[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Mirror of a Thousand Shadows, Harry/Tom, Ginny/Bellatrix, AU, 2/6

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

“Well. You have ambition enough for Slytherin.”

“Yes, I do,” Tom said, and sneered a little when he heard the hesitation in the Hat’s voice. “What? Do you think I should want to go to Gryffindor, the House that the Lady Firebrand tarnished with her presence?”

“None of the rest of your family chose to avoid it.”

Tom tensed his shoulders against the reminder of the rest of his family. “I’m not just another Weasley.”

“Yes, I can see that,” the Hat murmured. “Well, you won’t be the first person I thought I would be Sorting into Gryffindor and ended up sending to Slytherin instead. Therefore, SLYTHERIN!”

Tom took off the hat and had a hard time handing it to Professor McGonagall instead of flinging it to the ground and stomping on it. So he wasn’t even the first person in that situation, was he? Did the Hat have to rub it in?

But people were watching him, which included his wide-eyed brothers, and opening their mouths to shout. Tom straightened his shoulders, flung back his head a little, and walked over to the silent table with students that had serpent crests on their robes.

Then someone started applauding.

Tom’s eyes immediately turned to the person who had done it. Harry Potter was standing up, smiling, looking straight at Tom, and clapping.

Tom didn’t simper at him with gratitude, because he wasn’t that kind of person. But he nodded to Potter, and Potter nodded back, and suddenly Tom wondered if he was the person the Hat had thought would Sort into Gryffindor but had gone to Slytherin instead.

If that was the case, Tom couldn’t be resentful, because sharing character traits with Harry Potter could only be good for his future. After all, Tom had already decided that only the Boy-Who-Lived was really special enough to be his friend.

He sat down next to Potter, who gave him a small smile. Then he glared over Tom’s head at someone who was apparently trying to push back and reclaim their seat. Tom didn’t turn his head, but appreciated the way that Potter’s glare made his green eyes darker.

“You have as much right to sit here as anyone else,” Potter said, turning back to face Tom. “Don’t let them tell you differently.”

Tom hadn’t planned to, but he appreciated the encouragement. He looked Potter directly in the eye and asked something that he hadn’t wanted to this summer, when Potter spent a few weeks with their family and seemed always part of Ron’s orbit. “Do you mind if I call you Harry?”

“Of course not,” Potter said, waving his hand. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Someone caught their breath behind Tom. Tom again didn’t bother to turn around, because he was too busy basking in the sensation of being claimed as a friend by Harry Potter. In his own right, not just because he was Ron’s little brother.

He and Harry were in the same House, and they would share moments in their common that Harry wouldn’t with the Gryffindors. They would become closer friends than Harry and Ron ever had been. Tom was sure of it.

“Thank you, Harry,” Tom said, and Harry beamed at him.

*

“I think the Hat must be going senile. First you, and now my brother!”

Harry shook his head a little, and ignored the sharp glance Snape shot him. Harry had started taking advantage of Snape’s reluctance to take points from his own House or assign them detentions the moment he realized that Snape hated him for some reason. “You know I wouldn’t have fit in very well with Gryffindor, Ron. I don’t know Tom as well as I do you, but I don’t think he would have, either.”

“He’s a Weasley, though! Perfect Gryffindor material.”

Harry concealed a snort, thinking of the way that he had seen Tom already watching people in Slytherin, with a gleam in his eyes that said he was gathering blackmail material. He had done something to Malfoy that had got the prat to leave him alone, which was more than Harry had managed. Harry had thought of asking Tom what it was, but he hadn’t. He wanted to wait until Tom felt comfortable enough around him to volunteer that kind of thing on his own.

Then again, none of the Weasleys seemed to know Tom very well. The life of the house at the Burrow sort of went on around him, and Mrs. Weasley didn’t speak his name very often, for some reason.

Harry had wondered if Tom was named after someone who had died since his birth, but that wasn’t the sort of thing he could ask about, either.

“Mr. Weasley, maundering on about irrelevant things again? Two points from Gryffindor!”

Ron turned red as Snape swept away from them, pointedly ignoring Harry. Harry put a hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about him. He doesn’t like anyone. Not even me,” he added.

Ron calmed down and muttered something under his breath that Harry didn’t pay attention to. He was thinking of Tom. Tom was the perfect Slytherin in some ways, more so than Harry. Harry had had to adapt to the House, but Tom was fitting in right away.

Harry wondered idly if Snape would like Tom because of that, or hate him because he was a Weasley and “should” have been in Gryffindor.

Should have been means so little, Harry thought, and went back to cutting up slugs.

*

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!

Tom was writing fervently in his diary, sprawled on his bed with the curtains drawn sharply closed. The other Slytherin boys in his year—all of them useless, not as smart as he was, not interested in being friends with a Weasley—were out of the room at the moment.

Tom’s hand was stinging, and he clenched and unfolded it as he waited for Ginny to respond. No one else had this, he reminded himself, no matter how much his hand hurt at the moment, and no matter how much his cheeks stung from the force of his blush. He was the one Ginny had deemed worthy enough to speak to.

You hate whom? asked the black, curling words on the page a minute later.

Snape. My Head of House.

What did he do this time?

Tom hesitated, wondering if he dared tell the story of his humiliation to Ginny. Before he could decide one way or the other, the words formed on the page.

I can’t help you if I don’t know the whole story, Tom.

At least this particular chiding didn’t bother him, maybe because he wasn’t hearing a voice speaking the words. Tom began to write, always careful to keep his letters neat, though, no matter how he hurried. Ginny had had words for the way that he spluttered and blotted the ink at first.

We had our second Potions class today. Snape assigned me to partner with Yvonne Carrow, who’s as clumsy as a Crup puppy. She spilled half the water we needed on the floor in the first five minutes! But I dried it and was carrying on with boiling the lavender when Snape swept up to me and reprimanded me for the water. I told him it wasn’t my fault, and he said—

Tom clenched his hand again. Ginny waited in patient silence. After another moment, he went back to writing.

He said that he’d seen me with my wand drawn to dry the water, and I would only have done that if it was my mess. Then he said he would teach me to use a wand in class, and cast a Stinging Hex at the back of my hand.

Tom clenched his hand again. He hadn’t reacted, hadn’t been able to react, just staring at Snape in silence as the Slytherin-Gryffindor first-year class snickered at him and he heard Carrow grunting with laughter beside him. At least a swift kick to the shin had shut her up.

But it hadn’t been able to do anything about his reputation in the classroom. Slytherin had seen that Snape didn’t like him, which meant they would attack him more openly now, and Tom had been humiliated in public.

Words began to form on the page in front of him. Tom turned his attention back to them.

Aw, I’m sorry, Tom! If it helps, my Head of House didn’t like me either when I was a Hogwarts student.

When was that? Tom seized the new topic eagerly, always interested in more information about Ginny. He did have to wonder why he hadn’t heard of this remarkable student before now, given the casual revelations about magic and magical theory she would drop into the diary. He knew she had been a Gryffindor, and he supposed he could understand some of her reluctance to speak about her school days. Gryffindor had suffered a steep decline in reputation, since the Lady Firebrand had proclaimed herself a descendant of Gryffindor’s. It had only recovered a little in the eleven years since his defeat.

Oh, it was a few decades ago. And my Head of House was Dumbledore.

Tom sat up, even more interested now. Dumbledore is Headmaster now, and he’s so unfair! He talks as though no one could possibly want to be in Slytherin instead of Gryffindor.

That’s so weird, Tom! Why would you want to be in Gryffindor with what you’ve told me about the Lady Firebrand?

Tom shrugged, then remembered that it wasn’t like Ginny could see that, and hastily wrote his answer. He wants to rehabilitate Gryffindor’s reputation, I think. And my family has always Sorted Gryffindor. Until me. Some people were still upset about that, notably the twins, who pranked him in the corridors on the regular.

But you’re one of the best fits for Slytherin that I’ve ever heard about! Dumbledore will just have to get over himself.

Tom laughed, and then someone knocked on one of his bedposts. Tom started and sat up, hastily closing the diary and tucking it under his pillow. Then he swished the curtains over and looked up somewhat blankly at Harry Potter.

Of course, Tom had done his best to further his acquaintance with Harry since he’d been Sorted into Slytherin. He sat with Harry’s group near the fireplace, ignoring the way that some people glared at him for “usurping” their “right” to the Boy-Who-Lived. And he joked with him casually at breakfast, and asked him for help on homework now and then. But Harry had never come looking for him in Tom’s bedroom before.

“Hey,” Harry said, smiling at him. “I heard about what happened in Potions today. Are you all right?”

Tom felt his shoulders rising, hunching, trying to curl around his ears. With a sharp breath, he managed to lower them. “You heard about that,” he repeated flatly. “Everyone was laughing.”

“I know, because they’re a bunch of Snape-worshippers who’re afraid that he’ll turn on them next,” Harry said, and leaned his shoulder on Tom’s bedpost. “Not because you’re at all deficient or anything like that, Tom, never think it. Because they’ve got used to having their Head of House be a bully, and they’re just relieved he’s not bullying them. At the moment.”

Tom paused. He hadn’t thought Harry would interpret it like that. Certainly no one else in Slytherin talked about Snape like he was a bully. They were in awe of his genius at Potions, if anything, and viciously enjoyed it whenever he took points from Gryffindor.

“So you don’t think that I made a terrible mistake?” he asked.

Harry snorted. “No. Snape probably said it was all about his ridiculous rule of not having wands out in the classroom, right?”

Tom nodded. Snape hadn’t used those exact words, but he had told them at the beginning of class that there wouldn’t be “any foolish wand-waving” in his classroom. Except for his, Tom supposed.

“To me, that just says that you can think for yourself and realize that having your wand ready some of the time is necessary,” Harry said firmly. “Carrow spilled water on the floor. You could have slipped in it if you were trying to lean over the cauldron or go back to the storage cupboards for other ingredients. To me, you did the smart thing when you dried it. Snape wouldn’t have done it for you, and if Carrow has enough power in her whole body to pick her nose with her wand, I’ll be surprised.”

Tom laughed, the way he had at Ginny’s diary, without thinking it through. Harry didn’t seem upset, though, even though people were always laughing loudly at his jokes to try and get the “Boy-Who-Lived” to notice them. His eyes sparkled as he looked at Tom.

“Why does he dislike you so much?” Tom asked. “I know that he thinks I’m some kind of impostor because I’m the first Weasley not to Sort into Gryffindor, but—”

“I think he thinks some of the same things about me. Potters were always in Gryffindor, too, and so was my mum. But beyond that, there’s some personal motivation I’m not sure of.”

“No one’s given you a hint?”

Harry shook his head. “Not without sighing loudly about how Snape has his reasons, even if they weren’t about to tell me what those reasons were. I think Professor Dumbledore was about to tell me last year when I was in the hospital wing after I defeated Firebrand; he was hinting around like he was. But then he got this pinched look on his face when Theo and Blaise came in to visit me, and stood up and walked away.”

“He really hates Slytherins, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. But it’s not our fault, any more than it’s our fault that Snape’s a bully.” Harry gently squeezed his shoulder. “If anything, Snape’s just upset because he can recognize a future rival when he sees one.”

Tom blinked, hard. “You think—”

“You’re a genius, Tom, anyone can see that.”

It was so casual that Tom blurted out something he’d never meant to say. “Not my family. It’s never—they never—”

“I know,” Harry said quietly, without pity, and keeping Tom from saying too much. “Ron acts as though he barely remembers you exist, and I know your parents have some—weird thing with you.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I wondered if you were named after someone they knew who died. Is that why they’re so reluctant to say your name or look at you directly? Do you know?”

Tom gave a dry chuckle. He wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing this other than with Ginny a few minutes ago, but Harry hadn’t tried to defend his parents or Ron. He noticed. Tom knew already that Harry would keep anything Tom said to him close. “They wanted a daughter. Apparently some Healer told them that I would for sure be a daughter. And they can’t forgive me for not being their precious baby girl.”

Harry said nothing for a long moment, but his hand came back to Tom’s shoulder and tightened. Then he said, “People like to blame other people for things no one can control.”

He stepped back, then, and pulled Tom’s bed curtains back together. Tom listened to him walk across the floor and shut the door behind him. No one at home would have had the courtesy to do either of those things.

Tom leaned back with his hands behind his head and thought about Harry for a long time. Not Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. Just Harry, who saw him and came to ask if he was all right and didn’t laugh at him.

Who saw him.

Tom didn’t write in Ginny’s diary again that night. He just kept thinking about how rare that was, and how almost no one saw him, and how the one person other than Harry who did, Ginny, was stuck in the pages of a book and could never come out to be with him.

Tom needed someone who saw him like that. He needed to keep them for always.

*

THE CHAMBER OF COURAGE HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE!

Harry stared at the grim message in silence for what seemed to be hours. It was done in red paint or blood, he wasn’t sure which, and on the wall of a seventh-floor corridor that Gryffindors took to their Tower every day. Harry had been coming back from visiting Ron when he came across the message.

And the clawed, torn body of the cat that lay beneath it.

“Mr. Potter. What are you doing here?”

Harry turned around reluctantly. Dumbledore was behind him, as was Argus Filch, the caretaker, who wailed aloud when he saw Mrs. Norris’s corpse.

“No! My baby, my darling!”

“I believe that Mr. Potter may be able to tell us something of what transpired here, Argus,” Dumbledore said, staring at Harry.

Harry stared back, and did his best to project the truth to the top of his thoughts. He had read a book in the library that mentioned some people could use Legilimency to read your mind, and the best tell, unless you heard them actually using the incantation, was their eyes becoming very bright and piercing. Harry was sure that both Dumbledore and Snape could do it.

I was coming back from visiting Ron. I came across this.

Dumbledore blinked and glanced away with a frown. “The Chamber of Courage is little more than a legend,” he murmured. “One only known to Gryffindor’s true heirs. There is supposed to be a weapon inside it that can protect Gryffindor’s direct line from threats to their family. You would know something about that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Potter?”

“What?” Harry stared at him in bafflement. “I’m not Gryffindor’s heir, Professor Dumbledore! I don’t know who is! I thought his direct line disappeared ages ago.”

“Ah. But there was speculation that the Potters did descend from Godric Gryffindor, as I understand it. And your grandfather was known to keep old family lore close to his chest.”

“And you think I somehow could have learned anything from the grandfather who died before I was born?”

“There might have been books left behind. Other treasures. Maps to the Chamber of Courage.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Professor, I’m sorry to act like I don’t respect you, but this is ridiculous. Just because my family has been in Gryffindor for a long time before me doesn’t mean I have any special knowledge about the Chamber of Courage. You might as well talk to the Weasleys! They’ve been Sorted there for even longer than the Potters, from what I understand.”

Dumbledore sighed. “If you ever have anything you want to tell me, my boy, I hope you’ll remember that I would be glad to hear it. No matter what it is, and no matter what you have to tell me.”

Harry glared at him. He knew Dumbledore had read the truth out of his mind! What was he doing now?

But Dumbledore turned his back and started talking to Filch, consoling him from the sound, so Harry just shook his head and walked back to the dungeons.

*

I don’t remember where I was last night, Tom scribbled into the diary. He remembered getting ready to go to the Halloween feast, and then…nothing.

Don’t worry about it, Tom. You know how hard you study! I’m sure that it’s just because you fell asleep and you don’t remember your dreams.

No, this is different, Tom insisted. He tensed as he heard the door open, but from the mumbling sounds, it was only Hugh Rosier, one of his roommates, and the other boy never bothered him. Tom returned to the diary, to find that Ginny had answered him already, even though he’d planned to write more.

I really don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Tom. You know I can sense your magic. And there’s nothing wrong with it! If someone cast a curse on you so that you couldn’t remember things, I would know, wouldn’t I?

Tom considered that. Yes, Ginny was right. Her ability to sense magic was one Tom admired and envied, and wanted to acquire for himself, but the diary couldn’t exactly teach him.

But she was his best friend. She wouldn’t lie to him. And she wouldn’t want anything to happen to him. As she had told him, Tom wasn’t the only person who had handled the diary in the last few years, but he was the only one who had been strong enough to awaken her. Ginny had complained about dull it was to be shut in dark boredom with nothing to do, no one to write to, and no magic to sense. She would have let him know right away if he’d been cursed or otherwise encountered someone that could be a threat to him.

No one’s Memory Charmed you, Ginny repeated reassuringly.

Tom smiled then. I didn’t tell you what I discovered about Lockhart, he wrote. I’ve been looking at the stories he tells in his books, and they’re just not internally consistent enough to be true. Unless, of course, he might have stolen them from other people, and covered up his tracks…

*

“Blimey, mate, you’d think people would be happy that you managed to kill Filch’s cat!”

Harry grimaced as he set his cauldron down next to Ron’s. He was happy, at least, that his first friend hadn’t turned on him. “They’re too afraid that I’m going to open the Chamber of Courage and use the weapon on them next,” he said shortly, as he lit the fire beneath both their cauldrons.

The story seemed to have spread around the school overnight. Harry would have liked to blame Dumbledore, but he knew it was more likely Filch. Harry had been caught by the message, and he had somehow torn Mrs. Norris apart. And his family had been Sorted into Gryffindor for a long time before Harry…

There were rumors that he had somehow tricked the Hat into placing him in Slytherin, to throw possible Aurors or other investigators off the trail.

Other people said that he couldn’t have defeated the Dark Lady without being a Dark Lord himself, and this was his first show of power, meant to rival hers.

There were whispers about him also being an Heir of Gryffindor, which was why the Lady Firebrand had wanted to kill him, so she wouldn’t have to share the family legacy with him.

And there were a few Muggleborns telling anyone who would listen that serial killers started out harming animals first, then expanded to humans.

Harry was doing his best to ignore it, even as it was making some of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws draw away from him. Gryffindors seemed torn between denying that a Slytherin could be one of them and disregarding the whole thing as a prank to further hurt their House’s reputation. The Slytherins gave Harry sideways glances and merely waited for the outcome.

“Is it true that you’re a Leonismouth, mate?”

Harry gave Ron an exasperated sideways glance. “Sure, but you know I didn’t have any idea what it was at first, or why it had a bad reputation.”

One of the twins’ pranks last year had resulted, somehow, in an actual rather than an illusory tiger appearing in the dungeon corridors nearest the Slytherin common room. Harry had heard an enormous grumbling voice complaining about how uncomfortable it was, and gone out to yell at whoever it was that they were waking him up.

And there had been a tiger, with whom Harry had had a polite conversation of some minutes’ duration before the first other Slytherin—Draco Malfoy, as it happened—had walked out, heard what Harry was doing, and begun yelling frantically that he was a Leonismouth and how could you never tell us, Potter.

Harry hadn’t had any idea that Leonismouths were a thing, that it was supposed to be a special power of the Lady Firebrand and Gryffindor’s heirs, or that Leonismouths could in fact talk with big cats other than actual lions. It hadn’t spread all over the school because the twins thought it would be a great secret to keep and had threatened Malfoy into keeping it, too, but they must have told Ron.

“Well, maybe you have some Gryffindor blood that you don’t know about,” Ron consoled him.

Harry shrugged.

“It’s not the worst thing in the world to be a Gryffindor.”

“It would be for my reputation,” Harry muttered.

Luckily, Ron knew enough to drop it.

*

“I don’t believe you’re the Heir of Gryffindor, Harry.”

Harry glanced up, startled. He’d been sitting beside the fire by himself when Tom intruded. Over the past few weeks, his usual crowd of followers had withdrawn, and now sat by themselves in the corners, muttering. Tom knew they wanted some sign to show them which way they should jump.

Tom scorned the notion. He knew what Harry was really like. And someone who paid attention to the unwanted seventh Weasley son, who was only notable because he had upset his parents by getting Sorted into Slytherin, wouldn’t be the sort of person to randomly tear up a cat’s corpse and leave it lying in the corridors.

(Tom himself might have done the tearing up. He’d hated Mrs. Norris. But he wouldn’t have left the body lying there for all to see).

“Thanks, Tom.” Harry gave him a wan smile. “What are you working on? Transfiguration?”

Tom nodded emphatically. “And I should be able to do it, because I have more than enough power, but turning a match into a needle is hard.”

Harry looked at him. “I can tell you how to accomplish it if you want.”

“There’s a special method?” Tom concealed a scowl. Why would Professor McGonagall have kept that from him? Did she hate him that much for not Sorting into Gryffindor with the rest of his siblings?

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know about a special method. But I had the same problem with channeling my power into the Transfiguration and not understanding why it wasn’t working. So what I did might help you.”

“Yes, please,” Tom breathed, flattered at the mere thought of refusing special tutoring from Harry.

And also at the thought that Harry thought Tom might be his magical equal.

Being Harry’s friend was more amazing than Tom had ever thought it would be.

“Okay.” Harry took the match Tom gave him and laid it on the small table in between them, clearing his half-written essay for what looked like Charms out of the way. “What you have to do first is envision the needle you want to create. Close your eyes if you have to. What matters is that the vision should be right there, before you, almost tangible.”

Tom shut his eyes. He had always been good at imagining things, because so many of his siblings were too old to want to play with him, and the twins had each other, and Ron…well, he was mainly interested in chess, and Tom wasn’t. He liked games that were more real, more physical, where he could actually see other things than an abstract pattern of strategy working out.

Trying to imagine such games was trickier than imagining the perfect needle. Tom had it in his mind’s eye in seconds, a floating, gleaming thing that had a perfectly pointed tip and an eye at the top that was encircled by a pattern of snake scales.

“Good,” Harry said softly. “Now. Are you ready?”

Tom nodded.

“Open your eyes and picture your perfect needle overlaying the match until it looks more real to you than the match does. Then cast the spell.”

Tom took his wand in hand—he actually didn’t remember drawing it—and looked sternly at the match. The needle in his mind appeared, or seemed to appear, without much work, to float above the needle.

“It’s only a match,” Harry whispered. “You’re a wizard. Think about it. Shouldn’t it be yielding to you?”

Tom caught his breath. It was a thought he’d often had when he’d watched his brothers struggle with their wands and new spells, but no one had ever phrased it in words before. He was tempted to look at Harry, but he knew that would probably disrupt his imagining. He raised his wand slowly.

“Now.”

Tom cast the minute Harry spoke. The air seemed to writhe and twist above the match, and Tom felt the rush of magic through him more powerfully than he ever had, even the day that he’d matched with his yew wand (which had taken hours after hours of searching). He gasped, and his wand hand dropped limply to his side.

“Well done, Tom.”

Harry sounded as if he was smiling. Tom blinked at the match, and then scowled. “It’s still a match,” he said.

“Yes. But it’s silvery, and look at this.” Harry touched the top of the match. Tom had to lean closer to be sure, but yes, he could see the pattern of scales he’d imagined decorating the match head. He caught his breath.

“Did you do something like that when you used the visualization for the first time?” he asked.

“Mine turned to metal, but without the eye, and it was still the color of a matchstick.” Harry smiled at him. “It took me more than a few tries to do it, too. But I think you’ll master it soon.”

Tom had never been drunk, never even wanted to do more than attempt a sip of Firewhisky from his parents’ or Bill’s mugs. He didn’t care for the taste or smell. But he suddenly knew what being drunk felt like, and knew the kind of warmth and depth that people turned to Firewhisky for.

He imagined it was the kind of thing he would have liked to see in Ginny’s smile, too, if she was real.

*

“I must insist that you tell me whatever you know of the Heir of Gryffindor, Harry.”

Harry clenched his fists on the arms of the chair. He hated being dragged to the Headmaster’s office in the first place, especially since the man couldn’t seem to decide what he thought of him. He had been open and truthful when he told Harry how Professor Quirrell, possessed by the spirit of the Lady Firebrand, had died last year. But then he had seemed to remember Harry was a Slytherin, and closed his mouth.

And now he was staring at Harry with a smile, but his jaw was clenched, and his eyes didn’t sparkle. Harry stared at him, unimpressed. Dumbledore was a Legilimens, he was sure of it, and practitioners of Legilimency could detect lies. That meant both that he must have known Harry was telling the truth on Halloween, and he must be able to talk to anyone else he suspected and know if they were lying.

Why hadn’t Dumbledore caught the Heir of Gryffindor yet? He was much more bloody equipped than Harry, a second-year Slytherin, was.

“I told you all I know,” Harry snapped.

“Miss Brown is in hospital,” Dumbledore went on, without acknowledging that. “They had to transfer her to St. Mungo’s to tend to her wounds. They have hope she will recover, but she will always carry the scars. A young witch, in the first flush of her life, with her face marred forever.” He stared steadily at Harry and gave up any pretense of smiling. “Surely even you must care about that.”

“I know you can read my bloody mind!” Harry snapped. “Do it, and find out if I’m lying!”

Dumbledore caught his breath sharply. “Who told you that?” he asked a minute later.

“It’s not hard to figure out, not if you read the right library books.”

“Those books are generally in the Restricted Section, Harry.”

“But Noticing Legilimency wasn’t, it was just right out where anyone could grab it.” Harry rolled his eyes. “Let me guess, you’d find me less suspicious if I was a Gryffindor, right? I don’t know how you could, when the Heir of Gryffindor is stalking around messing people up, but somehow it would make you feel better. Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t want to be in the same House as the witch who murdered my parents?”

Dumbledore blinked for a long moment. Then he said, “You shouldn’t judge a whole House by one person, my boy.”

“Why not? You do.”

Dumbledore sighed and removed his glasses to rub them on his robe for a moment. “There are very good reasons for that, my boy. Old history, but—well, Salazar Slytherin’s legacy has been carried on by descendants of his at times. He had his own Chamber, you know, one called the Chamber of Secrets. There was a beast sleeping in there that has been released on the student populace more than once, although not in such a way that anyone ever managed to track it down.”

“And you thought I was—what, doing that and casting blame on the Heir of Gryffindor to throw people off my track?” Harry groaned aloud when Dumbledore didn’t deny it. He leaned his forehead on the palm of his hand. “I’m just twelve, you know? And like you told me last year, it wasn’t even me who defeated Professor Quirrell. It was my mother’s sacrifice. So it was probably her sacrifice that killed the Lady Firebrand, too. Don’t blame me for whatever’s going on now.”

“Gryffindor’s reputation needs to be rehabilitated. It makes more sense that this is someone attempting to cast blame on it to cover their own activities than it would be for the real Heir of Gryffindor to have returned.”

“Why not? Do you know who the real Heir of Gryffindor is?”

“Of course not, my dear boy.”

Harry didn’t believe that smile and those twinkling eyes for a second. He felt old, and jaded, and incredibly tired. Dumbledore was apparently so invested in not believing that anyone from his old House could be behind the Heir’s tricks that he would drag Harry into his office to interrogate him.

“Whatever. Can I go now, sir?”

*

I told you, Tom, you don’t have anything to worry about. You told me that you’d been exercising your magic more than usual. It’s not unusual to feel as if you’re losing memories when you’re tired. I’m sure they’ll come back with some more sleep.

Tom stared at the diary. There was a time, a few months ago, when he would have believed Ginny without question.

But it was nearly Christmas now, and the attack on Lavender Brown had happened a few days before, and…

He just didn’t believe her anymore. He didn’t have any proof that the diary was behind his strange bouts of lost memory, but he didn’t understand why she kept trying to persuade him that nothing was happening, instead of saying it was strange and she would work to investigate it with him.

He closed the diary without answering, and headed for the seventh floor. That was where both attacks had happened, the one on Filch’s cat, and the one on Brown, apparently when she was returning to Gryffindor Tower. He would throw the diary behind that old tapestry with the trolls on it, and good luck to whoever happened to find it.

*

Harry rubbed his scar, frowning. It had started hurting lately, something it had never done before except briefly last year when he met Quirrell’s eyes for the first time.

Harry shuddered. Seeing a woman’s withered face growing out of the back of Quirrell’s head like moss on a tree stump had explained that.

But right now, he was just in an empty stretch of corridor that led to Gryffindor Tower, and there didn’t seem to be any reason for it. Harry sped up a little just in case.

Then he came around the corner into that corridor, the one where Mrs. Norris had died and the attack on Brown had happened, and his scar flared as though Aunt Petunia had hit him with a pan. Harry rubbed it woozily and stagged into the wall.

The tapestry of trolls bent under his reaching arm. And it seemed to him that on the ground was a small black object. A square one? Someone’s dropped book?

Harry straightened up and edged slowly away from the object. The pain in his head dimmed. He walked slowly back towards it, and the pain came back, creeping slowly and burningly up from the edges of his vision.

It took him a few tries walking back and forth to be sure that the object—the book—was the source of the pain, and then two things happened at once that made him jump. First, the book flipped open invitingly, and Harry could see that there were long lines of writing in it, more like a diary or a journal than someone’s notebook.

And second, a door appeared in the wall opposite him.

Harry stood staring, and wondering what the hell he should do next.