[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Living Well, Harry/Tom, R, 5/8

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Five

Harry glances around and nods slowly. He vetoed going back to Riddle’s office at the Ministry, although he thinks Riddle suspected he would from the close way he watches Harry. So Riddle’s house it is.

Riddle’s mansion, that is. Harry wouldn’t mind having a place of his own, but what in the world does one person need all these rooms for? From the way that Riddle’s cloak disappeared when he held it out, he does have at least one house-elf, but otherwise, there are sprawling, silent drawing rooms, a whole room that seems to just be for keeping Floo powder, a ballroom that must be uninhabited most of the time, mountains of bedrooms…

It feels wasteful to Harry, and he hopes that if he does allow Riddle to buy him a house, Riddle won’t suggest looking for places like this.

“We are under the strongest wards I can manage,” Riddle says, flicking his wand around the blue sitting room he’s chosen without taking his eyes off Harry. He always seems to fear that Harry will vanish or something. Harry can see echoes of the way Voldemort looked at him, but he’s no longer invested in looking for parallels.

Although, who knows? After he hears that I killed his alternate self in another universe, maybe he’ll want me dead, too.

Harry finds himself hoping it won’t be so. The thought of having one person he can talk to about being from a different universe, his loneliness, the way his old Ministry turned on him, is…

It would be everything. If he can trust it.

“All right, I accept that the wards are strong,” Harry adds, when he sees Riddle still staring at him. “Now for your Vow.”

Riddle immediately holds out his hand. Harry does the same, taking the chestnut wand from his holster in case he’ll need it. It stirs sullenly and spits a few red sparks he didn’t tell it to spit. It really doesn’t like him.

You could change that.

Harry ignores the thought, the effort effortless by now, and stares at Riddle. “I want you to swear that you’ll never tell any secret I communicate to you in this conversation by any means, speaking or writing, or looking at someone and trying to put it in their mind with Legilimency, or—anything else you can think of.” Honestly, letting Riddle word the Vow is probably better than Harry doing it, since he could probably think of all sorts of weird contingencies that would never occur to Harry.

Riddle immediately and smoothly lifts his wand to the height of his temple, then sweeps it down in a broad gesture. Their joined hands glow. “I swear never to communicate any secret Harry tells me to any other being, living or dead, human or house-elf or other species, by means of writing, speaking, Legilimency, Occlumency, hinting, dancing around the subject, indirect speech, comparison, contrast, offering clues, referring to Harry by any last name or other name he might reveal, asking questions in front of others, trying to embarrass him…”

On it goes. It must be the longest Unbreakable Vow in the history of Unbreakable Vows. Harry stares at him in a daze until Riddle finally finishes, not even sounding out of breath, the bastard. He lowers his wand and smiles at Harry, that deep thing he does where the smile seems to pierce directly into the center of his eyes and the center of Harry’s brain.

“You—you didn’t need to do that,” Harry says weakly. “You could get killed all kinds of ways, with what you just swore.”

“No.” Riddle gives him a bright smile. “My magic will warn me, the closer I come to breaking the Vow.”

Harry continues staring at him, only taking his hand away when Riddle squeezes it once. “And—I just asked you to swear that you wouldn’t tell any secret I revealed to you in this conversation. Not any secret ever.”

“My darling,” Riddles hisses in Parseltongue, his eyes brightening to the point where it’s like being stared at by the sun. “I want you to feel that you can trust me. With whatever comes to mind, whatever you want to say. Whether it is now or in two weeks or a hundred years from now.”

Harry shivers a little. Riddle is still a force of nature who has instincts and priorities Harry doesn’t understand (like proposing marriage to someone he’s just met), but he is bound now, by his own choice.

Harry might be able to trust him.

“All right.” Harry licks his lips. “I don’t know if it’s in the bowels of the Ministry here or not, but in the Ministry in the world where I came from—the Department of Mysteries—there’s a veil that sounds like it has the voices of dead people whispering in it. That’s what they pushed me through. And that’s how I wound up here. I know things like the name Voldemort because I knew them in that world.”

It feels so good to say it. But Harry keeps his eyes on Riddle, for any sign that this is overwhelming him or—

Or, well. He might lose his fascination with Harry once he figures out the biggest source of his secrets. And then he would let Harry go, while still being bound by the Vow from telling anyone Harry’s secrets.

Best of both worlds, that, Harry thinks, and then snorts at the irony.

*

Tom feels as if someone has lit a star inside him.

Another world. He comes from another world.

And then another thought, hard on the heels of that one: I could so easily never have met him. It was pure chance that I did.

Tom shivers at the realization, and does his best to keep his eyes focused on Harry and his expression quiet and open and receptive. “I am unaware if there is a similar veil in our Department of Mysteries,” he admits. “I trust that you did not find yourself there.”

“No. In a random alley, with no wand—I mean, I had no wand when they threw me through the Veil, of course—and no money.” Harry lifts his chin. “I had to start all over. And I was doing all right until you interfered.”

You were half-starved. You were not all right. But Tom holds back the impulse to say it. The argument they could have about that doesn’t matter—not right now. “Will you tell me why they threw you through the Veil?”

Harry’s teeth flash. “You sound as if you think I was guilty.”

“I presume they had a reason. That doesn’t mean it was rational.”

“Yeah, all right.” Harry gnaws his lip for a second. “I do have to give you the whole story for that, because otherwise it won’t make any sense that they thought I was a Dark Lord lying about my power.”

Tom stares at him and once again feels as though someone has scrubbed the inside of his skull with sandpaper. “You? A Dark Lord?”

Harry rolls his eyes, but doesn’t get drawn into what Tom thinks he must deem an unproductive debate. “My full name is Harry Potter.” Tom mouths it to himself, finding it fitting. “When I was born, or just before I was born, there was a prophecy made that said a child born at the time I was had the power to defeat a Dark Lord.”

Harry looks straight at Tom. “The Dark Lord’s name was Voldemort.”

Tom could do without the constant sensation of having the world reel under him, but he suspects that he’ll need to get used to it if he spends time with Harry. He breathes out, hard. “You—you killed an alternate version of myself.”

“Yes.”

Harry is watching him with such care that it takes Tom a moment to realize he’s holding his breath, too. Tom quickly shakes his head and reaches out to glance a hand down Harry’s elbow, just possible at the distance apart they’re sitting. “I won’t hate you for that, darling. I could never hate you for that.”

Harry eyes him and says, “You haven’t heard the full story yet. You haven’t heard what happened. You could still hate me.”

He sounds a little hopeful. Tom gives him a faint, mean smile. “Still hoping to drive me away, Harry? What I know is that you survived him. And that is what matters to me. You matter more to me than any alternate version of myself ever could. If he was competition for you, of course—”

Harry yelps and draws away, shaking his head frantically. “Of course not!”

“Then I have nothing to worry about.” Tom gives him a winsome smile that Harry doesn’t seem to find reassuring, if the way he’s grimacing is anything to go by. “But I would appreciate hearing the rest of the story.”

Harry nods, hesitantly, and seems to be thinking. Tom waits, contenting himself with watching the rise and fall of Harry’s chest, the way his cheeks are flushed instead of pale, how vivid and alive his eyes are.

He could have died at any time. At Voldemort’s hands. When they threw him through the Veil, or if someone thought he was a Dark Lord and was hunting him down. But he survived, and he is here, and he is mine.

All the chances against it. I will not set myself against it, no matter what he tells me.

*

Riddle’s attention is patient and endless. Harry swears, apparently not enough beneath his breath to avoid Riddle’s hearing. It makes his lips quirk up, but still he says nothing, waiting as if he thinks Harry needs more time to gather his thoughts.

Harry breathes out. “Voldemort came after me and my parents when I was fifteen months old. A combination of circumstances that I think I still don’t really understand saved my life. My father died, and my mother gave her life for mine. And when Voldemort attacked me with the Killing Curse, it rebounded and—well, not killed him, not really. He’d made Horcruxes, and he couldn’t die. But his soul was so unstable that the spell made him into a wraith, and part of his soul broke off and stuck into mine.” Harry gestures towards his forehead, and then reminds himself that that’s stupid as Riddle’s eyes follow his hand. Riddle hasn’t given any sign that he’s noticed the scar until now. And shouldn’t Harry not want attention like that from him?

“I see,” Riddle breathes, although Harry has no idea what he’s really saying. “Horcruxes were something I considered. I am glad that I never pursued that path.”

“What did you do instead?” Harry asks, because he can’t see any version of Tom Riddle giving up on attaining immortality. Not really.

Riddle looks briefly startled, and then smiles a little. “Sometimes I forget that you’re not from this world, my dear. Everyone knows it already who was born here. I managed to obtain an apprenticeship with Nicholas Flamel, and he taught me how to make my own Philosopher’s Stone.”

Harry sags back against the chair he’s sitting on.

“Harry?”

Riddle’s voice is sharp, and Harry blinks and shakes his head and sits up, reminding himself that Riddle seems to care for him, for—some reason—and will take it badly if Harry seems weak or injured. “Until now,” he admits, “I didn’t know for sure that you didn’t have Horcruxes. It’s a relief to know that you don’t.”

Riddle nods, eyes still like the eyes of a waiting predator. “And he made you a living Horcrux?”

“Yeah.” Harry nibbles his lip. “That’s probably the reason our souls connect so well. Sorry if that disappoints you.” And he does mean it, somewhat to his surprise. It would mean the end of Riddle’s obsession, which would be a good thing for Harry, but be a devastating thing for Riddle.

“It does not,” Riddle says. “Because you are here, and it is my soul that you found your connection to, not his. You are not his.” He looks extremely smug as he says that.

“Is there anything about me that would put you off? I mean, I know that knowing I killed your alternate dimension’s counterpart doesn’t, but—”

“It would take much.” Riddle speaks softly, leaning forwards as if he thinks that Harry might simply Apparate before his eyes, despite the heavy wards on the house. “And so far, nothing you have told me makes you less desirable to me, Harry. Am I right in that Voldemort pursued you relentlessly, trying again and again to kill you, and declaring you a threat to his safety even when you might have wished to simply retreat from the war?”

“Yes,” Harry whispers. Then he rallies enough to add, “I suppose you would know all about relentless pursuit.”

*

Tom only smiles. Harry’s reservations towards him make so much sense now, and the more he can differentiate himself from Voldemort, the better. But giving up this “relentless pursuit” is not one of the ways he intends to employ.

Harry is too glorious not to be his.

“Tell me a little more about him,” Tom coaxes. “I know that your parents died in your first confrontation with him, but did no one else raise you? Did you not have adults who could stand between you and the murderous threat Voldemort posed?”

Harry snorts, in a way that freezes Tom’s heart. No, that snort says. No, I had to fend for myself.

It is almost exactly like what a young and bitter Tom Riddle might have whispered to himself at night in a Muggle orphanage as bombs fell all around him.

“My mum and dad died, yeah,” Harry says dully. “And I didn’t have any more magical relatives left. The war had gone on for a long time and killed my dad’s relatives, and my mother was a Muggleborn. So I was left with her Muggle relatives. My aunt and uncle and cousin.”

“You do not like them,” Tom says.

“They didn’t like me!” Harry fires up as if he thinks that Tom is judging him for something. “They called me freak all the time, and my cousin chased me around and beat me up with his friends and kept me from having any friends, and they didn’t tell me about the wizarding world even though they knew! They made me do all the chores, and they didn’t feed me all the time, and they made me sleep in a cupboard—”

The table to Tom’s left disintegrates. It’s a nice oak table, one that he’s had for a long time, and he treasured it. But it was release his magic in that direction or potentially release it straight at Harry in his longing to make what he says not be true, and between Harry and the table, of course his choice would be Harry.

Harry blinks and shuts up, though, which isn’t something Tom wished. He says softly in Parseltongue, “That was me, not you, darling. I’m sorry. But I have never before hated someone so much without meeting them, except your Voldemort.” And as he might have hated past lovers of Harry’s, but that is not something he has to worry about, at least.

Harry finally nods, shortly, choppily. “Anyway. I was so happy when my Hogwarts letter came, and I found out that I was magical and I could go to a school far, far away from Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. But then I found out that I was famous for surviving the Killing Curse. They called me the Boy-Who-Lived all the time. And they expected me to be some miraculous hero who could defeat Voldemort again at the end of my first year.”

“You did,” Tom breathes, utterly certain of it.

Harry tosses him a look of loathing. “If you can call killing the host his spirit was possessing by accident and without even knowing what I was doing, then yes.”

Tom closes his eyes. He knows something of what Voldemort must have been like, to survive as a wraith. He understands, intimately, the creature’s endless fear of death. He imagines what that must have been like for Harry to face, and flinches.

“Riddle? Are you okay?”

Tom opens his eyes and nods slowly. “I am picturing what it must have been like from your point-of-view. I’m sorry you had to endure that, Harry.”

*

Did anyone ever tell me that?

In the chaos of his thoughts and the rush of his blood, Harry honestly can’t remember. Maybe Dumbledore did say that to him, when Harry woke in the hospital wing after Quirrell’s death and Voldemort’s retreat. Maybe Ron or Hermione said it.

But he can’t remember. What matters is that someone here, now, in this world he’s always thought of as alien and hostile and one that he can’t allow anyone to know the real him or his history in, is telling him.

Harry closes his eyes to hold back the tears that are threatening to creep out. God, the last thing he wants to do is look weak and pathetic in front of this man.

“Harry?”

“I’m okay,” Harry whispers back in Parseltongue, and when he opens his eyes again, the tears are gone. “Anyway. That started kind of a pattern. Every year after that, the Defense professors—the man Voldemort was possessing was the Defense professor—tried to kill me. Well, I suppose sixth year doesn’t technically count, but all the others, yeah.”

Riddle draws in a harsh, meaningless breath that Harry supposes is one Parseltongue equivalent of swearing. “What happened in your second year?”

“A Horcrux got into the school and possessed a student.” Harry swallows against the memory of it. It’s not like it’s even his worst memory. That would his mum’s death, or maybe the graveyard and Voldemort’s resurrection, or the march to the Veil. “She was opening the Chamber of Secrets and letting the basilisk out.”

“The basilisk,” Riddle repeats in a flat tone.

“Yeah, didn’t you—” Harry stares at him, suddenly curious. “Oh, wait. You didn’t make Horcruxes. So you never did find the Chamber of Secrets and let the monster out, then? You didn’t know what it was?”

“I did not.” Riddle’s voice is extremely tense and clipped.

By now, Harry does actually trust him enough to think that the tension is for him. He nods. “So. It turned out that the basilisk was Petrifying people. They were all lucky enough to see it through reflections—mirrors, puddles of water, camera lenses, that kind of thing. And of course, people thought it was me.”

“What? Why?”

“The language we’re speaking,” Harry hisses back, and continues in English. “Messages from the Heir of Slytherin were being left on the walls. I accidentally revealed that I was a Parselmouth during a duel, and a bunch of students decided I was evil and to be shunned.”

Riddle closes his eyes for a long moment.

“Then a message appeared that said Ginny—my best friend’s little sister—had been taken down into the Chamber, and her skeleton would lie there forever.” Harry swallows, because yeah, it is harder to talk about than he thought. “I followed her down there, with my friend, but a rockslide happened and trapped him and I had to go on alone. I found the diary with Tom Riddle’s—I mean, sorry, young Voldemort’s—shade almost completely human because he was draining Ginny. I defied him, and he called forth the basilisk.”

“And then,” Riddle says, in the tone of someone peering through their fingers at a horror film, “an adult came and rescued you.”

“No. Then the Sorting Hat came down with Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix, and the Sword of Gryffindor fell out of it. I fought the basilisk and killed it, but it stabbed a fang through my arm.” Harry touches the sleeve over his scar without thinking, and Riddle’s gaze goes there as if riveted. “I would have died if Fawkes hadn’t wept for me. I took the fang and destroyed the diary. I didn’t know that it was a Horcrux then or that basilisk venom could do for them, but that destroyed Voldemort’s shade and rescued Ginny.”

Riddle lowers his head into his hands. “There is no way to make up for what that alternate version of myself did to you,” he whispers.

“Yes, there is,” Harry snaps. “My survival makes up for it. Or did you think that I did nothing but lie around feeling sorry for myself all day and that my main thought on seeing you was angst and trauma from that and not being angry that you were violating my privacy?”

*

Tom lowers his hands again and stares at Harry. Harry stares back, his teeth all but bared, as if daring Tom to consider him weak.

He killed a basilisk and a Horcrux when he was twelve.

Tom does not know what to say. He did not know the universe contained such people. Of course, a few days ago, he didn’t know that the universe contained Harry, but this still feels like the bigger shock.

And yet Harry is willing to sit, here, in the same room with a version of the man who almost killed him.

“Your third year?” Tom asks, after a long breath.

“My godfather, who supposedly betrayed my parents to their deaths, escaped from Azkaban. Except it turned out he was innocent, and hunting the real traitor, who had been hiding in his Animagus form as my best friend’s pet rat.” Harry sighs. “We almost captured him, but he escaped when my Defense professor turned into a werewolf and almost killed us.”

“Your Defense professor turned into a werewolf.”

“I mean, he always was one,” Harry says hastily. “But he forgot his Wolfsbane potion that evening, and yeah. He distracted us, and Peter Pettigrew escaped and Sirius had to go on the run.” Harry pauses, and his eyes turn wistful. “I don’t suppose there’s a Sirius Black or a Peter Pettigrew here? Or a Remus Lupin.”

Tom hesitates. But in that moment, Harry’s eyes sharpen, and he leans forwards.

“You do know them.”

“I have never heard of a Peter Pettigrew,” Tom says, telling the absolute truth. “But, sadly, I must tell you that Sirius Black was killed by a werewolf in his fifth year at Hogwarts. I do not know the werewolf’s name. He was Kissed by a Dementor immediately after that. It may have been Remus Lupin.”

Harry shrinks backwards, looking a little shocked. Tom cannot resist, and reaches out to put a hand on his knee.

“I am sorry,” he whispers. “I wish I did not have to be the bearer of bad news.”

“It’s not your fault,” Harry says, blinking rapidly. He lets Tom’s hand stay where it is. Even that little show of trust makes Tom’s chest burn with longing.

“And then? Did your godfather not object when they threw you through the Veil?”

“He died at the end of my fifth year,” Harry says, and his eyes close again. “Voldemort lured me to the Department of Mysteries so that he could make me retrieve the prophecy, which I didn’t know about then. Sirius was fighting his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, and fell through the Veil on accident. I—I hoped I would have gone to the same world he went to when I woke up, but I don’t think so.”

Tom has to shake his head. “I’m sorry, Harry. You’re the only one I’ve ever heard of appearing here like this, and I’d never heard of the Veil, either, before you told me.”

“It’s all right,” Harry says. “I—I deliberately didn’t seek out any news about them because I wanted to avoid everyone, but I don’t suppose you know anything about James and Lily Potter? They were my parents.”

“James Potter moved out of the country when he was twenty,” Tom says. He remembers that because people in the Wizengamot gossiped about it endlessly, claiming it was because Potter was denied entrance to the Auror program on account of his wildness. “I don’t know if he was married.”

“In a way, that makes it easier,” Harry says. “Not to encounter another version of myself.”

Tom nods, hoping that James and Lily, if they married, did not have a son whom they named Harry. He suspects his Harry is unique in all the worlds, and he would like to keep it that way.

“Your fourth year,” he prods gently.

“I was entered into the Tri-Wizard Tournament by a servant of Voldemort’s disguised, of course, as the Defense professor.” Harry rolls his eyes. “I fought a dragon, went through some other Tasks, and then got kidnapped and taken to a graveyard where—where Peter Pettigrew killed the other Hogwarts student I was with, a boy named Cedric Diggory.” Tom opens his mouth to tell Harry that Cedric Diggory is alive and well, but Harry is rushing on. “Then Voldemort used me in a resurrection ritual, taking my blood to build himself a new body.”

“Excuse me, he did what.”

Tom feels as if the part of him that was burning earlier has now frozen solid. He wants to destroy things. But this time, the magic stays caged up in his body, because no release of it as destruction would be enough. This was years ago, in a different time, and the man who did it is dead.

Probably more than dead, given what Tom knows about Horcruxes.

Harry nods and rolls up his sleeve to show a scar on his arm. Tom lets his fingers glance over it. Old, and healed-over. But he will touch it, he will kiss it if Harry lets him, he will hold it and prize it and treasure it as much as any other part of Harry.

“He forced me to bow, but then I threw off his Imperius Curse.” Harry smiles a little as if he hasn’t just said something remarkable, his gaze distant. “He tortured me with the Cruciatus Curse, too. But I escaped.” He sighs. “Then the papers and the Minister, who didn’t want to admit Voldemort was back, spent the next year smearing my name and calling me insane.”

Tom considers whether he ought to make a study of the Veil and lob something through it capable of burning a whole dimension to dust and ashes. Nothing like that exists right now, he is aware. It does not matter. He will invent it.

Harry stares at him curiously and lifts his hand to pull his sleeve down. Something about the glint of the light on his right hand catches Tom’s attention. He turns Harry’s hand over, and sees the scars etched into the back of it.

I must not tell lies.

A Blood Quill.

“Is there no violation you have not suffered?” Tom bursts out before he can stop himself.

“Well, you know I’ve never been raped,” Harry says dryly.

Tom glares at him helplessly. But Harry is not the person he wants to glare at, and in any case, Harry simply meets his glare unflinchingly, shaking his head a little while his eyebrows rise.

“Your Defense professor?” he asks, gesturing to the scars. It is the only thing that makes any logical sense, and he clings to logic to avoid drowning in his rage.

Harry nods. “My fifth year. She worked for the Ministry, and tried to make me stop telling people Voldemort was back.” He shakes his head. “And then the year ended with the Ministry battle I told you about, and---well, in sixth year, Dumbledore started giving me lessons on the Horcruxes, without telling me I was one. He had found one and destroyed it, but he was dying from the curse on it.”

Tom experiences a sharp, savage struggle between his pride that an alternate version of Tom Riddle managed to kill Albus Dumbledore and his disgust that he has never been able to do it himself.

“The sixth year ended when we went after a Horcrux in another place, and I had to force-feed Dumbledore a poison that I’m sure would have killed him faster.” Harry shudders a little. “The Horcrux we found turned out to be a fake, too, so even that effort was wasted. And my Defense professor killed Dumbledore.”

There, it wasn’t Voldemort.

“It turned out to be a set-up…” Harry trails off. “He was an active Death Eater—a follower of Voldemort—at one time, and then he turned to Dumbledore because he loved my mother. So they set things up so he could kill Dumbledore and earn Voldemort’s trust. But Voldemort even killed him in the end.”

“And you? How did you remove the Horcrux from your soul?”

Harry fidgets. “You’re not going to like this,” he says, after long moments of Tom staring at him and the silence drawing out.

“I like almost none of this except the fact that you survived,” Tom snaps. “Get on with it.”

“I walked to my death,” Harry says. “Dumbledore told Snape—the professor who killed him—that I was a Horcrux, and he managed to get the memories to me. And the only way to be sure that the Horcrux in me was killed was for me to let Voldemort shoot the Killing Curse at me.”

“Harry.”

Tom thinks this might be what heartbreak feels like. He extends his arms, and Harry leans a little towards him, although not actually coming within the circle of his embrace.

“I survived,” Harry whispers to him. “It’s okay.” For a moment, his hand glances across Tom’s.

“How?”

Harry shakes his head. “I’m honestly not sure. Because the Killing Curse killed the Horcrux, I think, and not me. And then it turned out that the wand Voldemort was using was Dumbledore’s wand, which another Death Eater had taken from him, and then I took the Death Eater’s wand. So Voldemort’s wand was answering to me. I lived. He died. Finally.”

“You lived,” Tom whispers. “And then they cast you through the Veil.”

Harry nods wearily. “Word about the Horcruxes spread around. I don’t know for sure how many people knew that I’d been a Horcrux, but they considered me tainted, at least. And the next Dark Lord. They thought I was lying about the extent of my power. I was held in a cell for a week without anything to sit or sleep on until the Aurors marched me to the Veil in chains. You know, the memory you stole.” But his words have no fire behind them.

“No wonder you’re terrified of Aurors,” Tom murmurs.

“Yes.” Harry looks straight at him. “So. What do you think? You really don’t mind that I killed an alternate version of you?”

*

Harry is waiting.

It feels good, so good, to tell the truth to someone at last, and have them sympathize with him, even if it is Tom fucking Riddle. In some ways, it’s even good that it’s him, because he knows about Horcruxes and can sympathize with what Harry went through in a way that no one but Ron and Hermione in his past world ever could.

But now…

It’s been rejection before, every time in the past. His whole damn world rejected him, except for two people. Fellow students rejected him for not being what they wanted, for supposedly being a cheater or a delusional liar or a mad killer.

Riddle’s not going to be different. Maybe he thinks that he can tolerate the knowledge Harry killed an alternate version of him, but when he actually thinks about it, it’ll be the same. Rejection.

Maybe then, Harry can go back to his peaceful life. Somewhere else.

Riddle stares at him, face blank except for a slightly open moth. Harry can’t tell what he’s thinking, but he glares back anyway.

Riddle leans forwards, moving slowly. Harry waits for it. The shout, the slap, the curse. Not but that he’ll fight back if it’s a curse.

“You are here,” Riddle whispers. “Alive.”

Harry waits.

“It is the greatest gift I have ever received.”

It’s Harry’s turn to stare now, and even though he’s not as good at reading people as Riddle is, he thinks he’s right.

The fucker is telling the truth.

And something breaks open inside Harry, and reaches for the sun.