A New Identity
The first thing that Harry noticed as he was brought back to the world of the living was the smell. It was distinctively clean and sterile with the faintest hint of potions in the air. The second thing he noticed was the feel of the rough sheets against his skin and the barely comfortable mattress he was lying on. After that, his memories started to return.
The graveyard.
Cedric.
Voldemort.
More and more memories started to announce themselves until he came to the one memory that sent fear through him. The dementor. He could remember the hopelessness of the situation. He had been caught with his guard down and could not react in time. The feel of death upon his lips as his soul was removed from his body.
He was fairly certain that he should not be alive now, not after having received the Dementor’s kiss.
Then he remembered the first person he saw and heard when he arrived at this place.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Shit.
How did he get thrown fifty years into the past? Why would getting the kiss have thrown him back to Voldemort’s past? He longed to have Hermione with him. She had much more experience with time travel, having used a time-turner for the duration of their third year. All he knew was that he could not change what had happened. Or be seen by himself.
Like that would happen.
He might be living the past as if it were his present, but everything he did had already happened. That knowledge reassured him slightly. Harry could not prevent himself from being born, or set Tom Riddle down an even worse path. The downside was that he would not be able to keep Voldemort from happening. He could not prevent Myrtle from dying, Hagrid from being expelled, or his parents from being murdered. Everything that had happened would still occur.
He pushed the intricacies of time travel from his mind for now. Harry had to figure out what he was going to tell people. The best way to keep himself from making a mistake was to keep his new identity as close to his true one as possible. The major events of his life would have to be the same as they were. So he would have still been raised by muggle relatives after his parents had been killed when he was a toddler. Why had he not come to Hogwarts before now? His relatives did not want him to. They insisted upon private tutors instead. The thought that the Dursleys would have paid for him to have a private education was laughable, but it was the only logical reason that he could come up with that would explain how he knew magic to the level he was at.
Why was he here now? His relatives had perished in one of the many air raids that had taken place during this time. He had no one left and thus had set out for Hogwarts to petition entrance into the school. His portkey must have malfunctioned and that was how he ended up injured and appearing basically in Riddle’s lap.
With his thoughts organised he decided it was time to open his eyes and face this new world that was fraught with danger. Belatedly he realised that he had forgotten to come up with an alias when he had the time to think things through so he was entirely unprepared when the nurse bustled over and started to fuss over him.
“Good, you’re awake! You had us worried young man. I’ve never seen such a bad case of nerve damage from the Cruciatus Curse. What is your name, by the way?” She reminded Harry of Madam Pomfrey so heavily that he wondered if she was related to the nurse of his time. “Oh! I almost forgot. Mippy?” A small house elf appeared beside the nurse.
“Yes, nursey Filch?” Filch? Was this woman related to Argus Filch? The grumpy caretaker who seemed to hate everyone that was not his cat, Mrs. Norris?
“Please go tell him that our mystery guest is awake.”
“Right away nursey Filch!” The excitable creature said before disappearing. Harry assumed that she had summoned the Headmaster, Dippet, or maybe even Professor Dumbledore.
He looked up at the nurse and flushed as he realised she was still waiting for his answer. “Sorry about that, my portkey must have malfunctioned.” He said quietly. “My name is Hendrix Sirius Evans, but most people just call me Harry.”
The nurse looked at Harry with an odd look in her eyes. “A malfunctioned portkey does not explain how you had curse damage from being held under the Cruciatus curse at least three times for several minutes each.” She had a stern expression on her face. “Now tell me the truth, Mr. Evans.”
Harry gulped and looked away from the nurse. “Four times…” His killing curse eyes shot to the door of the Hospital wing and his face paled when he saw Tom Riddle walk in. The other teenager looked very similar to how he looked during the Chamber of Secrets incident, except for his eyes. How could he have not noticed the vivid colour that they were? He could have sworn they had been more of a duller green. Harry supposed that he could be forgiven for not noticing then. At that point, he still was not used to being able to look in a mirror to see what his eyes looked like. It was not until the third year, when the dementors brought his worst memories back, that he had seen the colour of the killing curse. Since then he had never been able to forget the exact shade that his eyes were. Now he would never forget that Voldemort once had the same shade of eyes as he did. His dark brown hair was a little longer than Harry remembered it being. The waves were trying to form into neat curls. The lines of his face were not quite as harsh, and he was also at least a couple of inches shorter. It was before he opened the Chamber of Secrets and released the basilisk upon poor Myrtle. He had yet to take a life. He was not a murderer.
That realisation was odd. It challenged everything that Harry had ever known of Tom Riddle. Put the other boy in a different light than he had ever considered before. He was not a Dark Lord. He was not Voldemort. He was just another teenager. Just like Harry.
Except...
Harry already had a kill count. In his first year, he used Voldemort’s weakness to his mother’s protection to kill Quirrell. He had used a sword and slayed the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets in his second year. He had faced off against hundreds of dementors and managed to drive them all away to save his godfather’s life last year. Now, he had just survived a tournament that was known for killing its champions. He had faced off against the recently resurrected Lord Voldemort and survived being tortured over and over again. Somehow he had survived a dementor’s kiss.
This version of Tom Riddle was more innocent and pure than the light’s so-called saviour was.
Harry did not notice that he was still staring straight into Tom Riddle’s eyes and had started to hyperventilate. He was going into a panic attack, which worsened as Tom Riddle pulled that all too familiar yew wand out. Harry flinched back as Tom shot off a spell, having expected to be subjected to some kind of hostile magic, but instead, he had just summoned a potion vial. Harry’s eyes widened and he pushed himself back against the headboard of the hospital bed as Tom approached him and handed him the potion. “Drink.” His voice was commanding, but also soft, like velvet. Rich and comforting. Why did that voice soothe his panic ever so slightly?
Harry reached out at the command and took the potion vial. He finally broke eye contact with the teenager who would grow up to become Lord Voldemort to look down at the potion. He was suspicious that it was some kind of poison, but it was labelled as a calming drought. The colour was correct so he broke the seal and wafted the potion fumes towards his nose. Even in his heightened state of panic, he was able to tell that everything about the potion pointed out that it was the real deal. A calming drought and not some type of poison. So he drank it down.
His breathing slowed and the trembling stopped. He was regaining clarity of thought and was filled with embarrassment. “Sorry about that.” He ducked his head, “I don’t know what came over me just then.” Harry decided that he might as well try to get along with the other teenager. Hopefully, that would keep Riddle from taking too keen of an interest in himself.
Tom Riddle’s eyes showed that he was intrigued about this newcomer. “No worries, I imagine you are still on edge from whatever happened that led to you being held under extended Cruciatus curses.” The question that lay beneath his words would have to remain unanswered, at least for now. “I’m Tom Riddle.” The teenager’s hand was offered to Harry.
Harry hesitated for a second before shaking Tom’s offered hand. “Yeah, four goes of that curse by two different people isn’t something that I recommend experiencing.” He said with a wry grin on his face. He was still going to be cautious around Tom, but maybe not as much as if he had already taken a life before. “Nice to meet you Tom, I’m Hendrix Evans, but please call me Harry. Hendrix is rather…” His voice trailed off for a moment, “pretentious.” Harry himself was not sure how he had even come up with the name. Maybe it was the name of someone from before Hogwarts? Or maybe he had read it in a book somewhere? It did not matter anymore because it was now his name. His body was still tense from being around Riddle, seriously, the last time he had been awake was when he had been tortured by Lord Voldemort.
Tom Riddle’s eyes betrayed a flicker of surprise at the information. “No, just one go of such a curse would be able to drive a person nearly to insanity. Do you have any idea how long you were under the curse each time?”
Harry paused and narrowed his eyes at the question. He was immediately on edge and suspicious of why Tom Riddle would want that type of information. The flash of surprise could be seen in his eyes and he was certain he could perceive the desire, the hunger, for information written in the lines of the other’s face. “No, the only thing a person is aware of while under that curse is pain.” He shuddered before looking over at the nurse. “Madam Filch, was it?” He did not wait for the witch to confirm or correct his address for her. He desperately wanted to direct the conversation away from Voldemort. “Do you think I could get an audience with Headmaster Dippet? Sadly I require formal education after the deaths of my relatives.” He forced sadness to show on himself with the slump of his shoulders and the agony in his eyes.
Not that it fooled Tom Riddle.
“Oh yes dear, I can go get him for you. Tom here can give you an overview of the injuries you arrived here with.” She smiled at the teenager. “He helped treat you and is learning the basics of healing.” She gave Harry a conspiratorial wink. “I’m hoping to lure him to being a Healer by the time he graduates. He is extremely gifted at the healing arts.” She said before walking to the Headmaster’s office.
Harry was unable to hide the shock that he felt. Voldemort was talented in the healing arts? That did not track with what he knew about the burgeoning Dark Lord. Of course, he forcibly reminded himself that he did not know the version of Tom before he had lost himself down the path to becoming Lord Voldemort. It was still a shock. One, he knew, that Tom was very carefully monitoring.
“You’ll be happy to know that you will suffer no long-term damage from being subjected to repeated Cruciatus Curses. The nerve damage was healed up nicely and your vocal cords were saved. Your leg should be tender for the next couple of days, but that is because the acromantula venom had been in your bloodstream for longer than it should have been.” Harry could feel those Avada green eyes upon him like a hawk. Or a snake. “The curse wound on your left arm was healed, though if it had been anyone else other than me, or maybe Dumbledore,” Tom sneered at his mention of the Transfiguration Professor, “then you would have had to wait for it to be countered slowly over several months before it would have begun to heal.” He hesitated for a moment before he continued. “It knocked me out for several hours afterwards.” He looked very unhappy to have been affected by removing the curse. “Whoever cursed that knife was exceedingly strong.”
Harry started a bit at the revelation that the knife had been cursed. It had to have been Voldemort who had cursed it, which was a bit humorous that Tom Riddle had been the one to heal it. Maybe Voldemort remembered? Or maybe someone had erased the memory of their encounter to keep his identity hidden.
“The scar from where you were bit by a basilisk, on the other hand, we weren’t able to do anything for. It has been too long since it was treated with phoenix tears to reduce the scarring. Madam Filch is also going to put you on a regime of potions to help your body recover from years of abuse and malnutrition. Since you were unconscious for a week, she decided to vanish, and regrow, several badly healed breaks in your extremities and ribs. There was also some minor brain damage that she was able to correct, so your eyesight should get better over time as your brain adjusts and finishes healing itself.”
Harry listened to the list of injuries with growing horror. How were they able to tell so much of his past? Why did Riddle have to know? If he was not still under the influence of the calming draught then he would probably be panicking. How was he going to explain everything? “I see,” was the only verbal response that he could utter. After contemplating and dismissing excuse after excuse for what he had been through, he simply looked away from the teenager and sighed. “I don’t feel like talking about how that all happened.”
“Well then, how about you, instead, tell me how you knew my last name. We have never met before yet you blasted me away from you when you appeared on my desk. You also seemed to instantly hate me.”
Harry clenched his teeth and accidentally let a growl escape him. “I don’t remember anything from when I appeared here.” He decided that it would be best if he denied any memory of the incident, but all these questions were making him uncomfortable. He wished Tom Riddle would leave him alone.
Harry could tell that Tom knew he was lying to him. Voldemort could always tell when someone was lying to him. “Well, I suppose attacking me could be attributed to your recent torture,” Tom said.
Harry reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, sorry about that. I don't normally curse first and ask questions later.” He looked up just in time to see Tom Riddle turn and breeze out of the Hospital wing and thought he had heard something about trauma, but could not be sure. He thought it was weird, but this was the person who would end up becoming Lord Voldemort, so figured that it was just one of the quirks of the other teenager.
Of course. Why would he manage to get sorted somewhere other than the same house that Riddle was in? The sorting hat’s words were a bitter pill to swallow and were still echoing inside his head.
‘You belong in Slytherin, Harry Potter. You should have allowed me to put you in that house in the first place. You would have gotten out from under the future Headmaster’s manipulation a lot sooner. Everything that happened to you in your first four years was directly influenced by Albus Dumbledore. His phoenix would not have appeared to you without his knowledge. He should have been able to get your godfather a trial. Possession is something the wards would not miss. He also would have known that Alastor Moody was being impersonated. The headmaster knows the identity of every person who enters the wards. It has been this way since the founders enchanted the castle and myself.
As Mister Evans, make sure you enjoy your time here. Don’t be so afraid of changing the past that you neglect to live. After all, everything that will happen in your future has already happened in your past, and everything that has happened in your past has already happened in your future.’
Just after that, the hat had proclaimed him a Slytherin to the Headmaster and nurse.
He could barely remember Headmaster Dippet arranging for him to visit Diagon Alley when he would be released the next day, a Saturday. He would be presented to the school tomorrow morning and assigned a guide to show him around the castle. Harry would have to get his supplies for the year and the guide would accompany him outside the school as well. There was no use trying to fool himself, he knew that Dippet would assign Tom Riddle to be his guide. That was just how his luck would pan out.
So he spent the rest of that evening and night getting ready for his next confrontation with the future Dark Lord. He just hoped that he would be able to keep his temper in check without one of those calming draughts. He would have to try to get a book on a subject that the Hat had mentioned.
Legilimency, and the counter, Occlumency…