Something new
“Shit!” Harry exclaimed, jumping backwards. “Fuck! Are you serious!”
Despite what the fully reformed Tom Riddle in front of him must have thought, Harry was not cursing him out. (Well, maybe a little bit.) He was cursing bloody Fate. It was the dangling fucking stick all over again. He just hadn’t been smart enough to realize that there was no bloody prize. Of course nothing was ever that easy for Harry Potter.
Too immersed in his own thoughts, Harry didn’t even notice Riddle grabbing his wrists until he was flush up against his chest. Really, it was so very muggle of him.
“And who may you be?”
“Why the fuck are you holding me like this?” Harry spat, maneuvering an elbow and jamming it into the soulless git’s abdomen.
Riddle didn’t even have the grace to visibly react. He just held on to Harry’s wrists even more tightly. “And what are you, a student with unmarked robes, doing here? ”
“Where?” Harry blurted out before he thought to look around.
Oh, fucking hell, they were in the Room of Hidden Things. And it didn’t even look half-charred like it had when he and Malfoy had been sent to do cleanup, back in 2000. It was completely renewed—Harry didn’t know magic could do that.
Scratch that—he did know magic could do that. He just didn’t know who or why had even decided to redo the room in the first place.
He didn’t even know if anyone but him and the others who had been present for the whole fiendfyre incident had heard of the room, save Dumbledore, but Dumbledore was dead, and had been for quite some time now.
So that left him with…Tom Riddle. In the Room of Hidden Things. And he was wearing unmarked Hogwarts robes, yeah.
But, when Harry thought about it for a second more, he came to the conclusion that the boy standing in front of him seriously couldn’t have been his old enemy. The sucker had refused to do anything muggle on principle. He would have never just grabbed Harry and practically caressed him without the help of magic. And Harry had checked—he hadn’t been a member of the Auror force for nothing, thank you very much—there was no detectable spellwork in the air, this ‘Riddle’ wasn’t trapping him there, so Harry just let himself be awkwardly held against the guy. Whoever or whatever he was.
“First, you tell me who you are, or I’ll take you to the Headmaster’s office.”
Harry scowled. He did not want to explain himself to the bloody Headmaster. “First, you tell me who you are, or I’ll find Tom Riddle and tell him he has an impersonator,” he mimicked.
That made ‘Riddle’ frown, his annoyingly perfect reformed face not even slightly marred by the look of genuine confusion he was now wearing.
After a pause, “I am Tom Riddle.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. And I’m Roonil Wazlib.”
‘Riddle’ pushed Harry away from him a bit, still holding his wrists. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wazlib,” he said, successfully hiding the confusion in his voice, though Harry could see it in his eyes, which had changed back to brown. “But I really must ask what you’re doing here. If you can’t answer sufficiently, I’ll have to take you to see the Headmaster. Prefect duties. You understand.”
Harry almost rolled his eyes again but then stopped himself; he saved that compliment specially for the real Tom Riddle and for when dumb things happened when he watched Quidditch matches. There was no need to be rude to this faux Riddle. The nutcase was dead and Harry would let him rest in peace. Whatever peace meant for a failed Dark Lord.
“—Or from Durmstrang? Ilvermorny? Now I’m really curious,” faux-Riddle said, walking and pulling Harry along with him. He kept on going on and on. Harry had zoned out a while ago.The impostor had gotten Voldemort’s penchant for monologuing down pat, at least.
“Uh, neither,” Harry responded without really thinking. He was more concerned with how he looked. When he glanced down at his own wrist—that ‘Riddle’ wouldn’t let go of—he couldn’t see one of the more prominent scars he had received during a notably intense Auror raid. Huh. That was kind of weird.
“Roonil,” faux-Riddle said, a bit more harshly this time, but not very much so, Harry suspected he was still trying to keep up his pretense of being a perfect pupil and not at all the killer who had let loose a basilisk on an entire school of unsuspecting students. “Who are you?”
“Um,” Harry said, smacking his lips. He really didn’t know what to say. “Where are you taking me?”
Harry heard faux-Riddle mutter a prayer under his breath before slowly exhaling.
Interesting. Harry didn’t know Voldemort had been religious.
“To the Headmaster, Roonil.” Harry blinked a couple times. It was weird to hear him referred to as ‘Roonil’. He’d have to fix that. “Because you haven’t deigned to give me a proper answer at all. ”
“Not the Headmaster,” Harry begged suddenly as they reached the door that was probably the exit. “I can’t see the Headmaster. They’ll—”
“—Kick you out?”
Harry gulped. “Yeah.” Something like that. Ginny’s friend wouldn’t take kindly to seeing him around Hogwarts.
Faux-Riddle glared at him, eyes steely, but still not red. “Well, perhaps you should have thought of that instead of not answering a single one of my questions.”
“I really have bigger things to think about right now.”
Faux-Riddle’s nostril’s flared, but Harry ignored it.
He could afford pissing off faux-Riddle. It was the real one that was annoying and could actually cause problems.
Once they were out of the door, Harry tried to dart away, but faux-Riddle just grabbed onto him tighter and muttered some spell under his breath that tied Harry’s wrists together, the fucker.
Still, Harry let himself be led down weirdly unfamiliar halls by the shittiest Dark Lord he’d ever known.
“You know, I could kill you,” he told faux-Riddle. Harry was letting this happen because he was itching to see where Fate had led him this time, not because he was incompetent or anything like that.
Faux-Riddle let out a snort of laughter but nothing else.
Harry tried to kick at him in response. Faux-Riddle just smoothly stepped out of the way. Git.
Everything was getting kind of weird. The more Harry looked around, the more he noticed people he had never seen before. Ok, that made sense, he didn’t know any of the current Hogwarts students except for Teddy, but that still didn’t answer why Harry didn’t recognize any of the robe styles they were wearing.
Kids, right? They always did weird stuff. Back in the day Harry’s sets of teen robes had been the same style as those sold for adults, but it wasn’t surprising at all that kids now would subvert expectations and all that. He gave a congratulatory nod to some Ravenclaw boy with red highlights. Good for him. Harry had always wanted to dye his hair but the whole dark lord thing had gotten in the way. And then life. And then he’d just never done it.
Oh, what he’d give to be a kid again.
“Right this way,” faux-Riddle told Harry, leading him to the left and down a corridor Harry had never been down before. They had gathered a bit of a crowd, with curious comments here and there, but faux-Riddle ignored the people around him without even trying.
Wow. Faux-Riddle was acting just like what Harry thought actual Riddle would act like, if he’d had a chance to see the born-again git in psychopath action in the 40s. Harry needed to get this guy, whoever or whatever it was, to Hermione immediately. Merlin knew she would have a blasting time dissecting it. He could already hear her coagulating her thoughts—“We could figure out what causes such psychopaths! And then ways to stop it from happening again. Oh, a real reference is such a perfect thing, Harry!”
Then they stopped at what was apparently the Headmaster’s door.
“You’re at the wrong place,” Harry informed faux-Riddle. It wasn’t the impostor’s fault he didn’t know where he was going. Poor sap probably was having a nightmare trying to act like Riddle anyways.
Faux-Riddle frowned at him again. “And how would you know that, Mr. Wazlib?”
Harry shrugged. “Common sense.”
Faux-Riddle just stood there with a certain look upon his face, trying to figure him out, until he swerved around and said something to some gargoyle statue they were facing. “Tojours pur.”
“Again?” Harry exclaimed. “They re-use passwords?” That would have been a great thing to know when he’d been a student. He could have pilfered…certain…items from Severus Snape’s grasp.
But faux-Riddle had ignored him and was already dragging him inside and up a swirling staircase. It went on and on and on until Harry was pushed into a couch by the devil’s spawn himself.
He held out his hands to faux-Riddle. “You can take these off now, you know.”
Harry could do it himself but he didn’t feel like it. Plus, it was a good way to see what kind of magic this faux-Riddle was made up of. It had been like twenty minutes and Harry still hadn’t thought of a kind of creature that could emulate a human and their magic so completely. Especially if said human was definitely dead. For what felt like the sixtieth time that day, he wished he had Hermione with him.
Faux-Riddle just shook his head.
Harry kicked in his direction again.
“Mr. Riddle, what a surprising—ah. Who do we have here?” Some old man had tottered out of a side room and was staring at him quizzically.
He looked back and forth between faux-Riddle and Harry. “Who is this?”
“Roonil Wazlib,” faux-Riddle said at the same time Harry said “I really don’t know”.
They looked at each other and then back at the old man.
“This is Roonil Wazlib,” faux-Riddle repeated, giving the old man a polite nod. “I found him when I was taking a walk around the grounds, Professor.”
“No you didn’t—” Harry started to say, but then he stopped himself. He was actually curious now. What was this old guy going to do? He didn’t recognize Harry—which was weird —and he seemed to know this Riddle impostor. Harry would have to sit back, watch, and wait. WaW. Bloody Ron and his acronyms. He loved his best friend but he should have never asked to be assigned to the same Auror squad as him. Years into his career, and he and the guy had gotten pitifully little done, just because they liked to drink and pass the time making silly bets when forced to go into the field just to keep an eye on stuff.
“—and he didn’t say a word about himself, past his name,” faux-Riddle was saying. “So naturally, I brought him here to you.”
“Ah, well, thank you, Riddle,” the old man said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. Since when had people used those? Didn’t they go out of vogue in, like, the forties?
“Say, young man, what is your name?”
“Roonil Wazlib, sir,” Harry said dutifully. If the old man didn’t recognize him then that wasn’t Harry’s problem. He wasn’t about to set himself up to get an earful from Ginny when she inevitably heard about his romping around the grounds.
“Roonil—” the old man began.
“But you can just call me Harry,” Harry added in, rushing. Actually there was no way he was going to deal with people calling him Roonil. Merlin, Ron would get a real laugh out of this the next time they met at the pub.
The old man frowned. “Harry, then. Say again, boy, whatever are you doing here?”
Harry just stared at him.
The old man raised an eyebrow.
“I’m a student,” Harry lied.
“You are not,” faux-Riddle retorted, words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Hah. There it was. Harry knew the impostor was breaking.
“Says you,” Harry said, giving faux-Riddle a judgmental look. “You’re literally impersonating Tom Riddle.”
Now the old man and faux-Riddle both looked at him again, astonishment in their eyes.
“What?”