Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Blood of the enemy…forcibly taken…you will…resurrect your foe.”

Harry could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too tightly…

But then an idea flashed into his head. If the ritual required the blood to be forcibly taken, then what would happen if it was willingly given? True, that would still leave him tied to a grave with a knife-wielding Wormtail, who could just slash his throat in a second, but at least that meant Voldemort wouldn’t come back. At this point, what, precisely, did Harry have to lose? He was going to die either way.

“I give it freely!” Harry screamed. “I give my blood to you of my own free will!”

Wormtail’s eyes widened. “Master?”

“He does not mean it!” the voice of Voldemort called out. “Continue with the ritual, fool!”

Harry saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail’s remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry’s cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.

He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry’s blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing.

The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened…

Let it have drowned, Harry thought, and then there was a volcano of pain which erupted from his scar. It was like a thousand red hot pokers were all pressing on it. Harry was in so much pain it barely felt like pain at all. He just felt numb.

And then, suddenly, the sparks emanating from the cauldron were extinguished. A surge of white steam billowed thickly from the cauldron instead, obliterating everything in front of Harry, so that he couldn’t see Wormtail or Cedric or anything but vapor hanging in the air. It’s gone wrong, he thought, please let it have worked. Please, please, I’ll do anything!

And then through the mist in front of him, he saw, with a surge of confusion, the dark outline of a boy. He stepped into the light and Harry let out a gasp. It was a teenager, the same boy he had fought in the Chamber of Secrets. The young Tom Riddle. And yet…there was something different about him. His features were subtly different, not just in terms of expression, but also in terms of their physical shape. What had come across as sheer arrogance in the Chamber now registered as great confidence, mixed with, yes, some arrogance.

Also, Tom was completely naked, which was deeply distracting. Harry had noted how attractive Diary Tom had been – it was impossible to avoid it – but the whole fighting for his and Ginny’s life against Diary Tom and a giant basilisk had caused it to not really have time to sink in. Also, he was much more inclined to notice fit blokes now that he wasn’t twelve. He was a sculpted figure of pure classical beauty. Perfectly proportioned. Like one of those statues of naked Greek blokes. Harry didn’t want to keep coming back to the whole naked thing, but it was really quite impossible to avoid.

“Give me my robes, Wormtail,” Tom instructed with a haughty snap of his fingers and Wormtail hastened to obey. Thank goodness. Harry’s brain seemed to be breaking more and more every single second Tom was naked.

“Who are you?” Harry asked.

Tom studied him carefully. There was bloodlust in his eyes. At least Harry assumed it was bloodlust. What else could it be? “Who do you think I am?”

“Well, you’ve got Voldemort’s memories,” Harry said, trying his best to puzzle it out aloud. “The diary version of you didn’t have those. But I don’t think you’re Voldemort either – at least not fully. If you were, I’d be dead already. When I gave my blood, it must have sabotaged the ritual somehow. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

“Do you know what Horcruxes are, Harry?” Harry shook his head. “I thought not. It’s not a ritual Dumbledore would tell you about. My original self was terrified of death. He split his soul. Six times. And then he came to kill you and he died, and then his soul split a seventh time by accident.”

Harry wanted to hurl. Actually, why the hell shouldn’t he hold back, he decided, and he hurled right onto Wormtail, who let out a very rat like squeal. Both Harry and Tom laughed at him. Harry stopped laughing when he realized they were both doing it, but it was too late. There was a moment there. “My scar.”

“Correct,” Tom said, sounding proud, like he was a teacher and Harry his prized pupil. Not that he’d ever acted like that when he was actually teaching Harry in his first year…or the real Voldemort. This was going to get confusing. “I am that seventh Horcrux, Harry. But there are…side effects to being a living Horcrux. Some of your attributes flowed into me.”

“Like what?”

“Think of a spectrum, with you on one side and Voldemort on the other. My original self had no morals whatsoever. You are a man of intense moral convictions. I am somewhere in the middle. I am capable of feeling guilt, remorse. Not easily, but capable.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Tom conjured a mirror without even using a wand and let Harry see his face. It was now unblemished. The scar was gone. “You see? I speak the truth, which is more than I can say for Dumbledore. I have no doubt he knew about you being a Horcrux from the moment you gave him the diary.” With another wave of his hand, he untied Harry. “Dumbledore assumed you would have to die in order for my older self to be defeated. It is likely why your life has been made so miserable.”

“I don’t believe that.” If Dumbledore was some sort of evil mastermind attempting to drive him to suicide, he would have succeeded already. He wouldn’t drag it out over the course of many years. There were probably spells he could use that would make Harry suffer so much he would beg for death.

Tom shrugged. “I am just guessing. It is what I would do in his position, but I freely concede to some bias in this area. I am merely extrapolating from your memories.”

Harry knew he should have rushed Tom at this point, done whatever he could to stop his reign of terror. But he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he was sure he couldn’t win, though that had certainly never stopped him before. Maybe it was because Tom was making some very good points and he wasn’t sure this version of him needed to be stopped. Or maybe it was just because so much of his life had been fighting and he was tired of it all.

“I should stop you,” Harry said, but his heart wasn’t in it. “You murdered my parents…you murdered so many people…”

“I did no such thing,” Tom asserted. “I am not Voldemort. I have his memories, yes, but I am a separate, sentient being. I was a part of him, but I was also a part of you. Am I to be blamed for when you broke into the Slytherin Common Room?” Harry shook his head. “Then why should I be blamed for Voldemort’s sins?”

Worryingly, this logic seemed to make perfect sense to Harry. But just because he hadn’t been responsible for killing people in the past didn’t mean he would do it in the future. “What do you want?”

“I want to live,” Tom said. “I want to take on the role of Defense Professor I was once denied. I want you to leave me be and in return, I pledge to do the same to you and your friends.”

“And I’m supposed to just let you go free so you can genocide all the Muggleborns?”

Tom gave a weary sigh. “Conquest no longer interests me. All it brought Voldemort was death and ruination. It was all…such a waste. Make no mistake: I do not like Muggleborns. I especially hate Muggles. But I no longer have any desire to kill them.”

He walked over to Cedric’s decomposing carcass. “Your friend here died pointlessly. But in death, he can be of use. I can take on his form as a glamor and return alongside you without anyone being the wiser. As a prefect, very talented student of Defense, and Triwizard Tournament winner…or cowinner should you choose…he would be a shoe-in for next year’s Defense professor. Especially given how low to the bottom of the barrel Dumbledore has been scraping – I mean, Lockhart? Really?”

Harry knew it was wrong to say yes. Wrong to let Tom get away with impersonating Cedric. Even if he accepted the logic Tom wasn’t to blame for Voldemort’s crimes – and it was very persuasive logic – the chances he would kill in the future were high. What if he was lying about giving up on dreams of conquest? But Harry had taken the high road for so, so very long and what had it gotten him? Sent back to the Dursleys. Reviled by the school time and time again. His name in the Goblet. A godfather on the run. The world had taken a great delight in spitting in his face – maybe it was time he spat right back.

“If I’m going to help you, then I need more,” Harry announced. “For starters, I want to know why Voldemort came after me in the first place.”

“There was a prophecy,” Tom said without hesitating. “One of my Death Eaters overheard part of it. He did not tell me who gave it. I only know that part. It says ‘The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies.’ Voldemort assumed it was you the prophecy was referring to.”

Well, that certainly tracked. Voldemort seemed like the kind of person who would believe in prophecy wholeheartedly. Harry supposed he did too, given that Trelawney’s prophecy last year had come true. But he didn’t really think the prophecy mattered anymore. It said vanquish, for one, and he’d already done that. And his Divination textbooks were filled with examples of prophecies which had been misinterpreted, often with fatal consequences. Hell, Muggle myth had quite a few. Oedipus, for one.

“Why did Dumbledore not tell me?”

Tom shrugged. “It is he who should have been named Riddle, not me. Who knows why he does what he does?”

“Who was the Death Eater?”

“It was Severus Snape.”

Harry inhaled sharply. Of course it was. That bastard. Harry hadn’t come close to forgiving Snape for all the indignities he’d given to Harry and especially not for lying to Fudge about Sirius, which had prevented the two of them for living with each other. And now he was responsible for Harry’s parents’ demise just as much as Wormtail was. Speaking of which…

“My price for helping you is to get Sirius free,” Harry decided. If he was going to betray his beliefs – and Harry wasn’t sure it was a betrayal, but it could be – then at least he could get something out of it.

“Very well. My wand, Wormtail?”

Wormtail held out Voldemort’s wand to Tom with a trembling hand. “Master…please…you say you have the boy’s morality…please give me back my hand. Please.”

“No,” Tom said coldly and waved his wand at Wormtail. “Imperio.” Wormtail entered that blank, blissful state Harry had been subjected to earlier this year. “You will go to the Ministry and confess to your role in the betrayal of the Potters and framing Sirius Black. You will tell them you are a rat Animagus. You will never mention to anyone my return.” He looked at Harry. “Would you like him to die?”

Harry did, kind of, but he had enough of his morals to know crossing that line was something he couldn’t come back from. “Sorry, nope. I’d prefer him in Azkaban.”

Tom looked disappointed but not surprised. “Go.” Wormtail apparated away. “There are some more concerns. First and foremost, the man you know as Alastor Moody is actually one of my most loyal death eaters, Barty Crouch Jr., under Polyjuice. He may try to kill you.”

“I can take him,” Harry said.

“I do so love your confidence,” Tom purred and Harry blushed. “Has anyone told you it looks most attractive?”

“Are you coming on to me?”

Tom’s eyes glittered in delight and amusement. Now that Harry was studying them closely…very closely, they were, in shade, somewhere between Diary Tom and Harry’s own. “Would you like me to?”

“No…” Harry managed to get out, entirely unsure of whether he was telling the truth in general, though in this specific instance, it was just not a good time at all. He’d been through a very traumatic experience, after all, even if the outcome was probably better than he could have possibly hoped for.

“As you wish,” Tom said with a bow of his head, a diabolical smirk on his face. “Do feel obliged to tell me if you change your mind.”

Harry cleared his throat. “So…what now?”

“We return to Hogwarts. Your friend will rest in peace here and I will take his place. Do you wish to be a cowinner alongside him?” Harry shook his head hurriedly. He’d had enough fame, thank you very much! “Good. I promise you, I will not kill anyone except in self-defense. And with your godfather’s freedom, you should have an excellent summer living with him, and we will meet again in September.”

In that moment, Harry decided he would do it. He would give in to temptation and give Tom a chance. But the second he proved himself unworthy of that chance, he would fight against him just as much as he did against Voldemort. He wouldn’t let anything he may or may not have been feeling for the now human Horcrux stand in the way of that. Harry held out his hand and Tom shook it firmly.

Tom walked over to Cedric’s corpse and said a spell Harry didn’t recognize. His features morphed to a perfect replica of Cedric’s, his frame changing to fit his body. “I came up with this spell during those years trapped in your head. I wasn’t entirely sure it would even work.”

They walked over to the cup and Harry hesitated. Was this truly what his parents would have wanted from him? To trust a being with the memories of their murderer, who might very well be seeking to continue his path, a being comprised of the filthiest of Dark Magic? Probably not. But what they also wanted him to be was happy and alive, and neither seemed possible unless he agreed to this deal with the devil.

So the two of them took the cup and the two of them emerged at the edge of the maze to a roaring crowd, jaunty music blaring. “I claim this prize in the name of house Hufflepuff,” Tom said, his voice a complete match for Cedric, and there was a massive roar of approval from the section of the stands festooned with yellow and black.

Tom opened his mouth to say something else, but then Moody – no! Not Moody, the fake Moody, Crouch! – came running in his direction and yelled out the Killing Curse. Tom dove in front of him without hesitating and took the Curse with the faintest of grazes to the arm, which nevertheless should have left him just as dead as if he’d taken it in the heart, but he was left unharmed. Since he wasn’t dead and it had all happened so fast, it seemed everyone around Harry assumed the curse had missed him.

Dumbledore immediately trussed the false Moody in ropes and led him away, fury lining every corner of his face. Ron and Hermione hurried over to them. “Are you okay?” Hermione said.

“Rough luck losing the tournament, mate,” Ron said sympathetically.

“Yes, we’re fine,” Harry said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt. “Uh, but, yeah, Cedric here deserved the win. I wasn’t supposed to be in the tournament anyway.”

Tom put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry blushed. Both of his friends gave him a knowing look. That was going to be a fun conversation. “Harry and I will be seeing a lot more of each other this summer, won’t we, Harry?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Harry said, cursing his body for its lack of control. Tom was a version of his parents’ murderer! Another version of him had almost killed Ginny! He shouldn’t be…be…

Crushing on him. Oh, God. He was completely fucked, wasn’t he?

And yet somehow…Harry didn’t mind as much as he should have.

Chapter Text

Treachery! Harry had been the victim of a vile act of base treachery! And the worst part was that the culprits were none other than the friends he had trusted for years! Ron and Hermione had laid low all this time, worming their way into his trust, all so that they could commit a dire act of betrayal which made Wormtail’s betrayal of his parents seem practically benign in comparison. How long had this been going on? Had they ever been his friends? Were their meetings staged from the get go? Had all the compartments in the Hogwarts Express truly been taken or had Ron been lying through his teeth that whole time?

“All righty!” Hermione said cheerily as she plopped a large stack of books on the desk of the empty classroom they’d lured him into. “It’s time for some sex education!”

“NO!” Harry screamed. “Ron, please! I know deep down, you’re still loyal to me! Let me out of here!”

Ron smirked at him, the bastard. “Sorry, Harry. But this is for your own good.”

“Indeed. In actuality, I should be offering these lessons to everyone in our year. We missed out on the health classes Madam Pomfrey was supposed to be offering in third year. She was too busy treating Dementor exposure.” She sighed. “And, of course, the Board, in its infinite wisdom couldn’t be bothered to have anyone do it this year…”

“Yes,” Harry said, trying desperately to grasp at a straw. “You should absolutely start by teaching other people, Hermione, and then work your way up to me.”

“Nice try,” Hermione said. She waved a thick text which bore the title A Wizard’s Wizard’s Guide to Sexual Health. “We’ll start with the basics of the lubrication charm…”

Harry waved his hands in the air frantically. “Please don’t! Can’t you understand that I couldn’t look either of you in the face again if we do this?”

“Harry, it’s important for you to know these things,” Hermione said compassionately. “Now I understand why you’re so concerned right now. You think we’ll look down on you for being gay.”

Ron looked at her askance. “Uh, I think Harry broods a bit too much to be really all that gay.”

“In the Muggle world, gay has changed from meaning happy to being a word for homosexuals, one of the more polite ones,” Hermione explained. “There are unfortunately many impolite words out there, because most Muggles think being gay is wrong. My parents have always been very supportive of gay people and taught me to be the same, but they’re in the minority, alas.”

Ron looked a little befuddled…well, more than normal, at any rate. In the magical world, there wasn’t a widespread taboo against homosexuality like in the Muggle world. Right now, it was a bit frowned upon, but only because the magical world’s numbers had been depleted during the first Voldemort war and there was pressure to rebuild those numbers. Regardless, same sex marriage was legal and only the extreme blood purist types were homophobic to the level Muggles were. Harry wondered what they’d say if they knew they had that in common with their enemies. He might have to rub it in Malfoy’s face next year to find out.

“Anyway, given your clear crush on Cedric…”

“I do not have a crush on Cedric,” Harry said. Technically it was even true! But only because it was Tom, pretending to be Cedric, he may have been crushing on. Not that he was truly crushing on Tom. Tom was just stunningly attractive and it was a biological reaction, that’s all. “Anyway, Cedric has a girlfriend, so it doesn’t matter…”

“Oh, they broke up,” Ron announced. “I’m not sure what happened, but Cho didn’t seem too angry about it.”

Harry suddenly felt a surge of guilt. Tom had already destroyed a perfectly nice relationship and that was probably just the start of the damage he’d do. True, Cho probably would be a lot unhappier if she knew her boyfriend was instead dead, but still, didn’t she have a right to know?

Harry knew it was wrong to keep Tom’s identity to himself. Tom was potentially a danger to everyone around him. He was part of a Dark Lord’s soul…but then again, you could have said the same thing about Harry. Harry’s gut told him that Tom wasn’t evil like Voldemort, that all he really wanted was to live and be free. The same things Harry wanted. But what if he was wrong? What if this was all a cunning ruse? What right did Harry have to keep it a secret? Shouldn’t he tell someone? Sirius? Dumbledore? His friends?

“Look, Cedric…”

“If you’re going to tell us you didn’t have a crush on him, you can save your breath, mate,” Ron advised. “You were constantly staring at him.” No, he had been staring at Cho…hadn’t he? But how often did he really stare at her when Cedric wasn’t around?

The right thing to do was to tell them. They’d understand. But if he kept it from them, they’d hate him more the longer it was a secret. But Harry just couldn’t do it. Harry knew what it was like to be a prisoner. But his prison had been the cupboard under the stairs and he could at least do things. Tom had been stuck inside Harry’s head, unable to influence his environment in any way. To someone who wanted complete control like Tom, it must have been pure hell. But he’d endured and come out the other side stronger…just like Harry.

“Cedric’s going to be next year’s Defense professor,” Harry decided to say instead. “I mean, he’s going to apply, and considering how few applicants there are, I think he’s a shoe-in. So you see, even if I liked Cedric – which I don’t – it doesn’t matter cause he’ll be my teacher.”

Hermione and Ron shared a look which Harry couldn’t decipher. “Well, either way, this is useful information to know, even if you’re not going to be using it anytime soon,” Hermione eventually said. “All right, we begin with the pituitary gland. It may be little, but this guy’s got big plans!”

The door opened and Headmaster Dumbledore walked in. Harry had never been more grateful to see the headmaster before in his entire life. “Am I interrupting?” he asked, his eyes twinkling madly with amusement, clearly divining what was happening in an instant.

“YES! Yes, you most definitely are, and thank you so much.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to be borrowing Mr. Potter here for a few minutes.” Harry nodded his head eagerly. At this point, he’d be glad to have Snape show up. “I do appreciate how…industrious you’ve been in attempting to educate Mr. Potter, but I believe Mr. Black would perhaps be a more suitable choice of teacher.”

Hermione sighed. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Of course! But as Harry’s godfather, this is his responsibility.”

“Right, yes, of course!” Harry said hastily. “Headmaster Dumbledore is quite right, Hermione – haven’t you always said we should respect our professors? Sirius can handle this. Must be heading out – great talk!”

He practically ran out of the room. Dumbledore did an admirable job of keeping up with him, at least for someone so old. “Your friends mean well,” he said, his voice tinged with mirth. “I presume they were spurred on by your infatuation with Mr. Diggory?”

“I…how did you know…”

Dumbledore looked around the hallway, as if trying to see if anyone was around to hear him talk about a most grave secret. “Mr. Potter…I have eyes.”

“Oh.”

“Harry, it’s not anything to be ashamed of. I, like you, prefer the company of men.” Harry couldn’t help but be surprised. He’d never heard about that. “I’m not surprised you didn’t know. My most recent relationship, quite some years ago, ended…quite spectacularly badly. Since then, I’ve eschewed romantic attachments.”

This felt almost as awkward as discussing the matter with Ron and Hermione. Almost. “What would you do if you had a crush on someone you shouldn’t, sir?”

“If past experiences were any indicators, the answer would be plunge headfirst into the relationship then regret it for decades to come after it blows up in my face and in the faces of so, so many others.” He sighed. “I assume you refer to young Mr. Diggory. Or as he will soon be, pending approval by the Board, which should be a mere formality, Professor Diggory.”

He really should tell Dumbledore right now, he told himself. He couldn’t let Tom run rampant around the school. Again. What if he hurt someone?

But Harry…well, Harry had been yearning for someone who could truly understand him all these years. Ron and Hermione were great – absolutely no question at all. But at the end of the day, their happy, carefree childhoods meant they couldn’t truly comprehend what it was like to experience those years of misery at the Dursleys. But Tom could. He had all of Harry’s memories – all of them. Every thought Harry had ever had. There was nothing about Harry Tom didn’t know. The thought of having someone who understood him that much was very enticing.

“I would be remiss were I not to firmly point out that Cedric could lose his job and reputation if he were to start a relationship with you as a teacher.” He sighed. “That said, I do not feel I could judge either of you too harshly if it occurred, given what you have endured together. On a personal level, naturally. Professionally speaking, if it happened – if I became aware of it happening – I would be obliged to terminate his employ.”

If Harry was hearing what he thought he was hearing – and it was so vague he might have been wrong – then it almost sounded like Dumbledore was tacitly giving his approval. How bizarre.

“Alas, the topic of our conversation is far more concerning than mere romantic escapades,” Dumbledore said with a heavy sigh as they finally reached the stairs to his office, the gargoyle sliding by to let them in. “After you.”

Harry sat down in the chair across from Dumbledore. It must have been a very heavy conversation they were in for. The old man hadn’t even offered him any lemon drops! Did Dumbledore already know? No, he couldn’t! He was acting like he didn’t know! Was he just lulling Harry into a false sense of security? Just how much trouble was Harry in?

“As I am sure you have heard by now,” Dumbledore began, “the man who attacked you at the conclusion of the tournament was not, in fact, Alastor Moody, but an imposter under Polyjuice. Barty Crouch Jr., son of the deceased tournament judge, was impersonating him all year.”

“How did you not notice that?” Harry couldn’t help but ask.

Dumbledore shrugged. “He was a very good actor. I take responsibility for failing to notice him. But my failings are not the topic of conversation right now. Minister Fudge arrived here last night and brought a Dementor with him. Since Crouch was declared dead and was an Azkaban escapee to boot, the minister decided he had the right to summarily administer a Dementor’s Kiss.”

“Did he?”

“The Wizengamot will have to make that determination.” Left unsaid but quite clear was the implication they probably would decide Fudge had the right. Harry hated politics. Vernon may have been wrong about 99.999% of things, but the one thing he had gotten right was that all politicians were scum. “But we are not here to discuss politics. We are here to discuss the events of last night. And how I do not believe you are being truthful about what transpired.”

Oh, God. Dumbledore must have figured it out! Was this talk about Dementor’s Kisses a subtle threat? No! No, it couldn’t have been! Dumbledore wasn’t that cruel. He would never so much as even allude to threatening such a fate on Harry. He had to keep his cool. Whatever Dumbledore had figured out, there was no proof. Everything would be fine as long as Harry stayed calm.

“What – what are you talking about?” he stammered. Oh, well done there. Maybe when he’d lost the Horcrux, Tom had taken his ability to lie convincingly with it.

“Harry. Your scar did not just randomly disappear. Peter Pettigrew did not just randomly confess to his crimes. Crouch confessed to making the cup a Portkey.” Dumbledore slammed his fist on the table, startling Harry. He’d never seen the headmaster so angry. “Please do not do me the disservice of acting like I am a bloody moron!”

Harry took a few deep breaths. He wished Sirius was with him. Hell, he would have been happy to have his friends with him too. But they weren’t there and he was alone. Well, he’d been alone most of his life. He would just have to improvise.

“You’re right,” Harry began. “I didn’t tell anyone yesterday because I was scared of how the Minister would react. He arrested Hagrid for no good reason in my second year, after all. The cup…was a Portkey. It took us to a graveyard. The graveyard where Tom Riddle’s father was buried.”

Now he would have to start lying. “Wormtail was there. He tied us both up. He tried to do a ritual to bring back Voldemort. Since the ritual required blood taken unwillingly from me, I gave my blood up willingly. It must have worked, because the ritual failed. Whatever happened must have made my scar disappear too. Cedric got free, he stunned Wormtail, freed me, and we both took the Portkey back. That’s it.”

Dumbledore gave a heavy, ponderous sigh. “You are still lying. I know the truth, Harry. I have known it since yesterday. I was hoping you would do me the courtesy of telling the truth. Though I can understand why, in a way.”

“I can explain!” Harry said frantically.

“I know you put Pettigrew under the Imperius Curse.”

“What?”

But it did make a certain amount of sense from Dumbledore’s perspective. As far as he knew, he and Pettigrew and Cedric were the only people in the graveyard. A man like Dumbledore was probably smart enough to tell when someone was under the Imperius Curse (though he certainly hadn’t been smart enough to tell when someone was under Polyjuice). Wormtail certainly hadn’t Imperiused himself, and Cedric had no motive, so that just left Harry.

“I’m not saying anything more without a solicitor present,” Harry announced, very cognizant of the fact casting an Unforgivable Curse carried a lifetime sentence in Azkaban.

“I’m not going to turn you in, Harry,” Dumbledore said, looking older and wearier than he’d seen him in quite some time. “If you at least admit to your crime.”

Harry made a split second decision. Dumbledore would never understand why Harry would willingly help Tom. He had dedicated his life to destroying Voldemort. And frankly, Harry was having difficulty understanding it himself. But he might have understood why Harry had supposedly resorted to dark magic to free Sirius. “I was desperate. I thought I’d never get another chance to get Sirius free…I can’t go back to the Dursleys again, sir, I just can’t!”

Dumbledore looked deeply disturbed. “They are that bad?”

“They locked me in a cupboard and they kept me prisoner in the summer after my second year and Aunt Petunia swung a frying pan at my head and they never, ever loved me,” Harry said, the words coming out so quickly he could barely understand them. But Dumbledore seemed to understand every word. He seemed to age visibly in front of Harry’s eyes.

“I owe you a most profound apology, Harry,” Dumbledore said humbly. “It was I who placed you with them. I believed they would treat you well, or at least acceptably. I misjudged them.”

“Bloody right you did!” Harry shouted. “But I suppose I have to go back there anyway.”

Dumbledore blinked. “Of course you do not. Sirius will be adopting you, will he not?”

“Yeah, but…aren’t there supposed to be protections around the house?”

“It is my belief that the sabotaged ritual permanently destroyed Voldemort and all…remnants of him. There were blood protections, but they only protected you from Voldemort. They are thus a moot point now.”

Despite the dire circumstances, Harry couldn’t help but grin. He was free! He didn’t have to go back to the Dursleys ever again!

Dumbledore leaned forward. “If we may return to the subject of your usage of dark magic?” Harry’s grin vanished. “I understand why you did it. But magic such as the Unforgivable Curses is labeled Dark for a reason. To use them, you must demonstrate a disregard for your targets as people. Continued usage of them will erode your morality.”

“I won’t use them again,” Harry promised, an easy one to make since he’d never used them in the first place.

“It is an easy promise to make, Harry, but not as easy a one to keep. The Dark Arts can be…very enticing. Even I was not immune to their lure once upon a time…and someone I loved paid the ultimate price. If I have reason to believe you have used them again…I will have to intervene. Do you understand me?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, sir. I know it was wrong and I won’t do it again.”

“Very good. Now chin up! Your school year is almost complete and I daresay next one will be much easier now that the danger to you has passed. Summer nears and I believe Mr. Black will be most eager to make up for all those years missed. Beware, Harry, for I believe much spoiling lies in your future!”

Harry couldn’t help but grin a little at the prospect. But then his grim turned into a frown. He knew Tom would be out there, trying to tempt him, try to turn him to his point of view. Harry didn’t know if he’d be able to avoid succumbing to those temptations. Or if he’d even want to. Only time would tell, he supposed.

Chapter Text

Everything is fine, Harry thought to himself, just as he’d done innumerable times since that fateful night when Tom was embodied.

And it wasn’t just wishful thinking either, not entirely. So far, to the best of his knowledge, Tom wasn’t doing anything particularly evil. There were no mysterious murders like last year. No one had tried to kill Harry at all in the last week, which was definitely a welcome change of pace. He’d been excused from exams because he was a Triwizard Champion, so he hadn’t even had to do any last minute studying. Honestly, if Cedric hadn’t been dead, this honestly would have been the best end of his year yet. He hadn’t had to kill anyone or have his hopes to be removed from the Dursleys taken away at the last minute, so it was already better than the last three years.

Of course, that didn’t mean it had been entirely easy for him. Tom, effortlessly slipping into the role of Cedric as if he was born for it, made a point of spending as much time with Harry as possible. Which did not help Harry beat the crushing allegations. Tom was quite affectionate. Well, affectionate by the standards of a being partially comprised of the essence of a Dark Lord anyway. He always seemed to be finding some excuse to hold Harry’s hand or have his hands on him in some way. Nothing indecent, to be sure. And no single incident couldn’t be explained away with typical Hufflepuff touchy-feeliness. But taken together, they established a pattern even someone as stupid as Goyle could have realized.

And Harry liked it. He liked getting so much attention and affection from Tom. He felt like he was going nuts, being the only one who knew his secret. He needed to tell someone! But if he told someone, chances were very good they either wouldn’t believe him or if they did believe him, they would go after Tom. And Tom didn’t deserve that. He wasn’t Voldemort. Harry believed this very firmly. It wasn’t his crush talking. If Tom was Voldemort, if he was as much of a monster as the Dark Lord, he would have killed Harry. There was no good reason to leave him alive…other than Tom liking him.

Tom had all of Harry’s memories. Every. Last. One. Every dark thought he’d ever thought, every feeling of resentment he’d ever had towards the Dursleys. And every dream of an embarrassing nature. Even that dream he’d had of the Diary Tom Riddle, the one which Harry had thought made him a monster for even considering in his subconscious for quite some time. And he was there through every second of Harry’s life. Each moment in the cupboard, Tom was there. He understood Harry like no one else could.

And Tom had no compunctions about using those memories to his advantage. Just yesterday, he’d presented Harry with a bike he had seen in a shop window once when he was eight, a bike he’d told no one he’d ever coveted, which he’d almost forgotten coveting in the first place. How was Harry supposed to manage to resist such thoughtfulness? How could he even want to?

“Hey, watch it!” a voice called out. “Oh, it’s you, Harry. Be more careful next time, okay?”

Harry managed to recover his bearings in time to realize he was so consumed with his inner thoughts that he’d completely failed to notice Ginny heading his way until they’d collided with each other. “Sorry.”

Ginny gave him a wicked, teasing grin. “Oh, don’t worry. I get it. Too busy thinking about a certain Hufflepuff, right? Believe me, you’re not the first. Anyone who likes guys at all goes through a crushing on Cedric stage. Me included.” She sighed. “I guess it looks like us girls were out of luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh! Right, you’re too oblivious to pay attention to gossip.” Harry glared at her, but did not deny the statement. “Well, Lavender told me – who heard it from Parvati who heard it from Padma who heard it from Cho – that Cedric dumped Cho because he realized he liked guys. Lucky news for you, eh?”

Guilt crashed into Harry with such force he almost felt it as a physical blow. The Tom of the diary had possessed her, tormented her, gaslit her, violated her. And Harry was crushing on and helping a variant of him! It wasn’t right for him to keep this from her. She deserved to know.

So he dragged her into the nearest empty classroom. She just looked bewildered. “I have a confession to make. That’s not Cedric.”

Harry explained everything that had happened to him on the day of the Third Task. Her face was unfathomable, though Harry conceded he wasn’t good at reading people’s expressions on a good day. He even confessed that he had a now unfortunately undeniable crush on Tom. “I know I screwed up, but I really think he’s good, not like the Tom from the diary. It sounds stupid, but…but I don’t want him to get hurt. But I don’t want you to get hurt either.”

“I sometimes wonder if things would have been different if Tom hadn’t been stuck in that diary for fifty years,” Ginny said, sounding distant. “If he’d been conscious all those years, and it does sound like that’s what a Horcrux experiences, then it must have been pure hell for him to be deprived of company, of flesh, of freedom…how much did that twist him? It sounds like you got an opportunity to find out.”

Harry blinked. He had expecting her to start raging and screaming at him, certainly to round out a posse and go Horcrux hunting. “But Tom was trapped in my head…”

“Exactly. He was trapped in your head. You changed him. And he at least got to experience life through your eyes, not like the diary.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s foolish of me, but I still think there was some good deep down in the Tom from the diary.”

“Voldemort is pure evil.”

“Oh, certainly,” Ginny said quickly. “I’m not disputing that at all. He’s a genocidal mass murderer and anyone who serves him voluntarily is just as evil. But…I don’t believe anyone is born evil. He made choices and he could have made different ones. He probably lost his grip on reality the more Horcruxes he made too – there had to be more than one if his soul was so unstable he accidentally left a piece behind, right?”

Harry could see what she was saying. It was still an incredible risk. If he was wrong, if this was all some sort of long term con, then Harry could be responsible for unleashing a terrible evil on the world. Nothing, not even satisfying his burning need to be loved and understood, was worth that. But Harry had gone with his gut through most of his life and it had rarely led him astray. He wasn’t a freak. The Philosopher’s Stone had been in danger of being stolen. Ginny had to be rescued, regardless of the risk. Time and time again, he’d trusted his instincts and it had served everyone well.

“You don’t think it’s wrong for him to pretend to be Cedric?”

“I mean, it would obviously be wrong if he was keeping him locked up like Moody was, but Cedric’s dead, Harry. You really want to be the one to tell his parents that?”

Ginny reached out and squeezed his hand. Harry was struck with a wave of appreciation for him. He knew she’d once crushed on him, maybe still did a little. It was a huge sacrifice she was making here, a gigantic leap of faith, to let someone else have a turn at all, much less a variant of the person who’d possessed him. And if she was willing to extend that trust, when she had, perhaps, the most reason not to of anyone ever, then Harry felt he should follow her lead. “Everything is going to be fine. And, hey, you’re lucky. I bet he’s one hell of a kisser.”

Harry blushed incandescently. “Ginny!”

She cackled like a stereotypical witch from an old Hollywood movie. “Hey, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” She cracked her knuckles. “But if Tom wants to hurt you, he’ll have to get through me. I will bludgeon him to death if he so much as makes you cry.”

“Thank you. I think.”

Harry felt a lot better after that conversation. Ginny had, in a sense, absolved him of any guilt he was feeling. He would give Tom the benefit of the doubt, he decided. But he wouldn’t let Tom roll over him either. As soon as he even so much as suspected Tom of hurting people or using dark magic, he’d tell Dumbledore. The archmage headmaster would sort Tom out very quickly. He’d defeated Grindelwald, after all, and held off Voldemort’s victory long enough for Mum to defeat him the first time. A teenage version of Voldemort should be child’s play, pun unintended.

He decided he wouldn’t tell Ron or Hermione, not just yet. They wouldn’t understand. Ron still had a very black and white view of the world, not having suffered either the discrimination Hermione had or the losses Harry had. And Hermione’s viewpoint of the world was based off of logic and logic very much dictated he was being unfathomably dumb in trusting Tom. He’d wait a few months to make sure Tom was on the up and up. He wouldn’t be able to persuade either one of them unless he could say it had been quite some time and Tom hadn’t done anything evil in that time.

The last day at Hogwarts arrived and for the first time in his life, Harry awaited his summer with a feeling of elation rather than trepidation. He didn’t have to go to the Dursleys! He got to live with Sirius, just as it should always have been, just as his parents had wanted. More than a decade of torment in that horrid house had come to a close. If there was no other reason to be grateful for Tom’s embodiment, that would certainly be enough for Harry.

He was a bit confused, though, when Sirius brought him to a fancy but certainly extremely Muggle apartment building instead of them going to live somewhere more…magical. “Didn’t you say we were going to live in your family home?” Harry wondered as he stepped into the lobby of a building so luxurious the Dursleys would have literally killed someone, probably him, to live in. Harry, still dressed in Dudley’s hand-me-downs, felt quite out of place. Sirius, by contrast, was dressed to the nines and blended in perfectly.

“I said we’d live there eventually,” Sirius corrected him. “There was a big explosion there last week. Right around the time Cedric won the tournament, actually. The place is totaled. Cheaper to tear it down entirely and rebuild from scratch. It’s only thanks to our wards that it didn’t level the entire block. Killed our house-elf too. Poor sod. Kreacher was an ornery bastard, but he didn’t get a quick end.” He sighed.

A place like the Black family mansion was probably pulsating with dark magic. Harry vaguely recalled mention of Sirius’s late brother having been a Death Eater. It was probably the perfect place to hide a Horcrux. Maybe Dumbledore had been right about the ritual destroying all other parts of Voldemort. Harry hoped so. Tom was going to be hard enough to handle without Voldemort still running around.

“I got a very generous compensation from the Ministry and I decided to spend it on a nice place for us,” Sirius went on. “I know you probably want to stay in a magical area, but a lot of people still think I’m a mass murderer, no matter what the Ministry now says, so it’s safer for me to live in Muggle London.”

“But I can still see my friends?”

“Oh, no worries there,” Sirius said with a smile. “You can go to Diagon as much as you like, see your friends, do all sorts of crazy teenager things, no doubt!”

The receptionist looked like she would have rather had her fingernails torn out than let someone as disreputable looking as Harry into her building. But Sirius’s money talked very loudly and a mild Confundus charm talked even louder and eventually the two of them managed to get past her with minimal fuss. Maybe Harry should have objected louder to Sirius using his magic on a hapless Muggle, but all they’d made her do was the job she should have been doing anyway, so he wasn’t bothered. People like her had been looking down on him all his life. It was a little satisfying to turn the tables.

The apartment was luxurious in the extreme. Fully furnished, three bedrooms, including a guest bedroom, and Harry would be living in one of them, of course. No more cupboard under the stairs for him. Floor to ceiling windows with amazing views of the Thames, a kitchen which would have made Petunia strangle someone just to have the chance to be seen cooking in (of course she would have made harry do the actual cooking) and the biggest television Harry had ever seen in his life. Complete with an impressive VCR tape collection in a wicker box next to the TV.

“Now this is the life,” Sirius said, plopping himself down on a palatially large leather couch and propping his feet on the table. The designers of the place would probably have an aneurism if they saw how cavalierly he was acting. He looked down at an envelope on the table and frowned. “How did this get here?”

Harry gulped and saw an envelope bearing an elaborate seal. With neat, almost absurdly formal script, it denoted that it was from Heir Apparent Cedric Diggory, to Lord Sirius Archibald Black. Harry had no earthly idea why Tom would have been writing Sirius. All he knew was that he was in for an embarrassing conversation and that was the best case scenario. Harry didn’t even want to think about the worst case scenario.

“Uh, I didn’t know you were a lord,” Harry said in a frantic effort to distract Sirius. “And what’s up with that Heir Apparent stuff?”

“Nice try, Harry,” Sirius said with a guffaw. He took another look at Harry and clearly saw Harry had genuinely no clue what was going on. “All right, I’ll explain everything, but the fact still remains that you’re not about to distract me from reading this letter from your ‘friend.’” He made air-quotes around the word friend; Sirius had visited Harry at school a few days and seen him interact with Tom. The chemistry between the two of them had not gone unnoticed.

Sirius read through the letter with a huge evil grin on his face, which seemed to get more diabolical with every word he read. He put it down on the table. “Cedric wants to get my permission to formally court you.”

Harry’s face must have been blood red from how much he felt he was blushing. “I…uh…really?”

“Yeah, he was really flowery about it,” Sirius mused. “He really must have reached deep into the history books to write this thing…I think some of these phrases went out of fashion fifty years ago.”

Harry gave a horribly nervous laugh. “You don’t say!”

Sirius gave him a…well, as much as he wanted to avoid the term, he couldn’t. He gave him a serious expression. “You like him?”

“Yes,” Harry admitted. “I do. Very much. But…he’s…” He knew this was the right time to tell Sirius. But he just couldn’t. What if Sirius turned against him, thought of him as no better than a Death Eater? He’d just started a new life with his godfather. He couldn’t risk it coming to an end as quickly as it started. “He’s my teacher,” he finished instead. “Well, he will be next year.”

“He’s taken that possibility into account,” Sirius said, actually sounding mildly impressed. “He’s gotten Dumbledore to agree to grade your work instead to make sure there’s no bias. It’s, uh, not something I’d consider in any other circumstance. But I can tell how much he cares about you. You deserve the best and right now, it’s starting to look like Cedric might be it.”

“Oh…wow…”

Sirius gave him a warm smile. “I know this is all very overwhelming. But the advantage of a formal courting agreement like this is that it allows you to take things very slowly. And using the old traditions means there won’t be any perception of impropriety…well, people won’t be able to publicly state it anyway.”

Harry nodded. He somehow felt like he was trapped on a train which was moving very fast down the tracks. It was going in the direction he wanted, but he had no clue if it would derail before it got there. “Do I have to make a decision right now?”

“Absolutely not, Harry. You sleep on it. Take as much time as you need.” He tossed the letter down on the table. “Now how much has anyone told you about being a lord?”

“Absolutely nothing. I didn’t even know we had lords in the magical world. Except Lord Voldemort, I guess.”

Sirius’s bearing changed. He looked more formal, more teacher-like. Granted, he still had a long way to go before he could be anywhere near as stern as McGonagall or even Snape in his own git-like way, but it was still much different than his usual attitude. “Dumbledore should have told you, but I’m not surprised he didn’t.”

“Because he’s got some Machiavellian plan in mind, right?”

*****

In the headmaster’s office of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore threw back his head and laughed in a manner far more malevolent than anyone who knew him would have suspected he was even capable of. “Now that Voldemort is vanquished, my old friend, and I’ve hired a competent and definitely not evil Defense teacher, we can move on something far, far more important: CORNERING THE WORLD MARKET ON LEMON DROPS!”

Fawkes rolled his eyes. His friend was such a drama queen.

*****

“What? No! It’s just he was really busy in your first year, so it probably just slipped his mind and then he just forgot he didn’t tell you. He’s incredibly old, you know.”

“Busy with what?”

“The Soviet Union was in the process of collapsing,” Sirius explained. “As Chief Mugwump, he was extremely involved in making sure the Statute of Secrecy remained intact in the chaos and making sure no dark wizards would try to take advantage of the power vacuum. I wouldn’t be surprised if more things fell by the wayside that year.”

Like, for example, his heavy-duty obstacle course turning out to be so easy that a couple of first years could get through it, Harry thought, but said nothing.

“Anyway, back to the explanation. The Wizengamot is the legislative chamber of the Ministry for Magic – which is technically subordinate to the Muggle government, but only on paper. But that’s not important. What’s important is that it’s comprised of a mixture of lords and commoners. For the last hundred years, the lords have wielded less and less power, but they – we – still hold more power than the Muggle equivalents. But if current trends stay, you’ll probably live to see them defanged entirely or maybe even flat out abolished.”

“So both of us are lords?”

“Yes and no,” Sirius said, as if this cleared anything up. “Because I was in Azkaban and you’re a child, we’ve both had regents serving our supposed interests. Your regent’s Emmeline Vance – lovely lady, good friend of your parents, very responsible. No worries there. But my regent was my cousin Narcissa.” He scowled. Narcissa…where had he heard that name before? Oh. Right. Draco’s mum. Well, that wasn’t good. “There’s a lot of damage control I’m going to have to do.”

Harry nodded slowly. “So I’m going to take my seat…because I was emancipated?”

Sirius looked at him with great concerned. “Why would you say that?”

“Well, I was made to participate in a tournament with only of age students, so the Ministry must have declared me an emancipated adult, right?” He was very proud of this logic. He was sure Sirius would be too.

“There are so many things wrong with that, I don’t even know where to start…” Or maybe not. “No, Emmeline will still be your regent. I mean, unless you want someone else. And no, it can’t be me because I’m Lord Black and it can’t be Cedric because you can’t do that when you’re officially this early in the courting process. But Emmeline’s awesome – you shouldn’t need to dump her.”

Harry would have to meet with her first, but if Sirius trusted her then he didn’t think there would be any problem. “I guess we’re going to the Wizengamot soon, then.”

“That’s right, as much as I hate to admit it. You’ll never find a…a…”

“More wretched hive of scum and villainy?”

Sirius looked impressed. “That’s a great way to put it. Where’d you get that from?”

“You’ve never heard that quote before?” Sirius shook his head. Harry grinned and removed a copy of a VHS of A New Hope from the box. “Well, then I know how we’re spending our next two hours.”