Out of Bounds

When the time came for Defense Harry settled into the seat next to Orion Black. The seventh year was siriusly becoming his best friend, here back in the past. It wasn’t like Harry had any other options. The other person he knew from the time was throwing a big tantrum ATM. (At the moment, Hermione, not a bankomat.) That wasn’t Harry’s fault. He didn’t give a fuck about what happened to Riddle. It wasn’t his problem anymore. Fate could deal with that herself. 

“Just look at him,” Orion whispered in Harry’s ear, nudging him to look in the direction of a certain Thomas Marvolo Riddle. It had not escaped Harry that Riddle was fuming behind them, looking for all his normal grace a bratty pre teenaged boy. Again! Not Harry’s fault! Or problem! It wasn’t even that surprising that the Brat Lord acted like this at his grown age. He was sitting behind Harry staring bullets into his back as if that would make Harry get up and apologize for “sitting in his seat”. Maybe Tom should have thought about the metaphorical chairs he had taken out of the game too early. Lily and James Potter had died, for no bloody reason, Harry wasn’t about to have sympathy for a future Hitler, no matter how cute.

“Are you even in this class?” Harry whispered back.

Orion narrowed his eyes but Harry shrugged. It was a reasonable question. The guy was a 7th year, for Merlin’s sake, and was sitting in on a 5th year lecture, “to help you out, Wazlib”. Harry appreciated the thought but he would never get over how people seriously called him ‘Wazlib’ here. Shit was straight out of the story book and yet they all took it seriously. What did that say about society? Something. Harry didn’t want to examine it too hard. Too early in the morning for that. 

“And now, for our practical demonstration,” Professor Merrythought said, pulling out her wand and flicking it in the direction of a small stool in the center of the room’s dueling space. The stool expanded upwards, then outwards, then started skittering around in circles—a Ravenclaw sitting three desks behind Harry shrieked—until it had finally flattened and elongated enough to resemble something of a dueling mat. 

Harry didn’t see the point in that, really. She could’ve just pointed to the air and had one appear, just like that. Hermione was muttering something in Harry’s ear, Harry tuned it out. Right now he needed to focus. 

“Riddle, to me.” The prick-in-training got up at Merrythought’s beckoning and walked to stand at one end of the mat with such grace that Harry thought there was something wrong with him. Was this really the guy who had just thrown a door-splintering, wall-shaking tantrum like, what, 9 hours ago? 

Riddle bowed. Merrythrought bowed. They, especially Riddle, whipped out their wands with an impressive amount of dexterity and began.

Lights flashed.

Curses flew.

One student ducked as something evil-looking narrowly flew over his head. 

Harry ignored it. He lightly poked Orion Black’s side; the older year was obviously unimpressed by this display and had seen it many times, which was why he was working on his NEWL Potions homework instead of watching with awe like the rest of Harry’s supposed yearmates. Harry still couldn’t believe he was technically a 5th year. It didn’t make any sense.

Not like this guy makes sense, Ron told him. Look at him. The fuck he thinks vines are going to do?

Harry’s vision briefly flickered back to the ongoing scene. Riddle was trying some weird plant countercurse to try to trap Merrythought’s giant spider from advancing too close to him. It was somehow working, the spider kept on tripping and falling and it meant Riddle only had to whip his wand that way once every fifteen or twenty seconds or so.

“Works better than whatever the fuck you tried to do in the Forbidden Forest that one time,” Harry muttered under his breath.

Orion gave him a weird look. Harry ignored it; Ron had disappeared and that comment had specifically been for him, not for meddling Slytherins. “So. What do you think?”

“Of this?” Orion gestured to Riddle and Merrythought, still going at it, with a wave of his feather quill. “Not much out of the ordinary. Riddle’s always the one Merrythought calls for demonstrations.” 

“I really think you should be in class right now.” 

Orion gave Harry another dry look. “I am in class right now.”

“Not in the right one.”

Orion didn't say anything and didn't look at him but Harry yelped when he felt the familiar sharpness of a stinging jinx on his ankle.

Wow, he and Orion had really bonded in the past few days, hadn’t they. It was all because Orion had technically saved him from Riddle’s wrath or whatever. And then after hearing out Harry's plan, Orion had helped him get revenge. After immobilizing Riddle ("surprisingly easily," Orion had said) and leaving him to rot they had tracked down Nagini and hidden her back in the Forbidden Forest and then they had even given each other permission to call each other by their first names.

But Harry was still pretty sure that Orion was only talking to him because he thought Harry was the real Heir of Slytherin. Oh well. He could keep thinking that if it made him happy. 

Not like Harry didn’t have his own reasons for talking to Orion, too. The guy just reminded him of Sirius Black. And that was something Harry wished he never had had to give up. He wasn’t about to give up his chance to bond with his family when he suddenly got the chance. 

Orion isn’t your real family, Hermione whispered in Harry’s ear.

Harry normally wouldn't have done this, it was against his morals, but the past few days had been unnecessarily exhausting. So he rolled his eyes. “Just shut the fuck up.”

“Keep talking at empty air, Wazlib, and Riddle won’t be the only one who thinks you’re a loon.” 

“It’s Harry.” 

The dueling demonstration ended with Merrythought pointing her wand at Riddle, whose own wand was rolling across the floor towards the instructor. Riddle’s lips were slightly parted, and he absentmindedly blew a sweat-slick strand of that deep brown hair out of his face, and his hands were up in a farce of surrender. It was a farce, Harry could tell, there was still playfulness (?) of some sort in the way baby snakeface was ‘surrendering’ and backing up against the faux stone wall Merrythought had conjured not a minute before. 

Git.

Riddle thought this was fun. Like it was all a big game. He was acting the exact same way he had at the graveyard, right after he’d killed Cedric. Minus the evil cackling laugh and bald head. Thank Morgana that was gone. Riddle really looked better with hair. It was smooth and shiny even when it was sweaty and would probably grow out fast if the prick wasn’t probably so meticulous about how he looked. What shampoo and conditioner did he use? Or did he spell his hair to stay that way? Did he—

“You’re staring,” Orion commented, not looking up from the Potions essay he’d apparently finished outlining and was now actually writing. How did the wanker get done with drafts so quickly? Harry had never seen anything like that except for Hermione. Back at work whenever he and Ron had to get reports done they’d always assign it to some starstruck intern. Worked out nicely most of the time.

Harry belatedly realized that he had been staring, yeah. There was a little waft of steam curling upwards from near Riddle’s shoe. Harry snapped out of it and suddenly the steam disappeared. Oops. 

A thought came to him. “I need some money,” Harry told Orion.

“Take some out of your vault at Gringotts. We can take the floo tomorrow, I'm due to go to Hogsmeade anyhow.” 

“Right.” Harry scratched the back of his head. He didn’t really have any money. But as they got up to leave Defense (with a snappy comment from Merrythought that their twelve-inch essay on effective mid-round dueling stances was due by Friday. Morgana, some things really never changed), Harry got an idea. It hit him as soon as they walked past that bloody clock in the Slytherin common room. 

“Come with me,” Harry hissed and did his best to tug Orion towards the clock. The 7th year wouldn’t budge. This bloody skeptic Slytherin would be the end of him, Harry thought, when Orion hissed back that it was not even the middle of the day and they couldn’t go gallivanting in unknown corridors before lunchtime. “You’re bloody paranoid,” Harry heatedly insisted, though his voice went even lower. “Come on. Nobody’s looking.”

Orion swiveled his head around. It was true, in fact. Out of the maybe three and a half Slytherins in the room, all of them were second-years, meaning they were easily manipulable if really that necessary, and none of them were paying any attention to Harry and Orion presently. 

Harry caught the millisecond of doubtful acquiescence in Orion’s eyes and tugged him again, harder this time. “Let’s go. Come on. Nobody in recent history’s seen this.”

That was all Harry had needed to say, apparently, because then Orion turned extremely willing. “Well, then, you lead the way.” His bloody eyes turned hungry and Harry could almost physically see a caricature of Orion’s hands steepled together, fingers tapping as if he was some mafia don. 

Harry rolled his eyes and ignored the waves of pure greed wafting off of the Slytherin for his own sanity, he needed a friend here, and he wasn’t going to alienate the only one who currently had any say over Riddle’s atrocious behavior. Really, Riddle needed to try harder to stop being so obvious about being raised poorly. It was kind of embarrassing. Harry would need to have a talk with him. Harry knew what it was like to have mommy and daddy gone but it didn’t mean he tried to spell people’s food away like he had seen Riddle do yesterday at lunch in an attempt to intimidate some outcast Gryffindor.

We’re your friends. And we’re still here, Ron and Hermione’s voices echoed together in Harry’s brain. 

“Please shut the fuck up,” Harry begged them. “I’m trying to focus.”

Orion sent Harry another weird look as Harry flicked his wand and had the pendulum turn and swivel and jump upside down and finally open. “Nobody’s said a word, Wazlib.” Old (or new) habits seemed to die hard. It had been two days already since Harry had given Orion permission to use Harry’s first name when addressing him, but the guy couldn’t seem to let go of Harry’s ‘last name’. 

Harry rolled his eyes again. He had been doing that a lot lately. For some reason Orion's personality brought that out of him. Tom Riddle, quidditch matches, Orion Black. What a list. “Yeah, because—” then he swiveled around to look at the common room. There was a waft of cold that had blown behind them and Harry wanted to see where it was coming from, but instead, he saw—bloody hell—nobody was moving.

Everything had stopped.  

Even the water spilling out of some second-year’s wand in an evidently failed Charms experiment was firmly frozen in place.

How?

Harry’s jaw dropped open. So did Orion’s, but the 7th year was quicker about locking his shut and maintaining some sense of normalcy. “What just happened?” Harry asked nobody in particular. 

Orion briefly turned back to check on the clock. “The clock’s stopped moving.” He turned back and gave Harry a considerate look. 

Harry looked as well. He couldn't read read analogs but somehow the number immediately translated into his head, 11:47:32.65. Unmoving. “Time’s bloody stopped moving.”

“I never said that.” 

“That’s not possible.”

“I never said that.”

“Time can’t stop.”

Orion, now frustrated, pressed a hand to his own head. “No, you idiot.” Wow, so they had become close over the past weekend and some. Just four days ago Orion had been speaking as if he was the height of magical aristocracy. Which, Harry supposed, he in a way was. Harry was at that moment pretty sure either Ron or Hermione or both of them would pop up and make themselves visible and insist that only they could call Harry an idiot. But no noise. “It can't stop. I didn’t say that. But because you’re so insistent—” Orion then whipped out his own wand and, tracing the form of a typical non-grandfather clock in the air, casted the Tempus charm. 

Time didn't move again.

The seconds, milliseconds, nothing. The bright yellow numbers stared at them and taunted at them and didn't change, the 11:47:32.65 mocking them as if Harry had all day. 

“Oh.”

“Do you see what I’m saying? There’s no more time. It's been stopped.” By Fate, probably. She always liked to play her little games. 

“That’s not possible.” 

“I never said that,” Harry mimicked, and then gestured towards the grandfather clock, which had swung open behind them with such a loud sudden noise that they both jumped. “Shall we?” 

Orion pressed his lips together. “I suppose.”

Cautiously, or as cautiously as two Slytherins(/one real Slytherin and one Gryffindor in disguise) could be, they stepped inside, and immediately fell.

After a long minute, two things happened. The two of them crashed to the floor in a heap. Thankfully not as a heap of bones, thanks to Orion’s quick thinking and wand waving, even when said 7th year was screaming for his life. And just as quickly and suddenly, the realization crashed into Harry’s head. 

The slightly damp smell. The absence of any light except for two suspicious-looking yellow levitating orbs in the distance. The constant drip, drip, drip, of water. 

Harry was back.

Inside Salazar Slytherin’s secret lair.

The Chamber of Secrets had just been reopened.