lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2025-06-21 04:02 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2025-06-21 04:02 pm
Entry tags:
[From Litha to Lammas]: Hung the Moon, Harry/Tom, R, 1/6
Title: Hung the Moon
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Tom, mentions of background canon pairings
Rating: R
Content Notes: AU (Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived), time travel, romance, angst, bullying, mentions of violence and torture, past minor character death
Summary: AU. Harry isn’t the Boy-Who-Lived, and he committed a major mistake in the past that cost him several of his friends, but he can still help with fighting the Carrows during his seventh year. At least, until Alecto Carrow casts an experimental spell on him that ends up flinging him fifty years into the past. Harry makes himself at home in the past, unaware of the real identity of the handsome Slytherin, Tom Riddle, who seems oddly attracted to him.
Author’s Notes: This is the first story my “From Litha to Lammas” series being posted between Midsummer and the first of August. It should have five to seven parts.
Hung the Moon
Harry lifted his chin. He was bleeding, trembling in all his limbs from the Cruciatus that Alecto Carrow had cast on him for “practice,” and had what felt like a few broken fingers. But it didn’t matter. He faced the Carrows and he sneered.
“You’re going to tell us where the rest of your little resistance is hiding,” Amycus hissed, spinning his wand around his fingers.
“No.”
“We’ll just torture you—”
“No, wait, Amycus.” Alecto took a step around her brother, eyes fastened on Harry, so big that she looked a little like Hedwig, Harry’s owl, who had died earlier that school year. Harry buried the memory. “There’s a little spell that Bellatrix was developing, and I’ve always wanted to try it out.”
“What’s that, sister dear?”
Alecto leaned nearer to Amycus and whispered, so Harry couldn’t hear. He didn’t mind that much. He was leaning to the side and bleeding badly now. This gave him a chance to recover himself, a little.
“Well. Are you sure that Bellatrix won’t get you angry that you had the chance to cast it on a student before she did?”
Alecto laughed, more bell-like and cheerful than anyone who had caused that much death should be able to be. “It doesn’t matter if she is! We’re not going to tell her.” She smiled and aimed her wand at Harry. “And neither is this one.”
This is probably the moment I die.
But the incantation that Alecto spoke sounded, honestly, too long and wordy to make anyone die. The blue light that shot out of her wand and enveloped Harry made him glow, and tremble, and feel as if he were falling to the ground and bleeding out.
Maybe it just makes you suffer faster from the wounds you already have.
There was a sensation of wind rushing around him, and he heard several people shouting. His last, fleeting thought was that he hoped they weren’t students who had seen him falling and would feel obligated to rescue him.
Let me die, if it helps hide them. They’ve suffered enough.
*
“Who is he?”
“I have no idea, Deputy Headmaster.”
Harry stirred, and the voices stopped. He turned his head, and blinked as he saw Headmaster Dumbledore standing over him.
“You’re dead,” he murmured in wonder. He’d never had as much to do with the Headmaster as some of his fellow Gryffindors, but, well, it was hard to miss when someone got hit with a Killing Curse and fell off the Astronomy Tower.
“What, my boy?”
“You’re dead,” Harry repeated, although he was a little less certain now. This man’s eyes were the right shade of blue and he had the long beard and the crazy robes and he looked exactly like the Headmaster, but his beard and hair were red, and he seemed a lot younger. “Or maybe I’m going mad. There’s that possibility, too.”
“I wouldn’t think there’s a strong chance of that, my boy,” Dumbledore said, and smiled at him. Then he glanced over Harry at someone standing on the other side of the bed. “Is there, Madam Thorne?”
Madam Thorne?
Harry turned his head, slowly and painfully, to see a mediwitch—or someone he assumed was a mediwitch—standing next to his bed and glaring at him as if everything were his fault. At least that was familiar. It was the way Madam Pomfrey had glared at him every time he got injured since he’d started playing Seeker in second year.
“He is not going to go mad,” Madam Thorne said in a tart voice with a hint of an Irish accent. “He might, however, wish he were.”
“Can someone tell me what happened?” Harry asked groggily. He stared down at his arms, which seemed to have bandages on them, but not the kind of all-encompassing ones he would have thought an unknown curse from Alecto Carrow would need.
“You do not know?”
Dumbledore sounded fascinated. Harry shook his head. “I was standing in front of Alecto Carrow, and she was going to curse me. She said she was going to use a curse that Bellatrix Lestrange invented. But I don’t know what happened when the curse hit me.”
Dumbledore and Madam Thorne exchanged a quick look. Then Dumbledore said, “I do know some people with the last names of Carrow and Lestrange, including some of our students, but I do not know the Alecto or Bellatrix of which you speak.”
“Bellatrix sounds like a name a Black would have,” Madam Thorne murmured. “They are obsessed with stars.”
Harry swallowed at the reminder of Sirius, whom he’d never really got to know before his godfather died, and said, “Well, I think she was a Black before she got married. Does that help?”
“I have reason to know the Black family tree well, Albus, and there is no Bellatrix on it.”
“I know you have reason, Madam Thorne,” Dumbledore said, with an odd respect in his voice. Why would the Headmaster—or Deputy Headmaster—respect a mediwitch so much?
Then again, looking at the firm set of Madam Thorne’s jaw, Harry thought he knew.
“This is just more evidence that my theory is correct, Deputy Headmaster.”
“Yes, it seems so.” Dumbledore’s eyes didn’t twinkle so much as he turned to look at Harry. “I’m afraid you will find, my boy, that you have traveled into the past. Two decades at least, if you can speak of people as adults who are not even born yet.”
Harry stared at him and licked dry lips. Then he turned to Madam Thorne. “This is why you thought I might want to go mad?”
“Indeed.” Her voice was gentle now. “I am sorry, child. There was magic lingering around you that I only saw once before, when I was permitted to study a Time-Turner. But where the sand in a Time-Turner held a small, delicate amount of magic, the power around you was a great explosion.”
“There isn’t magic that can let someone travel into the past that far, though,” Harry said weakly. He only knew what a Time-Turner was in the first place because he’d overheard Hermione talking about it once.
“A newly invented curse might do the trick.”
“If you—felt the magic, could you—reverse it? Send me back?”
“I am afraid that is impossible. I felt the magic for long enough to identify it as the power of time, and then it dissipated.”
“I could—I could show you a Pensieve memory of the spell?” Harry offered. Pensieve memories were another thing he’d only ever heard of, but he knew more about how they worked. “Then you could use the same incantation on me and see if you could return me to my time?”
“There is no guarantee that is what would happen, instead of flinging you backwards even further, or destroying you altogether,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I’ll not risk it.”
Harry closed his eyes for a moment and slumped against the pillows. He felt Madam Thorne pat his shoulder. They probably assumed he was drowning in despair about not being able to go back.
And he was. Of course he was.
But only because he was thinking about the younger students in the school he had worked with as part of the resistance and what they would do without him now. If the war would ever be resolved.
Not—he didn’t leave anyone behind him who cared for him.
“We’ll let you get some rest, Mr.…”
“Potter. Harry Potter.”
“We’ll present you as Muggleborn,” Dumbledore said decisively. “That’s a common enough name that other Muggleborn children in the school have sometimes carried it. And we might confuse history if we announced that you were related to the Potter family.”
“I don’t know how I’m related to them anyway. I was orphaned pretty young. I don’t know much about my parents.”
“I am so sorry, my dear boy. Allow me to handle things. I do not know why you were cursed or what kind of situation you came from—although I hope you will tell me—but at least I can provide a comfortable environment for you now.”
“Thank you, Headmaster,” Harry whispered.
“Ah, now, I am only the Deputy Headmaster. The Headmaster is a man named Armando Dippet, who I know will be delighted to welcome you as well.”
A snort from behind him seemed to indicate that Madam Thorne doubted that, but Harry just opened his eyes and smiled at Dumbledore. The man was being kind, and that was all Harry really needed.
“Thank you, sir,” he said earnestly.
“Think nothing of it.”
*
Madam Thorne had left Harry some kind of sleeping draught, and Harry had taken it since he hadn’t been sleeping well lately (he wasn’t sure being unconscious counted). But he wasn’t really surprised when he opened his eyes in the middle of the night. Potions had always had an unpredictable effect on him, probably because he’d grown up without them for ten years.
That was what Madam Pomfrey said, anyway. I wonder if Madam Thorne would have a different theory?
In what had suddenly become his present, Harry leaned back with his hands behind his head and breathed.
It was probably beastly for him to feel grateful for this second chance—and he was still worried about the war and his little firsties and second-years—but he did. Oh, he did.
He’d been all right his first two years in Gryffindor, even if he’d been Petrified for a few days at the end of the second one, and even if he didn’t have any really close friends the way Seamus had Dean and Neville had Ron and Hermione. But then, in the third year, Ginny Weasley had taunted him about falling off his broom when the Dementors came near and Harry had just exploded at her, shouting something he wasn’t even meant to know. He wouldn’t have known it if he hadn’t been lying awake in the hospital wing when Ginny’s parents had a talk with her.
He’d known she was the Heir of Slytherin, and he’d yelled that she was such a coward he hadn’t even received an apology, and neither had any of the other students who’d been Petrified.
Ginny had practically frozen and then run from the common room. Ron had hexed Harry, Hermione had scolded him at the top of her lungs, and he’d lost the friendship of everyone in his House, just like that.
It turned out that Ginny had seen a Mind-Healer who’d helped her deal with the trauma of being possessed by practically blurring and taking away all the memories, so she didn’t really feel or remember them anymore. Harry’s accusation had brought down the walls and flooded her mind with them again. Ginny had had to withdraw from school for the rest of her second year, Harry’s third.
Ron hadn’t forgiven him, because Ginny was his sister. Neville hadn’t forgiven him, because he thought Harry should have been kinder. Hermione had sort of understood, because she’d been Petrified, too, but she had bitten her lip and gone silent whenever Ron glared at Harry or Ginny, when she returned the next year, fired off a hex.
There was no one here who knew about that. No one who knew about Harry’s cruelty or how Ron and Hermione and Neville and Ginny had all rejected his efforts to make up for it.
He could start over again.
Harry let out a long, tired breath, and fell asleep.
*
Well, there’s no choice about where you’ll go.
Harry nodded. The Hat had barely given him any kind of discussion when he was Sorted at eleven years old.
But to his surprise, the Hat didn’t shout out “GRYFFINDOR!” right away. Instead, it spoke gently into his head. You understand that you didn’t have to try as hard as you did to make up for a childish mistake?
Yes, I did. I hurt Ginny.
And she could have forgiven you or ignored you or moved on even if she decided not to forgive you, and so could the other Gryffindors. Why did you keep trying? Why did they keep turning against you?
Harry hesitated. It was a question he had asked himself, but he didn’t have any answer for the Hat, since he’d never been able to come up with one for himself. Finally he said, a little lamely, I always assumed I wasn’t much good at making friends. Dudley and his gang saw to that when I was little.
The Hat sighed. Try to have a different life here, it said, and then shouted “GRYFFINDOR!” before Harry could argue that of course he would have a different life here, he wasn’t about to go around blurting out other people’s secrets even if he did learn them.
Dumbledore swept the Hat off Harry’s head, beaming. “You are in my House, Mr. Potter. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, sir.” Harry grinned at him. Dumbledore seemed a lot more cheerful here, which was great. And Armando Dippet, the Headmaster, who sat behind the desk in front of Harry and received the Sorting Hat back from Dumbledore, gave Harry a gentle smile.
“I hope that you will feel welcome here, Mr. Potter. As it is, the Gryffindor prefects are all busy with classes at the moment, so we’ll have a Slytherin prefect, the Head Boy, escort you around the school. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” Harry said, although he noted, curious, that Dumbledore’s face had cooled and soured at what Dippet had said. “But I don’t really need a tour when I know it, you know?”
“We must keep that concealed, Mr. Potter.” Dippet blinked at him earnestly. “Just as we must keep your relationship to the pureblood Potter family concealed.”
Harry accepted that with a shrug. If he had known more about his relatives, he might have been eager to meet them, but as it was, they had always been a mystery. He hadn’t lost them by traveling back in time.
“Are you sure that Tom is the best choice, Armando? I thought he would be in class at this point, too.”
“Oh, he’s doing an independent study in Potions with Horace, Albus. I thought I mentioned that. He has this period free, and he can spare some time to escort Mr. Potter. He told me that he was quite looking forward to it.”
Harry listened in amusement, wondering what kind of person Riddle was. He hadn’t liked the Slytherins back in his time, but none of the ones here had formed an Inquisitorial Squad under Umbridge or tortured him with the Cruciatus. Maybe Riddle had the sort of ambition that required him to ingratiate himself with all the professors.
Although it didn’t seem to have worked on Dumbledore.
“Nonetheless, Armando, I have a free period right now as well. I will be happy to escort Mr. Potter, for what little escort he needs.”
“Nonsense, Albus. You always have something to do. And I already promised Mr. Riddle that we needed him.”
As if on cue, a quiet knock sounded on the door of the office. Dumledore gave it another sour look, but stepped aside, nearly colliding with one of the many bookshelves Dippet had around the place, as it opened and a student came in.
Harry blinked. This bloke probably matched every inch of tall, dark, and handsome. He had neat hair except for a curl in the middle of his forehead, stunning facial features, and striking dark blue eyes. He gave Harry a curious glance and a friendly smile, then turned and nodded a little to the professors. If he could see Dumbledore’s suspicion, he ignored it.
“Hello, Headmaster. Is this the new student I’m going to escort around the school?”
“Yes, yes, Tom.” Dippet beamed at Riddle, and Harry wondered if Dumbledore disliked the boy partially to keep the balance with how much Dippet loved him. Maybe he thought Riddle would get a big head without a dose of reality. “This is Harry Potter.”
“Potter?” Riddle’s eyes were sharp as he glanced at Harry.
Harry gave him an embarrassed smile, not hard to do when someone who must be the most popular person in the school was looking at him. Harry had never been popular. “Sorry, not the ones you’re thinking of. I’m Muggleborn.”
“Hmm.” Riddle’s eyes lingered on Harry’s features as if he could see the resemblance to any Potters at school fairly well. Maybe he could, but Harry was determined to maintain his story. Any Potters here would probably be eager to do the same thing because there was nowhere he could have come from that would be scandal-free for them.
“Mr. Potter’s relatives can no longer care for him,” Dippet said, the little lie they’d decided was vague enough to explain Harry going to Hogwarts. “Mr. Potter had wished to go to Hogwarts, but his relatives were upset about it.” Also true. “He’ll be in the seventh year with you, Mr. Riddle, and he’s been Sorted into Gryffindor. If you could make sure that his tour ends with Gryffindor Tower?”
“Of course, Headmaster,” Riddle said, with a perfect, polished smile. Harry sort of wished he looked like that.
But on the other hand, look at what had happened to poor Neville, being rich and famous and having people fawn all over him. Except for Ron, who had been his friend since they were little, and Hermione, who had become Neville’s friend with no prior ties to the magical world, Neville could never be sure that the people who surrounded him weren’t just trying to take advantage of him.
No, thank you.
“Follow me, please, Potter.”
And now he’d kept Riddle waiting. Harry held in a sigh as he followed Riddle. He was just awkward, there was no way around it.
*
“Where did you go to school before?” Riddle asked as they walked down the staircases towards the Great Hall. Harry noticed that the stairs seemed to spin less than during his time in Hogwarts. He wondered idly if age had changed them or if they obeyed Riddle because he was Head Boy.
“Well, I attended Muggle school,” Harry said. Dumbledore and Dippet had both told him that it was important to tell the literal, exact truth as much as he could, without lying, although neither had said why, exactly. Harry kind of enjoyed it. It was like a game. “My Muggle relatives didn’t like magic.”
“And they didn’t like you.”
Harry might have thought Riddle was asking a question, except he didn’t sound like it. He had stopped walking, and his eyes pierced Harry.
Harry looked down, embarrassed. “Something like that,” he said weakly.
“I see,” Riddle said, and his voice was soft and warm. “You don’t need to worry about it. Although some of the purebloods here can be…prejudiced…it matters less in Gryffindor than in some of the other Houses.”
Harry nodded. He was just glad that he hadn’t been Sorted into Slytherin either time. “Yeah, Professor Dumbledore said something about that.”
He glanced up in time to see Riddle’s face darken. Huh. Did he not like Professor Dumbledore? Well, Harry could see that, if Dumbledore didn’t like him. Harry wouldn’t have been able to control his face very well if someone had said something about Snape, either.
“I see,” Riddle murmured. “One thing you should keep in mind is that there are many—diverse perspectives in the magical world. Things that you might not know if you have kept mostly to the Muggle.”
Harry nodded. “Thanks.” He could play off his ignorance of the magical world as just being raised in the Muggle one, he supposed, rather than being from a whole different time.
Although maybe things hadn’t changed that much. Harry had only seen the more obedient staircases as a difference in Hogwarts so far.
“Riddle!”
Harry looked up, and nearly fell into a defensive stance. Someone was hurrying down the staircase towards them who had to be a Malfoy, he looked so blond and pale and pointy.
Not Draco, not about to hit you with the Cruciatus, Harry chanted to himself, and did his best to just look bewildered while the boy ran up and stood there, panting, in front of Riddle.
“Yes, Malfoy?” Riddle’s voice had the slightest impatient edge to it.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the Malfoy said, seeming to decide that Harry’s presence at Riddle’s shoulder did constitute something to be interrupted, “but Cassius is doing it again, and you said to inform you, and—” He sneaked another look at Harry.
Riddle sighed, long enough that Harry couldn’t help a silent comparison to Dudley. “I’m sorry, Potter,” he told Harry, ignoring the way that Malfoy mouthed Harry’s last name to himself as if he couldn’t believe it, “but this is something that has to be handled. It is part of my duties as…Head Boy. Will you be all right by yourself?”
Harry nodded easily. In a way, he was surprised that he had got to command as much of Riddle’s time as he had, but then again, the Headmaster had asked Riddle to do it. “Yeah, that’s fine. Maybe just show me which way I have to go to meet some Gryffindors?”
“Straight ahead through those doors there and to the table at the right,” Riddle said, nodding towards the Great Hall. “I believe some are still at lunch.”
“Okay. Thanks, Riddle.”
“I do look forward to our continued acquaintance, Potter,” Riddle said, lingering behind despite Malfoy’s trembling, controlled franticness. “Do let me know if you have any questions about Hogwarts. I know much.”
“Thanks, Riddle,” Harry repeated.
With one more piercing glance, Riddle turned and strode away in the direction that Malfoy gestured to. Malfoy’s words tumbled over themselves, something about “Cassius” and “threats” and “stomach,” before Riddle must have put up a Privacy Charm, because they cut off abruptly.
Harry shook his head as he opened the doors to the Great Hall. He doubted he would meet anyone in Gryffindor as overwhelming as Tom Riddle, or as handsome.
But not as popular, either. Harry felt a flutter in his stomach, a wistful hope that things would be different in this timeline.
Here, he could make friends. Here, he could study for his NEWTS and survive without a war and maybe even have a career.
He hoped.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Tom, mentions of background canon pairings
Rating: R
Content Notes: AU (Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived), time travel, romance, angst, bullying, mentions of violence and torture, past minor character death
Summary: AU. Harry isn’t the Boy-Who-Lived, and he committed a major mistake in the past that cost him several of his friends, but he can still help with fighting the Carrows during his seventh year. At least, until Alecto Carrow casts an experimental spell on him that ends up flinging him fifty years into the past. Harry makes himself at home in the past, unaware of the real identity of the handsome Slytherin, Tom Riddle, who seems oddly attracted to him.
Author’s Notes: This is the first story my “From Litha to Lammas” series being posted between Midsummer and the first of August. It should have five to seven parts.
Hung the Moon
Harry lifted his chin. He was bleeding, trembling in all his limbs from the Cruciatus that Alecto Carrow had cast on him for “practice,” and had what felt like a few broken fingers. But it didn’t matter. He faced the Carrows and he sneered.
“You’re going to tell us where the rest of your little resistance is hiding,” Amycus hissed, spinning his wand around his fingers.
“No.”
“We’ll just torture you—”
“No, wait, Amycus.” Alecto took a step around her brother, eyes fastened on Harry, so big that she looked a little like Hedwig, Harry’s owl, who had died earlier that school year. Harry buried the memory. “There’s a little spell that Bellatrix was developing, and I’ve always wanted to try it out.”
“What’s that, sister dear?”
Alecto leaned nearer to Amycus and whispered, so Harry couldn’t hear. He didn’t mind that much. He was leaning to the side and bleeding badly now. This gave him a chance to recover himself, a little.
“Well. Are you sure that Bellatrix won’t get you angry that you had the chance to cast it on a student before she did?”
Alecto laughed, more bell-like and cheerful than anyone who had caused that much death should be able to be. “It doesn’t matter if she is! We’re not going to tell her.” She smiled and aimed her wand at Harry. “And neither is this one.”
This is probably the moment I die.
But the incantation that Alecto spoke sounded, honestly, too long and wordy to make anyone die. The blue light that shot out of her wand and enveloped Harry made him glow, and tremble, and feel as if he were falling to the ground and bleeding out.
Maybe it just makes you suffer faster from the wounds you already have.
There was a sensation of wind rushing around him, and he heard several people shouting. His last, fleeting thought was that he hoped they weren’t students who had seen him falling and would feel obligated to rescue him.
Let me die, if it helps hide them. They’ve suffered enough.
*
“Who is he?”
“I have no idea, Deputy Headmaster.”
Harry stirred, and the voices stopped. He turned his head, and blinked as he saw Headmaster Dumbledore standing over him.
“You’re dead,” he murmured in wonder. He’d never had as much to do with the Headmaster as some of his fellow Gryffindors, but, well, it was hard to miss when someone got hit with a Killing Curse and fell off the Astronomy Tower.
“What, my boy?”
“You’re dead,” Harry repeated, although he was a little less certain now. This man’s eyes were the right shade of blue and he had the long beard and the crazy robes and he looked exactly like the Headmaster, but his beard and hair were red, and he seemed a lot younger. “Or maybe I’m going mad. There’s that possibility, too.”
“I wouldn’t think there’s a strong chance of that, my boy,” Dumbledore said, and smiled at him. Then he glanced over Harry at someone standing on the other side of the bed. “Is there, Madam Thorne?”
Madam Thorne?
Harry turned his head, slowly and painfully, to see a mediwitch—or someone he assumed was a mediwitch—standing next to his bed and glaring at him as if everything were his fault. At least that was familiar. It was the way Madam Pomfrey had glared at him every time he got injured since he’d started playing Seeker in second year.
“He is not going to go mad,” Madam Thorne said in a tart voice with a hint of an Irish accent. “He might, however, wish he were.”
“Can someone tell me what happened?” Harry asked groggily. He stared down at his arms, which seemed to have bandages on them, but not the kind of all-encompassing ones he would have thought an unknown curse from Alecto Carrow would need.
“You do not know?”
Dumbledore sounded fascinated. Harry shook his head. “I was standing in front of Alecto Carrow, and she was going to curse me. She said she was going to use a curse that Bellatrix Lestrange invented. But I don’t know what happened when the curse hit me.”
Dumbledore and Madam Thorne exchanged a quick look. Then Dumbledore said, “I do know some people with the last names of Carrow and Lestrange, including some of our students, but I do not know the Alecto or Bellatrix of which you speak.”
“Bellatrix sounds like a name a Black would have,” Madam Thorne murmured. “They are obsessed with stars.”
Harry swallowed at the reminder of Sirius, whom he’d never really got to know before his godfather died, and said, “Well, I think she was a Black before she got married. Does that help?”
“I have reason to know the Black family tree well, Albus, and there is no Bellatrix on it.”
“I know you have reason, Madam Thorne,” Dumbledore said, with an odd respect in his voice. Why would the Headmaster—or Deputy Headmaster—respect a mediwitch so much?
Then again, looking at the firm set of Madam Thorne’s jaw, Harry thought he knew.
“This is just more evidence that my theory is correct, Deputy Headmaster.”
“Yes, it seems so.” Dumbledore’s eyes didn’t twinkle so much as he turned to look at Harry. “I’m afraid you will find, my boy, that you have traveled into the past. Two decades at least, if you can speak of people as adults who are not even born yet.”
Harry stared at him and licked dry lips. Then he turned to Madam Thorne. “This is why you thought I might want to go mad?”
“Indeed.” Her voice was gentle now. “I am sorry, child. There was magic lingering around you that I only saw once before, when I was permitted to study a Time-Turner. But where the sand in a Time-Turner held a small, delicate amount of magic, the power around you was a great explosion.”
“There isn’t magic that can let someone travel into the past that far, though,” Harry said weakly. He only knew what a Time-Turner was in the first place because he’d overheard Hermione talking about it once.
“A newly invented curse might do the trick.”
“If you—felt the magic, could you—reverse it? Send me back?”
“I am afraid that is impossible. I felt the magic for long enough to identify it as the power of time, and then it dissipated.”
“I could—I could show you a Pensieve memory of the spell?” Harry offered. Pensieve memories were another thing he’d only ever heard of, but he knew more about how they worked. “Then you could use the same incantation on me and see if you could return me to my time?”
“There is no guarantee that is what would happen, instead of flinging you backwards even further, or destroying you altogether,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I’ll not risk it.”
Harry closed his eyes for a moment and slumped against the pillows. He felt Madam Thorne pat his shoulder. They probably assumed he was drowning in despair about not being able to go back.
And he was. Of course he was.
But only because he was thinking about the younger students in the school he had worked with as part of the resistance and what they would do without him now. If the war would ever be resolved.
Not—he didn’t leave anyone behind him who cared for him.
“We’ll let you get some rest, Mr.…”
“Potter. Harry Potter.”
“We’ll present you as Muggleborn,” Dumbledore said decisively. “That’s a common enough name that other Muggleborn children in the school have sometimes carried it. And we might confuse history if we announced that you were related to the Potter family.”
“I don’t know how I’m related to them anyway. I was orphaned pretty young. I don’t know much about my parents.”
“I am so sorry, my dear boy. Allow me to handle things. I do not know why you were cursed or what kind of situation you came from—although I hope you will tell me—but at least I can provide a comfortable environment for you now.”
“Thank you, Headmaster,” Harry whispered.
“Ah, now, I am only the Deputy Headmaster. The Headmaster is a man named Armando Dippet, who I know will be delighted to welcome you as well.”
A snort from behind him seemed to indicate that Madam Thorne doubted that, but Harry just opened his eyes and smiled at Dumbledore. The man was being kind, and that was all Harry really needed.
“Thank you, sir,” he said earnestly.
“Think nothing of it.”
*
Madam Thorne had left Harry some kind of sleeping draught, and Harry had taken it since he hadn’t been sleeping well lately (he wasn’t sure being unconscious counted). But he wasn’t really surprised when he opened his eyes in the middle of the night. Potions had always had an unpredictable effect on him, probably because he’d grown up without them for ten years.
That was what Madam Pomfrey said, anyway. I wonder if Madam Thorne would have a different theory?
In what had suddenly become his present, Harry leaned back with his hands behind his head and breathed.
It was probably beastly for him to feel grateful for this second chance—and he was still worried about the war and his little firsties and second-years—but he did. Oh, he did.
He’d been all right his first two years in Gryffindor, even if he’d been Petrified for a few days at the end of the second one, and even if he didn’t have any really close friends the way Seamus had Dean and Neville had Ron and Hermione. But then, in the third year, Ginny Weasley had taunted him about falling off his broom when the Dementors came near and Harry had just exploded at her, shouting something he wasn’t even meant to know. He wouldn’t have known it if he hadn’t been lying awake in the hospital wing when Ginny’s parents had a talk with her.
He’d known she was the Heir of Slytherin, and he’d yelled that she was such a coward he hadn’t even received an apology, and neither had any of the other students who’d been Petrified.
Ginny had practically frozen and then run from the common room. Ron had hexed Harry, Hermione had scolded him at the top of her lungs, and he’d lost the friendship of everyone in his House, just like that.
It turned out that Ginny had seen a Mind-Healer who’d helped her deal with the trauma of being possessed by practically blurring and taking away all the memories, so she didn’t really feel or remember them anymore. Harry’s accusation had brought down the walls and flooded her mind with them again. Ginny had had to withdraw from school for the rest of her second year, Harry’s third.
Ron hadn’t forgiven him, because Ginny was his sister. Neville hadn’t forgiven him, because he thought Harry should have been kinder. Hermione had sort of understood, because she’d been Petrified, too, but she had bitten her lip and gone silent whenever Ron glared at Harry or Ginny, when she returned the next year, fired off a hex.
There was no one here who knew about that. No one who knew about Harry’s cruelty or how Ron and Hermione and Neville and Ginny had all rejected his efforts to make up for it.
He could start over again.
Harry let out a long, tired breath, and fell asleep.
*
Well, there’s no choice about where you’ll go.
Harry nodded. The Hat had barely given him any kind of discussion when he was Sorted at eleven years old.
But to his surprise, the Hat didn’t shout out “GRYFFINDOR!” right away. Instead, it spoke gently into his head. You understand that you didn’t have to try as hard as you did to make up for a childish mistake?
Yes, I did. I hurt Ginny.
And she could have forgiven you or ignored you or moved on even if she decided not to forgive you, and so could the other Gryffindors. Why did you keep trying? Why did they keep turning against you?
Harry hesitated. It was a question he had asked himself, but he didn’t have any answer for the Hat, since he’d never been able to come up with one for himself. Finally he said, a little lamely, I always assumed I wasn’t much good at making friends. Dudley and his gang saw to that when I was little.
The Hat sighed. Try to have a different life here, it said, and then shouted “GRYFFINDOR!” before Harry could argue that of course he would have a different life here, he wasn’t about to go around blurting out other people’s secrets even if he did learn them.
Dumbledore swept the Hat off Harry’s head, beaming. “You are in my House, Mr. Potter. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, sir.” Harry grinned at him. Dumbledore seemed a lot more cheerful here, which was great. And Armando Dippet, the Headmaster, who sat behind the desk in front of Harry and received the Sorting Hat back from Dumbledore, gave Harry a gentle smile.
“I hope that you will feel welcome here, Mr. Potter. As it is, the Gryffindor prefects are all busy with classes at the moment, so we’ll have a Slytherin prefect, the Head Boy, escort you around the school. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” Harry said, although he noted, curious, that Dumbledore’s face had cooled and soured at what Dippet had said. “But I don’t really need a tour when I know it, you know?”
“We must keep that concealed, Mr. Potter.” Dippet blinked at him earnestly. “Just as we must keep your relationship to the pureblood Potter family concealed.”
Harry accepted that with a shrug. If he had known more about his relatives, he might have been eager to meet them, but as it was, they had always been a mystery. He hadn’t lost them by traveling back in time.
“Are you sure that Tom is the best choice, Armando? I thought he would be in class at this point, too.”
“Oh, he’s doing an independent study in Potions with Horace, Albus. I thought I mentioned that. He has this period free, and he can spare some time to escort Mr. Potter. He told me that he was quite looking forward to it.”
Harry listened in amusement, wondering what kind of person Riddle was. He hadn’t liked the Slytherins back in his time, but none of the ones here had formed an Inquisitorial Squad under Umbridge or tortured him with the Cruciatus. Maybe Riddle had the sort of ambition that required him to ingratiate himself with all the professors.
Although it didn’t seem to have worked on Dumbledore.
“Nonetheless, Armando, I have a free period right now as well. I will be happy to escort Mr. Potter, for what little escort he needs.”
“Nonsense, Albus. You always have something to do. And I already promised Mr. Riddle that we needed him.”
As if on cue, a quiet knock sounded on the door of the office. Dumledore gave it another sour look, but stepped aside, nearly colliding with one of the many bookshelves Dippet had around the place, as it opened and a student came in.
Harry blinked. This bloke probably matched every inch of tall, dark, and handsome. He had neat hair except for a curl in the middle of his forehead, stunning facial features, and striking dark blue eyes. He gave Harry a curious glance and a friendly smile, then turned and nodded a little to the professors. If he could see Dumbledore’s suspicion, he ignored it.
“Hello, Headmaster. Is this the new student I’m going to escort around the school?”
“Yes, yes, Tom.” Dippet beamed at Riddle, and Harry wondered if Dumbledore disliked the boy partially to keep the balance with how much Dippet loved him. Maybe he thought Riddle would get a big head without a dose of reality. “This is Harry Potter.”
“Potter?” Riddle’s eyes were sharp as he glanced at Harry.
Harry gave him an embarrassed smile, not hard to do when someone who must be the most popular person in the school was looking at him. Harry had never been popular. “Sorry, not the ones you’re thinking of. I’m Muggleborn.”
“Hmm.” Riddle’s eyes lingered on Harry’s features as if he could see the resemblance to any Potters at school fairly well. Maybe he could, but Harry was determined to maintain his story. Any Potters here would probably be eager to do the same thing because there was nowhere he could have come from that would be scandal-free for them.
“Mr. Potter’s relatives can no longer care for him,” Dippet said, the little lie they’d decided was vague enough to explain Harry going to Hogwarts. “Mr. Potter had wished to go to Hogwarts, but his relatives were upset about it.” Also true. “He’ll be in the seventh year with you, Mr. Riddle, and he’s been Sorted into Gryffindor. If you could make sure that his tour ends with Gryffindor Tower?”
“Of course, Headmaster,” Riddle said, with a perfect, polished smile. Harry sort of wished he looked like that.
But on the other hand, look at what had happened to poor Neville, being rich and famous and having people fawn all over him. Except for Ron, who had been his friend since they were little, and Hermione, who had become Neville’s friend with no prior ties to the magical world, Neville could never be sure that the people who surrounded him weren’t just trying to take advantage of him.
No, thank you.
“Follow me, please, Potter.”
And now he’d kept Riddle waiting. Harry held in a sigh as he followed Riddle. He was just awkward, there was no way around it.
*
“Where did you go to school before?” Riddle asked as they walked down the staircases towards the Great Hall. Harry noticed that the stairs seemed to spin less than during his time in Hogwarts. He wondered idly if age had changed them or if they obeyed Riddle because he was Head Boy.
“Well, I attended Muggle school,” Harry said. Dumbledore and Dippet had both told him that it was important to tell the literal, exact truth as much as he could, without lying, although neither had said why, exactly. Harry kind of enjoyed it. It was like a game. “My Muggle relatives didn’t like magic.”
“And they didn’t like you.”
Harry might have thought Riddle was asking a question, except he didn’t sound like it. He had stopped walking, and his eyes pierced Harry.
Harry looked down, embarrassed. “Something like that,” he said weakly.
“I see,” Riddle said, and his voice was soft and warm. “You don’t need to worry about it. Although some of the purebloods here can be…prejudiced…it matters less in Gryffindor than in some of the other Houses.”
Harry nodded. He was just glad that he hadn’t been Sorted into Slytherin either time. “Yeah, Professor Dumbledore said something about that.”
He glanced up in time to see Riddle’s face darken. Huh. Did he not like Professor Dumbledore? Well, Harry could see that, if Dumbledore didn’t like him. Harry wouldn’t have been able to control his face very well if someone had said something about Snape, either.
“I see,” Riddle murmured. “One thing you should keep in mind is that there are many—diverse perspectives in the magical world. Things that you might not know if you have kept mostly to the Muggle.”
Harry nodded. “Thanks.” He could play off his ignorance of the magical world as just being raised in the Muggle one, he supposed, rather than being from a whole different time.
Although maybe things hadn’t changed that much. Harry had only seen the more obedient staircases as a difference in Hogwarts so far.
“Riddle!”
Harry looked up, and nearly fell into a defensive stance. Someone was hurrying down the staircase towards them who had to be a Malfoy, he looked so blond and pale and pointy.
Not Draco, not about to hit you with the Cruciatus, Harry chanted to himself, and did his best to just look bewildered while the boy ran up and stood there, panting, in front of Riddle.
“Yes, Malfoy?” Riddle’s voice had the slightest impatient edge to it.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the Malfoy said, seeming to decide that Harry’s presence at Riddle’s shoulder did constitute something to be interrupted, “but Cassius is doing it again, and you said to inform you, and—” He sneaked another look at Harry.
Riddle sighed, long enough that Harry couldn’t help a silent comparison to Dudley. “I’m sorry, Potter,” he told Harry, ignoring the way that Malfoy mouthed Harry’s last name to himself as if he couldn’t believe it, “but this is something that has to be handled. It is part of my duties as…Head Boy. Will you be all right by yourself?”
Harry nodded easily. In a way, he was surprised that he had got to command as much of Riddle’s time as he had, but then again, the Headmaster had asked Riddle to do it. “Yeah, that’s fine. Maybe just show me which way I have to go to meet some Gryffindors?”
“Straight ahead through those doors there and to the table at the right,” Riddle said, nodding towards the Great Hall. “I believe some are still at lunch.”
“Okay. Thanks, Riddle.”
“I do look forward to our continued acquaintance, Potter,” Riddle said, lingering behind despite Malfoy’s trembling, controlled franticness. “Do let me know if you have any questions about Hogwarts. I know much.”
“Thanks, Riddle,” Harry repeated.
With one more piercing glance, Riddle turned and strode away in the direction that Malfoy gestured to. Malfoy’s words tumbled over themselves, something about “Cassius” and “threats” and “stomach,” before Riddle must have put up a Privacy Charm, because they cut off abruptly.
Harry shook his head as he opened the doors to the Great Hall. He doubted he would meet anyone in Gryffindor as overwhelming as Tom Riddle, or as handsome.
But not as popular, either. Harry felt a flutter in his stomach, a wistful hope that things would be different in this timeline.
Here, he could make friends. Here, he could study for his NEWTS and survive without a war and maybe even have a career.
He hoped.