lomonaaeren

Thank you for all the reviews!

Part Two

“The situation is serious, I fear, Harry,” Dumbledore said quietly. There was no twinkle in his eyes as he tapped a finger on the pages of the massive book spread out on his desk. “There is indeed a spell called the Dreaming Sleep Curse that can make someone have intense dreams that carry over into waking life. And the purpose is to drive an enemy mad.”

Harry closed his eyes and nodded. He had almost accepted that, honestly. The visions were getting worse and worse, and the dreams made him feel as if the waking world was the dream. He kept walking around a corner and expecting to see Riddle there, and twice he had almost walked back to the Slytherin common room in the dungeons instead of Gryffindor Tower.

“When do you think he cast it on me, sir?” Harry asked quietly. “At the Department of Mysteries?”

“That is a possibility. Perhaps when he realized he would have to flee and you would escape. Or perhaps he had someone here, a follower of his, cast it on you.” Dumbledore sighed and closed the book. “I’m afraid there is only one countercurse.”

“What is that, sir?”

“It’s more a potion than a spell,” Dumbledore began, and shook his head a little when he saw Harry’s eyes narrow. “I know that you don’t have good experiences with Professor Snape, Harry, but I tell you that I would trust him with my life.”

There was an odd emphasis on those last words that Harry didn’t understand. He nodded and stared down at his lap. “Do you think he would be willing to brew the potion for me, sir?”

“Of course, Harry. And I will be the one to cast the spell that should remove the curse after you have taken the potion.”

Harry uttered a shaky breath and tried to keep his eyes away from Dumbledore’s hearth, where a hallucination of Riddle laughed over a chessboard. Harry had become accustomed to seeing that laugh in his dreams, but only for him, or the version of Harry that inhabited them. “Thank you, sir.”

*

“Why are you here?”

Harry knew his voice was dull and exhausted, but so what? Riddle could just go away if he didn’t like it.

“To see if you are well.”

Riddle sat down on the bench next to him, in the Slytherin section of the stands looking out over the Quidditch pitch. Harry snorted and didn’t look at him. “You know I’m not. Now you’ve seen. You can go away again.”

“I want to know what happened, Harrison.”

“Why would you need to ask? I’m pretty sure that Prewett will be bragging about it and word will spread all over the school.”

Harry could hear the hatred creeping into his voice now. Riddle shifted a little, but if he was thinking about getting up and walking away, he didn’t follow through on the impulse. Instead, he said, “Harry.”

It was rare for Riddle to call him by his actual name, instead of the longer version he thought Harry “deserved.” Startled, Harry glanced over at him.

Riddle was leaning forwards far enough for the setting sun to paint his face with fleeting streaks of red. He looked as though he was covered with blood, Harry thought, and licked at his own bleeding lip absently.

“I need to know what happened because I need to know if I should kill Prewett.”

More than startled this time, Harry immediately turned around on the bench to face him. “No! Do you hear me? Do not go after Prewett!”

“Such concern, Harry.” Riddle moved closer. “I want to know what happened.”

Harry closed his eyes. He was bitter, and he was resentful, and only, what did it matter if he hated Riddle? Riddle was the one here asking for the story, and Harry was just going to give it to him.

“Prewett was telling me that he wanted to be my friend,” Harry said softly. “He said that he could tell I was different from the other Slytherins, and actually had a heart.” Riddle shifted in place on the bench, but didn’t interrupt. “I started spending time with him on the pitch, and we studied together a few times in the library.

“Today he started asking what the Slytherin Quidditch team was going to do in the next game. I told him I didn’t know, because I’m not on the team. He said, ‘But you will be, won’t you? You’re too good not to be.’

“I told him that I didn’t want to be on the team and wasn’t going to try out. Then he looked at me like I was a crawling bug and said, ‘What good are you, then?’”

The look on Prewett’s face when he’d said it was burned into Harry’s memory. He kept thinking that he must have seen similar things before, even though his memory wouldn’t provide them when he asked it to. The contempt, the clear indication that he had only been Harry’s friend because he thought Harry would spill Quidditch secrets…

“What happened then?”

“A couple of his friends from Gryffindor flew out from behind the stands. They laughed at me for thinking that Octavian would want to be my friend.” The laughter was still lodged in Harry’s heart, like blades. “They mocked me and called me a friendless Slytherin and said that I ought to have known better.”

And they had left to spread the story all around school. Not everyone would find it amusing, but enough people would, Harry knew, especially in his own House, where he hadn’t made any friends because no one knew his blood status or whether he was telling the truth about his last name being Potter. There would be snickers and sideways glances and people having conversations in voices just low enough for him not to hear.

Harry knew he had endured that before. He didn’t know how. But that was the thing. Even the faintest edge of a memory was too much. He didn’t want to endure it anymore.

“I will make sure that Prewett regrets this.”

“You can’t,” Harry said, but less emphatically than he had earlier. His skin was cold and his breath was coming a little faster just from telling the story. He kept picturing what would happen if Prewett’s broom broke and thinking it would be justice.

“Will anyone else take this revenge for you?”

Harry said nothing, and he could feel more than see Riddle nodding. “Then I will.”

He turned and walked away. Harry opened his eyes and stared at his hands, hating the fact that he felt a little less alone.

*

“But why would Voldemort want you to have these dreams?”

“Driving me mad would be enough reason for him,” Harry said dully, rubbing his forehead. The long dream about Prewett had burned itself into his mind, and the humiliation still hung over him like a shadow. “Other than that, who knows? He’s mad, too.”

Hermione leaned over to put a hand on his wrist. “I’m sure that Professor Snape and Professor Dumbledore will put it right between them.”

Harry just nodded. They were sitting in a secluded corner of the library, and he hated that he couldn’t look over at one of the other tables without perfectly seeing himself sitting there with Octavian Prewett—who might not even have existed, for all he knew.

“I hope so, Hermione.”

I hope they do it before the dreams and visions really drive me mad. But Harry wouldn’t say that.

*

“You didn’t need to do that.”

Riddle turned around with a smile. “This is the first time you’ve come to seek me out, Harry. I must admit, I’m flattered.”

“Don’t get used to it, Riddle. I only came to tell you that you didn’t need to do that.”

“What is it that I didn’t need to do, Harry?”

Now he seems to have decided to say my name all the time, like he owns it or something, Harry thought in annoyance. He switched to Parseltongue. They were fairly deep in the dungeons, near a classroom that Harry suspected was a meeting place for Riddle’s idiot “followers,” but still. “You didn’t need to cast the curse that broke Prewett’s broom and both his legs. It’s not like he would connect it with me, anyway. It’s not going to make him think better of what he did.”

Riddle’s eyes shone, maybe because they were having their first conversation in Parseltongue in two months. “Ah, but that is not why I did it, Harry. I did it because you would know why I did it, and that it was vengeance taken for you. I did it for you.”

“I wish you hadn’t.”

Riddle laughed softly, and his tongue darted out like a snake’s. “Liar. I can practically smell the truth on the air.”

Harry flushed. All right, so he had had a moment of gratification when he saw Prewett being carried into the school and wailing about how his broken Cleansweep meant he wouldn’t be able to get another broom until next year at the earliest and his broken legs meant he would miss the Gryffindor-Slytherin match. But…

“It’s the worst part of me. I shouldn’t encourage it.”

“I wonder, Harry. I saw the way you dealt with the aftermath, the laughter and the taunting. It affected you, but you kept your head up and endured. Have you had something like that happen to you in the past?”

“How would I know when I can’t bloody remember?”

“I think you did. I think no one came to your rescue then. I think that you like having someone come to your rescue, even if you believe you shouldn’t.”

Harry shot him a half-hearted glare. Riddle just watched him with a deepening smile, deepening eyes. He was really handsome with this kind of smile on his face, Harry had to admit. Most of the time, he only saw Riddle look sadistic.

Now…

Delight looks good on him.

Harry jerked his eyes away. That would do more than encourage the worst part of him. He stomped away after the corridor.

But this time, unlike the others when he’d walked away and left Riddle staring after him, he turned to say quietly, “Thanks, though,” and vanished away in the direction of the Slytherin common room.

*

“Concentrate, Potter!”

Harry grimaced. He was standing in Snape’s office with the potion needed to counteract the curse bubbling away in front of him. Snape was watching him with intense eyes, fingers twitching on the cauldron’s rim. Apparently this wasn’t like other potions, and Harry would have to think very hard of what he wanted to stop happening with the curse while he drank it.

But it was hard, when Riddle was lounging transparently with one elbow against the wall next to Snape, mouthing things that seemed to be insults to Snape’s brewing skills.

Harry remembered the way Riddle had defended him against Prewett, and he couldn’t help but wish—

No!

Harry yanked his mind back to the present. That had never happened. He couldn’t think of it as if it was a real memory. He wanted the dreams to go away. He did. And if was thinking of what was supposedly “good” about them when he drank the potion, there was no way that he would ever get rid of them.

“Now, Potter!”

Harry promptly picked up the silver goblet that Snape had left at his side, scooped it full of the bubbling grey-green potion, and drank, concentrating as hard as he could on the image of a life without visions or dreams.

The potion burned his tongue and made him double over, coughing.

“Swallow it, Potter!” Snape said, looming over Harry. He looked as if he might be reaching for his wand. “It will do you no good and may even have the opposite effect if you spit it back out!”

Harry clenched his hands by his sides and swallowed again and again, trying to dull the awful taste as well as the awful heat that felt as if it was poisoning him from the inside. At last it was down, and he slumped forwards, panting.

“There,” Snape said, breathing harshly. He stepped away from the cauldron as if he didn’t like being this close to Harry. “Professor Dumbledore will cast the spell on you tomorrow at five-o’clock. Now, get out of my sight.”

Harry bowed his head and scrambled out of the room. He did glance back once, when Snape made a sharp noise.

The transparent Tom Riddle on the other side of the cauldron had aimed his wand at Snape and shot a hex at his back. Of course, it wasn’t real, it couldn’t affect Snape at all, but nevertheless, he was exploring his back with careful fingers and a puzzled look on his face.

The look became not at all puzzled when he saw Harry lingering. “Out!” he snarled.

Harry went.

*

“Come on, Potter, don’t be like that.”

Harry rested his head in his hands and gave in to the temptation to scream into his cupped palms. Andrew Mulciber would not stop following him around. Harry had given him every indication that he wanted to be alone, up to the point of yelling it into his face, and all Mulciber did was give him a puzzled smile and ask if there was anything Harry wanted.

“I really like you.”

Harry snapped his head up and stared at Mulciber. They were waiting outside the Defense classroom for Professor Merrythought to arrive, and that was—not what he had thought he would hear, let’s say.

Mulciber scratched the back of his neck with heavy fingers and avoided Harry’s gaze. “I don’t care if you’re a half-blood,” he said loudly. Apparently he had decided that Harry couldn’t possibly be a Muggleborn. “You have fast reflexes, and pretty eyes, and you’re smart, and—”

“Andrew.”

The word wasn’t in Parseltongue, but it sounded as if it should have been. Mulciber’s eyes went wide and he scrambled back until he hit the wall. Then he remained still, staring past Harry and looking as if he wanted to swallow his tongue.

Harry glanced over his shoulder, already knowing what he would see. After all, he’d recognized the voice.

Then again, Riddle hadn’t looked this deadly even right after Prewett had been carried into the school and Harry had seen him preening. He stood with his head lowered like a bull about to charge, and his hand held his wand, fingers tapping up and down the handle. He smiled at Mulciber, but it was an expression that seemed to chill the air of the corridor around them.

“What were you saying, Andrew?” he asked softly.

“I n-need to work on my h-homework before Professor Merrythought gets here,” Mulciber stuttered out, eyes locked on Riddle and presumably seeing something even more terrifying than Harry did. “I didn’t finish it.” He swallowed, a loud click of his throat.

“That’s right, Andrew.” Riddle smiled and put his wand away, moving forwards to stand next to Harry. Anyone coming up on the scene now would assume everything was normal. “Why don’t you do that?”

Mulciber turned and scrambled away. Harry shook his head and glanced at Riddle. “Thanks, but you didn’t need to do that. He wasn’t making me feel bad the way Prewett did. He’s just annoying.”

“I didn’t do that for you,” Riddle said, swinging his attention to Harry now. Harry found himself standing as still as a bird in front of a great snake. “I did it for me.”

“What?”

“I have no desire to watch lesser people degrade you with their presence, Harry.”

“All right,” Harry began, ready to tell Riddle all the ways that was weird and creepy, but at that moment, Professor Merrythought opened the door of the classroom and gestured for them to come in. Harry entered, shaking his head.

Riddle sat at the table in front of Harry, but he paused before he sat down and leaned over so that his mouth was only a small distance from Harry’s ear. “I promise,” he breathed, like they were at a bloody wedding or something, “that you will never have to deal with anything like Mulciber’s dreadful advances again. You will only have comfort and pleasure at my hands.”

Harry pulled his head back and scowled at Riddle. Part of him found the offer tempting, just because he didn’t have any friends, not real ones, and he couldn’t remember someone ever wanting to date him. But Riddle would be smothering and impossible to get rid of. “What if what I want is for you to go away?”

Riddle half-bowed his head, eyes bright with mirth. “If you wish that, of course, Harry. But I hope that you will still accept my protection and gifts that I will offer you.”

“What gi—”

“Mr. Riddle, take your seat, please.”

Professor Merrythought sounded shocked that she had to say it. Come to think of it, Harry was, too. Riddle was always the perfect student, always seated when the professor started to talk, never needing to be reminded of any rules. The one with the perfect marks, who always did his homework on time, who always had the right answer in class.

Riddle bowed his head and murmured, “I’m sorry, Professor Merrythought,” before winking once at Harry and mouthing something that looked like See? Then he sat down and faced forwards and to all appearances focused utterly on the class and ignored Harry.

Harry stared blankly at the back of Riddle’s head for most of the class, except when Professor Merrythought called on him to demonstrate a defensive spell. That was easy for him, and he did it flawlessly, ignoring the way she exclaimed about it.

Riddle was more interesting.

He was willing to endanger his perfect schoolboy reputation for Harry? That was—

It meant something. Harry didn’t know a lot about what it meant. And he knew that he didn’t want to become Riddle’s follower, and he knew that he really shouldn’t be associating with someone who had terrified Mulciber and hurt Prewett like that. (Prewett still wasn’t walking right).

But part of him wanted to be someone who did. Part of him whispered, They all abandoned you. They didn’t treat you well. There were only a few people who did, and they’re gone. This is the best you might get.

Hold onto it with both hands.

Harry was still trying to decide if he wanted to when class ended.

*

“Just a moment, Harry, and you will be rid of the curse forever.”

Harry straightened his shoulders hopefully and gave Dumbledore a smile that he hoped was sincere. Tom was standing behind Dumbledore, whipping his wand about in mockery of the Headmaster. He’d already given himself a long white beard, and Harry had had to work hard on controlling his laughter.

Dumbledore pointed his wand at Harry and began a long incantation. None of it was in Latin, or at least it didn’t sound like any of the Latin spells that Harry had learned.

But then, how many had he learned, really? Truly learned, as opposed to just memorized and mumbled when the occasion called for them?

Harry found himself longing to learn more spells, really learn them, and practice them with someone who understood. Not the simple Transfigurations and useless petty Charms they practiced in those classes. Real defensive spells, real offensive ones, the useful ones. He obviously needed them if someone could just hit him with the Dreaming Sleep Curse and he’d never noticed.

But there was no one he could do that with, not really. Snape wasn’t going to let Harry practice as much as he needed to in Defense class, and other people would either be horrified by what he wanted to learn or wouldn’t want to duel him.

Harry looked up sharply as the spell came to an end. Concentric rings of white light spread away from the end of Dumbledore’s wand as though he’d thrown the wand in a pool. The white rings came to a stop at Harry’s robes and sat there, shivering.

Harry glanced back and forth between them and Dumbledore, who suddenly looked very old. The transparent Tom behind him looked smug. “Headmaster?” Harry whispered.

“I am so very sorry, my boy.”

“What is it, sir?”

“The spell did not work, because you have not been subjected to the Dreaming Sleep Curse.” Dumbledore stared at the white rings, which had turned and begun retreating to his wand. “I do not know what this is…”

“So you think that Voldemort really is just sending me visions?”

“I do not see what else it could be, if it is not the curse.” Dumbledore shook his head slowly and lowered his wand as the rings vanished back into it. “You must work on Occlumency, Harry. It is the only way that we can…I will be teaching you myself.”

Harry swallowed. He hated the idea that there was no easy solution to his problem the way he had thought there was, but at least Dumbledore wasn’t going to throw him back at Snape again. “All right, sir. Thank you.”

*

“Flawless, Harry.”

Harry stepped back with a smile out of the dueling ring. Riddle had brought Harry to a classroom in the dungeons that apparently he and some of the “followers” sometimes used, but no one had come into it except the two of them since they’d started coming here. There was a runic circle set into the floor that ensured their spells didn’t fly anywhere outside it and also could conjure shadowy enemies for training.

Harry watched in contentment as the latest of those enemies shredded into mist and darkness. He’d blown it apart with a curse that Merrythought had mentioned in her class but never let them try. And he was good at it.

“You are remarkable.”

Harry was staying for the Christmas holidays at Hogwarts, of course—it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go—and he’d had hot mulled cider in front of the fireplace yesterday. Riddle’s words made him feel warmer than both the drink and the fire had together.

Harry turned around. Riddle stood a few meters behind him, outside the circle, smiling at him as if Harry was the center of his universe.

Harry’s blood rushed into his face. It was something to make handsome, collected, brilliant Tom Riddle smile at him that way, he thought. It was power. It made Harry want to strut, and swagger, and show off with spells even stronger than the ones he’d cast so far.

Part of him was still uncomfortable with the notion, whispering that he shouldn’t do this because—because Riddle was bad news, and probably only was so warm to Harry because he was a Parselmouth, and—

But honestly, Harry thought, he didn’t even remember why he thought that. He didn’t remember where he came from, or why he knew so much about Tom Riddle.

But he knew, because he felt it, that he had been through horrible things. He was going to grab a good thing for himself for once, even if it wouldn’t last very long.

Riddle was suddenly in front of him, reaching up a hand as though he would touch the old, weird scar on Harry’s forehead. Harry started back and away, almost tripping into the groove in the floor that was the edge of the runic circle.

“What is that?” Riddle whispered. His voice was soft, almost a lover’s. His fingers spread out as if he would pick up the scar and take it away from Harry to examine more closely.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, biting back the response of None of your business that he’d almost said. He didn’t want to offend Riddle, and Merlin knew that he did that all too easily when it came to his other roommates. He wanted Riddle here.

“It shines.”

“What?”

“It shines,” Riddle repeated. His eyes came back to Harry’s face, and he made a frustrated little sound, as though Harry was being deliberately obtuse. He took out a shard of mirror from his pocket—why he had it, Merlin knew—and held it up.

Harry caught his breath. There was an edge of green and an edge of gold around the edges of his scar. As he watched, the green light, which seemed vaguely familiar, faded, and he was looking at a shine of gold that—

It was also familiar, but he didn’t know why, and the fact nearly made him weep in frustration.

“You are such a mystery,” Riddle said.

“Sooner or later, you’ll give up because you don’t have answers,” Harry replied, not sure what made him say it.

Riddle’s grin widened across his face, jagged as a crack in an egg. “Oh, no, Harry Potter. I can’t foresee myself wanting to let you go for a very long time.”

And all Harry felt was relief.

*

Harry shuddered as he leaned his forehead against the cool wall of the stone a few corridors distant from Gryffindor Tower. He’d woken from that dream, and he didn’t want to stay in the common room or his dormitory in case someone woke up and noticed him and wanted to talk to him.

He was finding it hard to forgive himself for wanting to be the friend of Tom Riddle, of all people.

Something sounded behind him, an odd musical note, and Harry whirled around, already thinking that it was Malfoy sneaking around again and that this time he’d managed to sneak up behind Harry and make him look like a right prat—

But it was Fawkes, hovering in midair. He gave a soft, musical croon, and Harry found himself lifting an arm as if he could talk to birds along with snakes. Fawkes landed on his forearm, a much gentler weight than Hedwig, and reached out to rub his head gently against Harry’s forehead.

Against his scar.

“Can you stop whatever’s happening, Fawkes?” Harry whispered. “Do you know what it is? Can you make me stop seeing this?”

Fawkes gave him a look of deep sadness, and then sang softly. Harry found his depression lifting as he listened. Nothing had changed, but everything at least felt better, and he knew he would go to bed and sleep dreamlessly.

“Thanks, Fawkes,” he whispered.

He expected the phoenix to fly away, but Fawkes stayed on his arm all the way back to Gryffindor Tower, when he lifted his wings and soared off in a silent burst of light before the Fat Lady could see him. Harry walked into the Tower, pretending that he couldn’t see the translucent boy in Slytherin robes staring at the phoenix with transcendent joy.