the shrine

The temple looms over them all. Always covered with some ancient mist, shrubbery desperately clinging to the stony top— like some palace, as ancient as it is decayed.

When he was younger, he used to spend days on that mountain, greedily gathering delightfully red berries, carefully tucked under fawning leaves. That precious red would stain his mouth, filling that hole inside of him that grew so wide, week after week— still, always, when he lifted his basket, Lily—his caretaker, his mother—she would gently pry each and every berry away.

“It is not ours, my dear,” she would say, as she urged Harry to walk a little faster by the bones that kneeled over in the streets. 

Tears had icily streamed from his cheeks. “They are beautiful,” she would say, dabbing away his tears. “That is why they are only for the mountain.” 

Back then, he had wailed. He had screamed. He had done so much in those days— and perhaps even now he screams, but he has long learned to fold it until it all echoed, until it all whispered, until everything was practically silent, objection hidden deep in the night air that burned away at dawn. 

Harry tries to do that now, as he is led through a twisting, winding path. But the stones grate underneath his shoes— the leather uncomfortably pressing into his soles, the slight stick of his toes as they peel only to be smushed back. 

“Watch your step,” the guard says. Harry bites back a retort—how the hell can he watch his step if he has a blindfold over his eyes—and merely nods in deference. 

Deference. Be quiet. Be still. 

This is the way. He breathes in. He breathes out. Harry’s mind wanders to his friends— their sweet yet earthy smells that spoke of the rain and the dirt—surely they had to be alright? 

He is dropped with little fanfare. Harry forces everything away from his thoughts.

A wavering voice. “This is he.” Even without his eyes, Harry can smell it– that careful press of ozone to the body, the slight twang that cuts through powdered cream and rich pencil. 

“You are dismissed.” Strong. Demanding. Clothes rapidly shuffle behind him, noise waning with every second. Harry wishes he could open his— 

“Kneel.” And with years of training, he does. 

His blindfold is removed. 

It is a boy. He emerges, like some gilded myth— as beautiful as all of the legends had warned about. “His features,” they had all whispered, “…too glorious for this world.” Dark eyes, darker hair, the boy flutters his eyelashes behind some mystical veil. 

The child of the moon. The beauty of the land. 

Unwillingly, Harry catalogs each individual pebble as they feverishly press into his calves. Petals wave before his vision. 

“They tell me…” and the boy’s syllables are meticulously rolled, that slight stain, that crimped accent– “you are one of those Potters.” 

Misty veil gently touches each word. Harry notices his hat, made of rough straw, curls  fluttering in the wind, like some lost dove.

Harry’s eyes absentmindedly trace the detailed lining of the boy’s robes. “They’re right.” The fabric shakes with the breeze. The cut— the lining—the seam, millimeters apart, a love letter of quiet patience—and yet the boy drags it so. He grits his teeth. 

“You Potters have given us quite the trouble, over the years. Well?” He tilts his head. “Are you here to plead for mercy?” 

The words seem so mechanical– no, that’s not quite right. Harry imagines the characters, spread out, each exactly apart from the other, stacked perfectly with ceaseless tradition, slightly stained with excess water. Ineffable purpose dangles precariously off of his tongue.

“Yes.” 

The boy twitches. What a luxury. Harry tries to mold his features into sorrow, into unrelenting repent. 

“You are lying.” Well. Harry barely stifles a laugh.

“I do not like liars.” Harry feels it—teetering off of a cliff, too afraid to look over the edge—“Tell me the truth.”

Harry swallows. 

“I want to kill you.”

Silence. The boy laughs. Harry feels something sweet stain the edges of his teeth. 

“And how would you kill me?”

He is amused. The boy is merely amused. Harry feels a flicker of irritation— and finally, he lets it fill the air between them.

He licks his lips. ”It would be a,” he trembles, the word oozing over his lips, “surprise attack. After the third guard shift.” Cool night. The clashing of steel sword. Soft muttering. “Perhaps after Malfoy steps out for a break,” he says, and prays he is right.

“Oh?” The veil has slipped, just slightly, from his face. From this angle, Harry can see the other’s eyes gleaming dangerously. He tamps down that swelling, unnamable emotion. 

Harry meets his gaze. His eyes are just like water over a crumbling leaf— flecks of burning, blazing red. 

“I’d check to make sure you were asleep. Your hair would fan out over the sheets...” Harry is rambling now, he’s sure of it, but he can’t stop, “…just before I would kill you.” 

He snorts, his body unconsciously relaxing. “With what weapon?”

Harry pauses. “Perhaps you’d let me use your own, my lord?”

He laughs. It’s a real laugh, this time. Harry, unwillingly, admires the lovely thing.

The boy uses some cloth to dab his eyes. “You’re quite the delight. We don’t get your kind often.”

Harry laughs. 

“Potter, was it?”

He stops laughing. 

Fear, electric-green, shudders through his body, mixing with the lingering pain in his legs, that lingering, earthy scent. He thinks it might rain.

What has he done?

His friends—Ginny, Hermione, Ron…

The position he kneels in is exceptionally well executed, almost picturesque. Haltingly, Harry gets up, brushing away the dirt to reveal saffron-red marks. 

The boy merely looks at him. “I have not… dismissed you. Yet.” No veil can veil the pressing demand that wafts through the boy’s words. 

The wind blows. Delicately, Harry’s nostrils are filled with a sickly-sweet scent. 

Harry tries to swallow the unsayable– it hurts, it’s cold, I’m tired– and he vomits the most important part. ”I apologize,” he begins, almost haltingly, “for my rudeness.” 

How do syllables, once familiar, seem almost foreign to his mouth? 

“I…”

The boy smiles. It is with teeth.

“Potter,” he says, mouth fully tasting each syllable. “What do they call you, at home?”

“…Harry.”

“My mother used to call me Tom.”

Unconsciously, Harry presses his fingers to his hand. It is warm. In his dreams, it is always cold. 

Tom, startlingly, looks far away, eyes fixed somewhere in the distance, before suddenly they flicker back onto Harry. He waves his hand. A towering, ever-present red arch, curled like a sleeping dragon, rises before Harry’s eyes. “I suppose I will make an exception.”

Harry blinks. “What?”

“Go, Harry. Come when the moon is missing, and when the guards are asleep.”

He leans in. Harry can feel the texture of the veil, draping over him like water— barely masking Tom’s hot breath, ghosting over his cheek. 

“Do not disappoint me.”