revenant
A few days after the impromptu visit to the Chamber of Secrets, Harry sits on the floor between his and Ron's bed and traces intently the little ribbon on the map with Tom Riddle written on it. Ron pokes his head over his shoulder.
"Pretty serious about this, aren't you, mate?"
Harry hums absently.
"Hey!" he exclaims as the Marauder's Map is forcibly grabbed from him by Hermione, who has her other hand on her hip and a determined frown on her brows.
"You need to stop obsessing over him," she snaps. "January's coming to an end, do you want to fail your exams? They're giving us revision exams for a reason, you know? So that you'll become gradually familiar with the material instead of just memorising it the night before the exams. It's for students like you!"
"Ouch," says Ron quite cheerfully. "We're in the middle of something important, Hermione."
Scowling, Harry nods. "Vol— the Dark Lord poses a more serious threat than exams! It isn't even our NEWT year, Hermione."
She sits on Ron's bed with a huff and throws the map at his feet, which he eagerly picks up again. Tom is nowhere to be seen, as fucking usual. He's getting a bit restless with waiting for an opportunity.
"What's he up to now?" she asks after a pause, unable to resist as always. Ron and Harry share a small smile at her predictability.
Ron shrugs at her. "Dunno, but he's disappearing off the map a lot lately."
"He's either at the Chamber or the Room of Requirement," adds Harry.
"Does he know about it?" Hermione asks, and Harry nods along. He wondered that, too.
Ron shrugs again. "We have to assume he does."
"I'm still worried after last time. Harry escaped narrowly." She shudders. "I don't even want to imagine what he'd have done to you if you hadn't left."
"I'm surprised he let him get away."
"Also, I think we're giving him too much credit," Harry says.
Hermione says, not unkindly, "Harry, you were the one insisting he's more of a threat than he appears."
"I don't think he's as dangerous as we think," he insists, shaking his head. "I know what I said. But the fact that he let me get away tells us that he didn't expect me to do anything like that, so he's probably inexperienced compared to Voldemort."
"And he's likely to be weaker, too, since Voldemort probably did something creepy and Dark to boost his magical strength and core volume," Ron chimes in.
Harry nods along. "And I'm almost sixty per cent sure that he was bluffing about having followers."
Ron giggles. "I still can't believe you told him you could use him on our side."
"You told him what?" Hermione exclaims, horrified.
Harry waves her away. "He didn't take it seriously," he insists though he didn't stick around to see his reaction and hasn't seen him since.
She deflates. "You two have been thinking about this a lot," she observes, surprised but pleased.
Ron and Harry grin at each other. "Since you wouldn't hear us out, we thought we ought to pretend to be you so that we'd know what we missed."
They laugh at the stunned look on her face and she joins in, giggling uncontrollably. "Y-you two, I swear!"
"So," Hermione prompts after they settle down, "I'm sure you two have come up with a plan again, haven't you?"
They shake their heads in unison. "We can't think of anything," Ron says mournfully.
She sighs. "Well, boys, while we're sure he's not at the common room, don't you think we could go scouting?"
There's a pause.
"Hermes," Ron says slowly, delightedly, "you're a genius. Thanks for existing."
She turns red. "What? What did you call me?"
"We came up with it while we were trying to think of a plan," Harry grins.
"Harry! Ron! Just call me by my name, Jesus."
But she's smiling and laughing, so they keep grinning at her.
~
They retrieve their cloak and put it on once they've left the common room, creeping through the dungeons to the Slytherin common room.
"The password is acta non verba," Hermione whispers, and they whip their heads to stare at her. She stares back defensively. "I have portraits working for me. They like gossip from places they can't go to."
"Goddess," Ron says to himself, but the two of them hear it anyway. Hermione blushes while Harry rolls his eyes.
"Flirt some other time, we've a mission to complete."
"Oh, piss off, Harry."
They fall silent as they approach the common and Harry opens the map. There are few people in the common room and Tom Riddle is still nowhere on the map. Finding people got easier once Harry figured out that tapping the parchment and saying the name of the person makes the person's name glow softly.
"Acta non verba," Hermione whispers to the stone. It grinds open and they slide in quickly as it closes behind them. A girl raises her head and looks around quizzically before sinking back into the couch and resuming her nap, but other than that, no one seems to notice, and Harry silently thanks Hermione for being friends with them because he's sure they wouldn't have thought of notice-me-not charms.
They go to the boys' dorms and then to Tom's shared room, Harry leading them easily due to hours of staring at the still form of the Tom Riddle on the map. The door opens to a simple alohomora that makes Ron sigh nostalgically, and they're in.
They spread out in the room and rustle through the desks of all the students, careful to avoid any protection charms on them that Ron made visible with a whispered spell, and Harry quickly moves on to Riddle's desk. He thought it would be hard to find anything, but right there, sitting on the desk with an inkpot as a paperweight, is an old letter, corners cut as though it has been read several times since it was sent.
My Lord, it starts, and Harry's breath comes faster,
I cannot express how glad I am to hear from you. I admit with shame that I was initially disturbed upon receiving your letter, but once I realised it was you, my true Lord, my happiness could not be contained. I congratulate you on achieving the impossible once again, my Lord.
Despite this joy, I am saddened to inform you that Abraxas is no longer with us; he passed away recently of dragonpox, though your loyal servant is not surprised that you could not find many records of him. There is tense history entangled in that name which is too delicate to discuss in letters, as shielded as they may be.
However, I have informed Theodore about your return. It only remains now for your Lordship to decide on a place and time, and we shall fulfill your command.
Yours in service,
Emrys Rosier
Harry wants to gag at the ass-kissing but the excitement at finding something overrides his disgust as he beckons to the other two to read the letter. But they approach with confusion plain in their eyes and stare at him.
"There's nothing there, Harry," Hermione whispers.
Ron brings his hand near the desk and withdraws it with a little hiss, clutching at his palm and blowing on it. "It burnt me," he says, looking up. "How can you see it, mate?"
Harry shrugs. As shielded as they may be, this Roiser had said, and it seems to be true.
Five minutes later, they decide that it's best to leave now before Tom shows up, and they sneak out of the common room, uncaring of the girl, who again lifts her eyes to stare at the entrance, bewildered.
"What was in the letter?" Hermione demands later, when they're all huddled on Harry's bed, and Harry recites it as best as he remembers.
"Emrys Rosier," Ron mutters. "He's Evan Rosier's uncle, I think. Probably old enough to have attended school with Riddle."
"Abraxas is clearly Malfoy's grandfather. He mentioned him at Slughorn's party," Harry adds.
"Theodore," Hermione says, quieter than them. "Is it Nott? His father?"
It must be Nott Senior, they agree.
"How could you see the letter?" Hermione asked.
He's been thinking about this. "Must be because he has my blood. Well, not this one, but their magical signature is the same, I guess. So... Voldemort's blood-sharing with me carries over to Riddle too? I don't know." He shakes his head and they fall silent again.
The most troublesome thing is that Riddle does have followers he trusts. And they certainly seem to obey his every behest, as Riddle put it.
"We need to do something," Ron says after a long pause, and no one even tries to argue.
~
Harry hadn't really spent much time thinking about Tom Riddle after the whole Chamber of Secrets debacle in his second year. There hadn't been any spare time, Petunia working him to the bone like always, but he thinks even if not for that, he still wouldn't have dwelt on that much. Each year at Hogwarts had a new horror waiting for him and he simply couldn't keep them in mind as anything truly significant to him apart from the fact that it happened, and Harry survived.
But when he saw Riddle entering the Great Hall, trailing after Dumbledore with first years staring at him as they followed the two... it had kindled a rage within him that he hadn't known he was capable of.
Voldemort coming back from the dead was nothing surprising, but to see him in his teenage form, smiling charmingly at everyone already, ready to talk anyone into his web and never let them go... Harry wasn't proud of losing control, he wasn't. To see Riddle be sorted into Slytherin wasn't a shock either, but the implications were dire and his mind was blank.
The three of them had huddled together that night in his bed, sharing warmth and assurances that everything would be alright, it always turned out well for them.
But Harry couldn't shake the feeling that his world was tilting, just like it had when Hagrid broke the door to a small hut all those years ago, but this time, it didn't right itself like this was how it was always meant to be. This time, it tilted and tilted until Harry couldn't tell right from left, up from down, and he'd snapped. There was debris everywhere, but Ron and Hermione diligently helped him clean it all up, vanishing feathers and wood splinters as the rest of the boys stood by the entrance to the dorm, alarmed but sleepy.
They'd cuddled together, and Harry still thinks that if he hadn't had that support that night, he might have just done something irreversibly disastrous.
His mind shifts back to the cause of his stress, and he sees the slanted smile again, with a hint of teeth, mocking, but he'd also been able to see how so many people had been entrapped in his web. If that sneer had been just a bit to the right, or his eyes a little more hooded, it would've...
Harry shook his head quickly. No use going down that train of thought. Back to the point, Potter, he told himself.
The problem of having two Dark Lords (well, one Dark Lord and one Dark Lordling) running around. While Tom had said that he wanted no truck with Voldemort, that didn't necessarily mean they didn't have the same goals. After all, they were the same person. Maybe Riddle just disapproved of his future self's methods of going about their goal, whatever it was.
Probably world domination.
"Your thing might actually work," Ron said suddenly.
"What thing?" he asks, and Hermione leans in.
"About turning him to our cause, isn't it?" she asks, and Ron looks at her, surprised, but nods.
Harry makes a surprised sound and they turn to him.
"You said that we could use a guy like him on our team. Well, we could. If we can make it work, we can defeat Voldemort using himself!"
"Riddle isn't as powerful as Voldemort," Harry says doubtfully. "I mean, he shouldn't be. You said so yourself. That he's less powerful than Voldemort, that he still doesn't know many things Voldemort does... He's probably easier to defeat than first-year Quirrelmort."
Their lips twitch at that, but the jest doesn't last long.
"We'll talk to Dumbledore," Hermione suggests. "See what he says."
Disturbed by a sudden recollection, Harry blurts out, "Let's not." They stare at him like he's declared that they're going to become Death Eaters. "I mean, I want to do this by myself. I... don't want a repeat of last year... you know? Dumbledore's busy with Order things. We shouldn't trouble him. If Riddle's so easy to beat, we can take care of him ourselves. Right?"
He turns his pleading eyes on them and they sighed together.
"I swear, Harry..." Hermione shakes her head.
"We'll do this, then." Ron holds out a fist and Harry bumps it with his own. "To victory!"
They fall asleep laughing this time, and Harry couldn't be more glad to have them by his side, though the guilt of lying to them omitting some details weighs him down a significant deal.
He falls asleep with Tom's voice—a ghostly whisper in the uneasy quiet of his mind—and his scowl floating on the surface of his thoughts.
Dumbledore always lies.
Stay away.