Temporal changes
Harry kind of nervously picked at a thread in his robes. It was a nasty habit he had picked up from all his pent up energy after the war. And apparently it had transferred over to this new body as well. Great. He could not, for the life of him, stop doing it even when he tried. That shit was harder than giving up beer for six weeks—he would know. Harry and Ron had done it as a New Year’s resolution once.
Speaking of beer. Harry would need a bloody drink when this whole koshmar was over. Tom Riddle, His Slytherin Royal Highness, was staring at him as if an elf had dumped a pile of freshly roasted feces on his head. Harry stifled a laugh at the mental image. He needed to focus on the here and now.
Or was it the here and now?
The here and 70 years ago?
Did that even make sense?
It didn’t. Harry mentally shook himself awake and refocused on the situation unfolding in front of him.
The brunette boy on the other side of the room was frowning at Harry with poorly concealed shock. He had a Head Boy badge on, Harry noted. The guy seemed so familiar but Harry couldn’t place him.
Not to mention Riddle’s open mouthed stare. The boy looked like a fish out of water.
Who was the loon now, huh?
“Okay,” Harry said, with no small amount of trepidation. He was pretty aware he may have just set off a bomb in Slytherin Kingdom. “I’m not lying.”
Riddle and the other guy shared a look. More of a half a second long conversation between themselves while the other Slytherins in the room stared at them like witnesses at a long awaited court hearing, eagerly awaiting the judge’s verdict.
After watching that battle of wills unfold (the brunette guy won, Harry told the Hermione voice in his head. No, not baby Voldemort. The other one.) Harry turned to brunette guy #2 (it was easier to assign him in this way, brunette guy #1 was Tom Riddle and no other) and started talking.
“You want me to prove it to you?”
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed brunette guy #2 glance at Riddle again and give him an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Riddle’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t say anything. Harry made a mental note of that.
Riddle, bending to the will of some white guy…?
What do you think? he asked Hermione.
Dude, they’re fucking, the ambient voice of Ron Weasley responded.
Harry inwardly groaned. Not another voice. But he appreciated the advice all the same. It was nice that his friends were with him in spirit. Flesh and blood would have been better. But Harry would take what he could get.
“I don’t think so,” Harry said out loud, quietly, but he had been looking at Nagini and it had come out as parseltongue. He hadn’t said anything loud enough for anyone to hear, anyways, but Riddle’s head snapped up and looked at him all the same.
“Sorry, force of habit,” Harry apologized, making sure to look at Riddle, not at Nagini, who was now asking him for “the marred feathers of that bloody Bird”, capital letters and all. Nagini had seen Fawkes and evidently still wanted a bite. There had been a whole conversation about that, earlier, where Harry had come to the conclusion that Riddle was a terrible snake father, his serpent had absolutely no notion of the word ‘politeness’ and what was appropriate to say when, Hermione would have had a fit.
But really. Harry really needed to work on his parseltongue abilities. It was extremely unhelpful to have an ability that he couldn’t control. India couldn’t come a moment sooner. He needed to find a job and make some money. ASAP.
“What were you guys saying?”
He kept bloody zoning out, Nagini was now whispering sweet nothings in his ear, promising “New Master will get many treats and not find spider nor rat, hide nor hair, in his nest this winter, if only she could taste the Bird of Fire— ”
Harry inwardly begged for PEACE AND QUIET, PLEASE, NOW, I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF REWRITING HISTORY.
To his relief, Nagini seemed to hear and understand this mental projection, and shut up a bit, quieting to indescernible hisses so Harry could focus. Thank Fate.
“—need proof,” brunette guy #2 was saying.
“Um,” Harry said intelligently.
“Prove you’re the heir,” Riddle all but hissed.
“Sure. Is this working? Can you hear me?” Harry said back as if he was speaking out a microphone and not his own voice he'd been using his entire life. But it was in parseltongue and Riddle heard and understood.
Riddle’s eyes widened and then, bless the poor boy, he ruined it for himself again.
The guy was prone to doing that, it seemed. Tom Riddle made decisions on impulse, every damn time, and expected himself to win. Like, who was he kidding? For a supposed genius, Voldemort had been stupid. Villanously senerading, literally every single time, instead of just killing him back in the nineties? Really?
And here Riddle was, doing it again, hissing out loud in parseltongue about some Slytherin bullshit myth about a clock. Harry had heard all about that clock from Malfoy, apparently Crabbe, before the guy had died, had tried to steal it from the common room and sell it for parts at B&Bs. Load of crap the story was, probably, but Harry was glad he had heard it anyways. Not for the first time in his life did he pat himself on the back for participating in repairing inter-house relations, it was really coming in handy, wasn’t it, now.
Harry strode right up to that blasted old clock—he would recognize it anywhere, it had been half of what he’d worked on with Malfoy back in ‘01, the bloody thing had been bewitched by Salazar Slytherin himself—and started chanting.
“Odblay of the rpentseay, Cognizereay me nou, For Hameichay not ynthay arespay, But a ewetray scendantdeay, Reheat to leashunay ynthay werpoay, Ynthay miniondoay, Ynthay cellenceexay, ovenabay lealay, Causebiay hameicay the Irheay.”
Some corny shit that was. It was a tongue twister of sorts, in parseltongue, no less.
It was a Riddle, one might say.
Thankfully Harry had remembered the correct words and the clock had swung right open, revealing a lair, made bare for the Heir of Slytherin to step through. If not that would have been really embarrassing. Nagini headbutted Harry with fond annoyance, she just wanted another rat and this whole shebang was boring her, Harry could tell. He had paid her off, in a sense, with a heap of rats and other small animals that reminded him of Wormtail and it was keeping her sated, for now, but he would need to get her more food soon, he didn’t want her suddenly switching up on him like that.
“New Master is kind, and feeds Nagini aplenty. Nagini will stay with New Master,” Nagini decided aloud as if she could hear his thoughts. What the hell, she probably could.
Harry chuckled and ran a finger down Nagini’s side, admiring his handiwork, the clock was really out of it now, thank Merlin. At least in this time period magical artifact restoration would never be his problem. He hoped. “Thanks, baby girl. We’ll get you dinner soon, huh, cutie pie? Aww, you’re just soooo bloody cute. I love you. I love you so much, did you know that?”
“Wazlib.”
Right. Riddle and his (boy?)friend were still there, standing behind him. In all the commotion the rest of the Slytherins had been chased upstairs, courtesy of the current Head Boy and the baby dark lord themselves, they had Slytherin House laying in the palms of their pretty little hands. Like the way Malfoy did back in the nineties. Some things really never changed.
“That is my snake.”
“Uhh, not any more, it’s not. You ask her.”
“Nagini will stay with the New Master. Nagini has decided upon this.” Nagini coiled herself around Harry's new wizarding hat he had stolen from the 1940s equivalent of Madame Malkin's. It was very sweet of her, Harry appreciated the gesture, though the extra weight was weighing down on the item's conelike structure and tipping it forward so that it almost completely dwarfed Harry's glasses in Hat.
“You will not,” Riddle hissed. Harry turned around to look at him, and Merlin, was the poor boy going through it. His face was redder than Harry had ever seen it before, not that he had seen it like that, ever, really. He had in fact not had the pleasure of seeing much pre-snakeface Voldy, and when he had, the guy had been out to kill him.
Much like Riddle right now. The future terror of Great Britain had his wand out and trained on Harry, ignoring the Head Boy behind him, ready to do something impulsive. Wouldn't be the first time.
“What have you done with my serpent?” Riddle asked, voice shaking with anger. His wand hand was shaking as well. Harry fancied his chances in a fight, only one person in the room had fought a Dark Lord all their formative years and then gone on to be an Auror.
So he held up his hands in a show of mock defeat. Disarm and disable, it went, right? The Ron voice that had so loudly made itself known just minutes earlier had gone pitifully silent, and Harry was left with no answer.
“No need for that, now, come on, can we just talk?” Harry asked.
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“You are not who you say you are.”
Harry let out a loud laugh at that one. That was rich, coming from the guy who had been so scared to use his own bloody name that he had come up with an acronym at fifteen and never moved on from it. Dude was emo as hell.
“I’m exactly who I say I am, dude.” Harry kept it in plain English for the benefit of their one and only spectator. He was tempted to ask for the name of brunette #2, who was watching them with all the rapt attention Aunt Petunia had once dedicated to her soapy serials, but he figured now was not the right time to do it.
“I am the Heir. You are a mockery, a sham,” Riddle spat, continuing to speak in parseltongue. “Who sent you? Grindelwald? Dumbledore?”
“Neither and neither.” Harry was getting better at this. Riddle was staring straight at him, Nagini was now wrapped around Harry’s arms and was quite loudly egging both of them on, and he was still keeping his side of the conversation in English. Mostly. He deserved a prize for this. More hot chocolate, maybe. Later. Once he fed Nagini her dinner.
“Lies,” Riddle hissed, advancing closer.
“No, dude.”
“I will get you, Harry Wazlib.”
And then Harry’s world turned black.