itself is intrinsically paradoxical. To remove someone from existence, to erase them—living breathing beating—from reality is a conundrum in itself. The bleed through it might have on time is all an afterthought to that first act of murder.
Even his existence here writes itself. They backdate his birthday without him saying anything, they keep themselves busy chasing dead lines of the Potter family tree. Harry is a PTSD-ridden mess with good battle reflexes and a British accent—the aurors spell out a story of war and loss and a Dark Lord. It’s the wrong Dark Lord, but the basics are there.
Eventually they leave. Harry is left to his thoughts, and his regrets. He is left to the vision of his friends’ dead bodies when he closes his eyes and Voldemort’s high pitched, cold laugh in his head.
He should have been quicker. He shouldn’t have wasted time talking—should have blasted apart the whole corridor to smoke and dust. His fingers curl uselessly against his chains, bound and shackled as he is. He imagines a world where he has the power to break them, to walk straight out of there without issue. His magic hums, a low, thrumming current under his skin, but the chains hold.
Harry is not sure what he would do if he got out. If it wasn’t for the fact that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different outcome, he would plan to walk into Hogwarts and shoot another killing curse at Riddle. It had been almost too easy.
Maybe they’re right, maybe he really is crazy.
He wonders where his wand is. He’s not too worried—he can always buy it again where it sits resting in the back of Olivander’s dusty shelves.
Time passes. He does not know how long it has been, tucked away in the holding cells of the Ministry. He hungers and thirsts and occasionally, irregularly, food and water is brought to him. None of the aurors on shift speak to him. They barely look at him.
Maybe they will lock him away in this cell to rot. Throw away the key and forget about him. He’s waiting for the day they lead a dementor to his cell—for the putrid shroud of depression to embrace him in its cold arms and drag him to a unique kind of oblivion. Harry is not unfamiliar with death, nor the idea of his own death, but somehow the idea of his consciousness being shredded by a creature of fear feels like a terrible way to go, after everything. After Umbridge and Death Eaters, after watching Voldemort stride through the halls of Hogwarts to strike Dumbledore down, after fleeing for days-weeks-months with no plan, no allies and little to no hope—
They don’t need the dementors to bring depression, Harry thinks, he’s got plenty inside already, an oily slick-stained pit of tar that is always bubbling away under the surface.
He looks up when Dumbledore enters the room.
He feels the man first. Can taste the ozone on the air of the other man’s magic, like oak wood and summer lightning singing the air before Albus Dumbledore even sets foot in the room. He had forgotten what a presence his old headmaster had once held.
And the sight of him—oh—the man looks so young. Beard a russet auburn, eyes not quite as rheumy and he is not wearing his usual half-moon spectacles. There are hints of age creeping in—grey to the edge of his temple, crows eyes at the crinkle of his brow—but there is an energy that has mellowed by the time Harry had known him.
His heart aches. His teeth grind down. The man had been always been a conundrum to Harry—one minute a guiding force, the next an impossible-to-approach figure. A mentor, a mystery, someone to respect, someone to be wary of.
This younger version does not know Harry. His gaze holds no warmth, there is a distance to his movements as he pulls out a chair and sits in front of him. Harry is a stranger. They have never met. He is an unknown variable, a man Harry knew better after he had died than he had ever known while he still breathed.
So Harry ignores the instinct to lean forwards and tell the man everything. He clenches his jaw, biting down his words and avoiding the old man’s probing eyes.
“Harry Potter, is it? The aurors are still besides themselves trying to work out how a sixteen—or are you seventeen already—year-old boy got into Hogwarts without anybody noticing. Not only got into Hogwarts without the wards kicking you out, but snuck in with enough skills that they only responded after you fired the killing curse.”
“Next time,” Harry grits out, despite his internal promised vow of silence, “Next time I’ll use a knife.”
A sigh. “They say that you’re not talking.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
“Then allow an old man a few words,” Dumbledore leans back, lacing his fingers together, “I was curious, you see, when I picked up your wand. Phoenix feather, you said. A rare wand core.” He tilts his head, like Harry doesn’t know the man’s core is phoenix.
If Dumbledore is hoping the pause will encourage Harry to conversation he will be disappointed.
“Olivander favours it,” Dumbledore says, eventually. “It’s remarkably tricky to utilise but it is an art he has perfected over the decades. He is familiar with every single wand he has sold, but most noticeably… his phoenix wands.”
And then he leans forwards, placing Harry’s wand on the table.
It’s so close. Harry could grab it, it’s within his reach. He eyes it, the familiar pale holly, the stained handle, the little nick part way down from where it had been buried once under the broken stone of Malfoy Manor and Harry had dug it out with bleeding fingers and Ron screaming at him to run.
“Holly and phoenix feather, 11 inches,” Dumbledore says. “Garrick remembers making it. He remembers all his wands and who he sold it to. But this particular wand he has never sold. In fact…”
A box joins the wand. Long and black cardboard, a piece of twine keeping it closed. Dumbledore gestures. Harry doesn’t move at first, waiting for the trap to spring. His own wand is right there —
He pulls at the piece of twine, watching as it springs open. The box opens easily and nothing springs out—no spell bites at his fingers, no magic sparks. And inside--
Oh , he thinks, maybe his old wand wasn’t available to buy.
Inside the box are stains of ash and burnt splinters. The remnants of a holly and phoenix feather wand, burned out of existence by the presence of its counterpart in the same timeline.
“Mr Olivander had a small explosion in his workshop. A wand that was seemingly stable, seemingly finished, had a poor reaction with the core and it burned out. He told me it happened about three days ago. Approximately 10 hours in fact before your attempted murder.”
Harry leans back, lips pressed tightly together. His gaze flickers to the door, to one side where he’s convinced the fake wall leads to a room the aurors listen in.
“There’s nobody else here,” Dumbledore says, “Just the two of us, Harry—may I call you Harry? Mayhaps you might tell me how it is that a boy that nobody has heard of, and nobody can trace, breaks into Hogwarts wielding a phoenix feather wand that used to exist until his appearance.”
There isn’t anything to say. Harry is not schooled in paradoxes and time travel. That had been Hermione’s schtick. He is not here to manage and control what consequences come from his actions, nor is he here to sit down and work out what is and isn’t allowed.
He is here to kill Tom Riddle.
“And what business does this boy have trying to kill a fifteen-year old student?”
Does he know about the wand cores? Harry wonders. Likely, he thinks, Dumbledore had known the first time.
“He needs to die,” Harry says. His throat is dry—he had not realised until he spoken how rough his voice had grown. He does not offer anything else—does not know where to start, does not know if he wants to. How does he go about convincing this man the necessity of his mission?
Dumbledore is silent. He does, however, reach for the phoenix wand and pick it up. It feels like a violation, seeing the holly wand in someone else’s hand. Harry tenses, longs to snatch it up, can feel the chains weighing his limbs down. “How is it that two identical wands can exist in the same moment, Harry Potter?”
He knows, Harry thinks.
How the headmaster had figured it out so quickly—
He’s not the headmaster, Harry reminds himself: he’s just the transfiguration professor with a lot of sway and power in the current war raging against Grindelwald. Enough to slip into the cell and speak to Harry, unimpeded by the Ministry.
“Tom Riddle,” the man’s tone is slow. Measured, weighing each word before he says it. “Tom Riddle is a fifteen year old boy. A prefect. Respected and a hardworking student. He has not committed any crime.”
Yet. Dumbledore doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to. They both hear it.
Albus Dumbledore already knows the answer. Which is—impressive, Harry had to admit it. Who works out time travel so quickly? He had known the other man was smart, but he’s always been on Dumbledore’s side. He’s always stood besides him and watched him work out information for their cause. He’d listened to him, looked up to him, Dumbledore had been like a mentor to him.
And then he died.
“He kills you, you know that?”
Harry breaks his silence to throw that information out like a dead carcass to rot in the sun. Watches as the crows pick at its flesh, as the sun bleaches the bones. He watches as Dumbledore processes that information slowly, observing the knowledge decay in Dumbledore’s mind to fragments and broken remnants of the truth.
Harry’s throat is dry—scratchy—he’s thirsty, he realises belatedly. He’s so used to ignoring things like thirst and pain and hunger. He’s been running for so long. Fighting for even longer. But he needs Dumbledore to know. He needs this man to understand, to step aside and let him do what he has been born to do.
“He kills you and he laughs. He kills my parents and steps over their bodies. My godfather, my friends… so many people die because that boy turns into the monster you already know him to be.”
Dumbledore is still. His face could be carved from stone, expression an open grave waiting to receive a body. He’s been dead for years in Harry’s mind, the man next to him is a ghost in all but reality.
“I don’t want to kill him. But I have to,” he says again. “He needs to die,” he’s trying to make Dumbledore see, “It’s all I exist for. You told me that once. Or… something to that extent. Neither can live. He can’t live. He can’t .” He’s shaking. Why is he shaking?
Harry wonders if the aurors are listening in. He wonders if they’ll commit him to a ward in St Mungos for this or if there is a cell in Azkaban or somewhere equally as dark awaiting him. They’ll chastise him and forget about him and it’s fine; they’ve put him in deeper holes before. Harry will climb out once more.
“He is a child,” Dumbledore’s tone is sharp.
“So was I.” Fury burns hot in his veins, he feels like the fire might just spill out of him.
“I cannot condone him for crimes he has not yet committed.”
“Oh? So how many people have been petrified already?”
Silence. Harry’s words have hit his mark. Dumbledore has no moral response to this. Harry knows what they are—he has had them himself, heard the words echoing around his own head. He will become less, he will reduce himself to the level of Voldemort, he’ll be a monster, a villain. His parents wouldn’t want him to, his friends would want him to be their beautiful perfect hero Harry that he had been.
His loved ones are dead—they don’t want anything.
And Harry wants to see Tom Riddle hanged. “I have to,” he says, beaten and bloodied and tired, “Don’t you get it?”
There is hesitation in Dumbledore’s movements now, a stilted caution to the flexing of his fingers over the holly wand. The information sinks in: the carcass starting to rot a little in the sun. The stench is hard to ignore, the truth irrefutable. Dumbledore can see that.
It’s fine. Harry can wait.
He’s got time.
*
The boy sitting in front of him is so young.
He’s not, in the eyes of the law. Albus is pretty sure the young man is seventeen already, he should be tried as an adult. But the sheer lack of knowledge about him means that everyone is more bemused than intimidated by the lanky sixteen-maybe-seventeen-year old with violent tendencies. He should be written off with a caution, some time locked up, some time serving the community, some fines and monitoring charms and no more thought about him.
Except—
A holly wand with a phoenix feather from Fawkes. And not the original which now sits in crumpled wood splinters and ash, but a second, copy. An older copy with wear and age to the magic that has been woven through.
“You can’t continue your crusade to kill Tom Riddle,” Dumbledore cautions.
Harry Potter glares at him. Try me , he eyes challenge, even though he keeps his jaw clenched shut.
“And you’ll probably have to agree to a modified version of the Trace to track your movements and magic.”
That glare gives way to confusion as Albus continues, uncertainty beginning to creep in.
“If I understand it correctly you don’t have anything here. No qualifications, no family, no money. I’m the deputy headteacher. Something can be arranged.”
And then he sees it, just a single spark, the faintest hint of what looks like hope.
“I believe I might have a proposition for you, Mr Potter.”