Chapter Text
The room in which Harry wakes is unfamiliar. The ornate canopy of the four-poster bed he lies in is slightly out of focus, and the soft sheets beneath him wrinkle when he reaches up to adjust his crooked glasses.
“I see you’re awake at last.”
Harry startles into motion, turning towards the source of the voice even as he scrambles away, falling off the bed and pressing his back into a corner. The sight of Tom Riddle, looking all too human sitting with one ankle crossed over the other and his chin propped up on a fist, causes the memories to come rushing back.
“You,” Harry whispers, shrinking even further into the corner of the room.
“Me,” the man agrees calmly. “However, you’ve made it clear that we both know who I am. The question now is how, exactly, you came by that information.” With those words, his voice turns dangerously cold, and Harry swears that the temperature of the room drops a few degrees as well. He shivers, eyes darting around in a desperate search for an exit, and makes himself respond in hopes of stalling long enough to find a way to get out.
“What did you do? Why am I here?”
“I believe I was the first to ask a question. You will receive no answers until you provide some.”
“You didn’t actually ask any questions,” Harry retorts thoughtlessly, then winces. He probably shouldn’t backtalk the Dark Lord. Having examined the room thoroughly enough to determine that there are no obvious escape routes, he returns his attention to the man sitting in the chair in front of him.
Riddle’s face is completely neutral, with no indication of anger, which Harry finds odd. After how Voldemort acted in the graveyard last year, any display of emotional stability strikes Harry as somewhat uncharacteristic. He would’ve honestly expected to be screaming under the Cruciatus by now. Actually, he would’ve expected not to have woken up at all after being captured by Voldemort. Harry frowns, unnerved by the situation, but decides to hold his tongue until he figures out what’s going on. After only a minute of wary silence, Riddle exhales in a sharp gust.
“Who are you?”
All notions of holding his tongue immediately flee Harry’s brain, and he leans forward with a scowl.
“What do you mean, who am I? Did your new look come with amnesia, or something? You know who I am.”
“I assure you, I do not. Which is why I find it curious–” Riddle’s eyes glint with some undecipherable emotion– “that you know so much about me.”
Slumping back against the wall, Harry bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from responding. Riddle tilts his head slightly to the side, but seems to get the message that Harry won’t be saying any more at the moment.
He stands up in a fluid motion and draws his yew wand, ignoring Harry’s flinch, only to cast a silent vanishing spell at his chair. A section of the wall opposite Harry’s corner begins to shimmer as he draws near, and a door appears. Harry is on his feet the moment Riddle exits, but the door has shimmered back out of existence before he takes two steps towards it. Regardless, he approaches and runs his hands over the space the door inhabited, but feels only smooth wallpaper. He strikes it with one of his fists and lets his forehead rest against the unyielding barrier as the frustration sinks in. Half a second later, he recoils from the sudden rippling of the wallpaper beneath his touch. He watches in shock as the door reforms right in front of him, then lunges for the handle before it can disappear once more. Despite his fears to the contrary, it turns easily, and he yanks the door open only to take several wary steps backward upon seeing what awaits him on the other side.
The Unspeakable who brought him to Riddle stands there with his hand outstretched, the handle presumably ripped from his grasp when Harry threw open the door. There’s a beat where the two do nothing but stare at each other, but then the man strides into the room. Harry stumbles back in an attempt to keep space between them, but only manages to trip himself and end up on the floor again.
The man – likely a Death Eater, it would explain why Harry has the feeling he’s seen him somewhere before – offers Harry a hand up. When it is met with nothing but suspicion, he shrugs and pulls out his wand. Oblivious to Harry’s intense gaze, the man conjures a chair for himself and slumps down into it with a deep sigh.
“You really shouldn’t talk to him like that.”
Harry pushes himself to his feet while noting somewhat hysterically that the new chair is much less gaudy and ostentatious than the one Riddle had vanished.
“For your sake, I mean,” the man continues.
“I’ll keep it in mind.” The words are clipped short. Harry has no intention of making friendly conversation with the man who delivered him to a Dark Lord, no matter how much amnesia said Dark Lord is experiencing at the moment.
“Look, kid–”
“I’m not a kid.”
The Death Eater looks at him sceptically.
“Seriously? You can’t be more than fourteen.”
Harry’s indignation overrides his common sense – again. “Almost sixteen!”
He should probably work on that.
“Whatever you say, kid,” the man replies, but there’s a glint in his eyes that reminds Harry of Hermione when she finds a fact that’s been particularly elusive. He squints at the man suspiciously.
“My name’s Gus, by the way.”
Harry’s eyes narrow further. Even he can tell that this is some sort of probe for information, and he doesn’t want to let it work any more than it already has.
“Suit yourself, I suppose. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself. Would you like a glass of water, or anything?”
Harry’s eyes snap back to Gus’s hand as he draws his wand again, and he nods, his muscles tensing as the wand draws nearer, until–
“Nuh-uh!” Gus chuckles, holding his wand out of reach of Harry’s grasping fingers. “Not going to happen, kid, sorry. Nice try, though.”
Harry sits slowly down on the bed, arms crossed over his chest. He startles a bit when Gus mutters an Aguamenti and offers him the water with a smile on his face. It was originally just a ploy to get access to Gus’s wand, but now that Harry thinks about it, his throat really is very dry. He takes the water hesitantly and downs it in two large gulps, carefully setting the empty glass down on the nightstand when he’s done.
“What do you want?”
Gus looks very uncomfortable with Harry’s blank tone. “This isn’t some sort of exchange, you know. I’m not going to deny you food and water if you don’t tell me anything.”
Harry just stares at him, conveying his doubt.
“Merlin, kid, what kind of person do you think I am?!”
“The kind with a tattoo on his left arm and an extremely questionable moral compass, in my experience.”
“How– nevermind. Look, I know you’re probably confused and scared–”
Harry scoffs.
“–but I can help you, if you’ll help me in return. How about I ask some questions, and then you get to ask some back? You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to, but if you pass on a question, I get to ask a different one until we find one you’re willing to answer.”
“...Fine. But I get to go first.”
“Works for me. Go ahead.”
It occurs to Harry that he doesn’t know what to ask first. He casts his eyes around the room, and decides that it’s likely safest to start with the basics.
“Where am I?”
“An estate in Somerset, belonging to a powerful pureblood family. I’m afraid I can’t get any more specific than that – wards, you see.” Gus smiles wryly. “May I ask you a question, now?”
“I guess.”
“What is the last thing you remember before I found you?”
“Mostly just a lot of light. And pain. There was a fight, but I was hurt, so–”
“Where was this?”
“The Department of Mysteries.” Harry frowns at the man, confused. “You know this, you found me there.”
If Gus had a pad of paper and a pen, Harry thinks he would be scribbling down notes.
“You mentioned a fight. Who was fighting?”
“Dumbledore–”
“Albus Dumbledore?”
“Yes, of course. How many Dumbledores do you know?”
“...Of course. Continue.”
“Hold on, don’t I get to ask another question first? You’ve gotten at least three.”
Gus raises his eyebrows, but makes a gesture for Harry to go on.
“Right. Er…” Harry racks his brain for another safe question, but keeps circling back to the one that’s been at the forefront of his mind since the moment he awoke, unmurdered, to the sight of an eerily human-looking Dark Lord. “Does Voldemort really not know who I am?”
Gus flinches when Harry says the name, and his eyebrows climb even higher on his forehead.
“Should he?”
That startles an incredulous bark of laughter from Harry. He slouches back against the headboard and stares up at the canopy, mind racing with the implications of those words. Then a thought strikes him, and he jolts upright.
“You didn’t find anyone else, did you? When you found me?” His voice is strained with panic. “There would’ve been five others, about my age – two boys and three girls. Were they–”
“Sorry, kid. There was no one there but you.”
“But–”
“Believe me, I checked. One security breach was bad enough, I definitely would’ve noticed six.”
Harry stands abruptly and starts pacing. Gus’ words don’t make sense. Had the defences of the Department of Mysteries been disabled for the night, and only reactivated when everyone except Harry had left? He supposes that would explain how he and his friends were able to just walk right in, but it still begs the question of why they would’ve left Harry behind. Even if the Order was wholeheartedly defeated – which he doubts – there should’ve been signs of a struggle, some indication that anyone other than Harry was ever there.
Unless… Is this all some sort of trick? If they’re trying to make Harry let his guard down, they’ve chosen an odd way to go about it. What advantage could be gained by making Harry think that his friends abandoned him and Voldemort no longer knows who he is? What could their goal possibly be?
Well, Harry isn’t currently being tortured or killed, which is a marked improvement over previous encounters with Voldemort and his Death Eaters. He can’t fight back; he doesn’t have his wand. It might be in his best interest to just… play along. He goes back through the information that has been given to him so far.
Firstly, Voldemort supposedly has no idea who Harry is. Nor does ‘Gus’, who, while presumably both a Death Eater and a member of the notoriously reclusive Unspeakables, probably hasn’t been living so thoroughly under a rock that he managed to miss the events of the last decade and a half. Secondly, Voldemort is disturbingly human-looking, complete with nose and hair and skin that is, while not the epitome of health, a far cry from the scaly nightmare it was before. Thirdly, Harry was the only one in the Department of Mysteries last night. Gus found him alone and unconscious in the Time Room.
Time.
It’s almost too simple, but Harry can hear an echo of Hermione’s voice lecturing him about Occam’s Razor. He stops pacing and turns to face Gus, who is watching him with something like bemusement.
“What’s today’s date?”
The Death Eater’s laugh is short and wondering. “You are a sharp one, aren’t you, kid?” Harry glares, and Gus holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. It’s the first of August.”
They want him to think he’s travelled a month and a half, then. Or maybe ten and a half months; Harry’s never heard of anything that could bring someone forward in time. He pushes down the satisfaction that wells up at the confirmation of his theory and realises there’s still one more piece of the puzzle missing.
“The year?”
“Nineteen eighty.”
Harry feels like he’s been struck; all the air leaves his lungs and he sways backward, his muscles no longer working to keep him upright. He squeezes his eyes shut as tight as he can and drowns the tiny sliver of hope in his chest that maybe it isn’t a trick with the wave of anger that rushes over him. It’s all he can do to stop himself from launching himself at Gus and going to kill the Dark Lord right that moment, wand or not. He breathes in; he breathes out. He breathes in again. He opens his eyes.
Gus is still sitting before him with open curiosity on his face. Harry wonders what he’d have to do to get the man to break his act, debates following through with his first instinct and lunging at the man for being so blasé. Instead, he sits down on the edge of the bed with a thud and buries his head in his hands to hide the rioting emotions he’s sure are written all over his face.
When he finally looks up, Gus is gone.
Harry is left alone long enough for him to triple-check the room he is in for anything he might be able to use to escape and come to the conclusion, three times, that there is nothing. On the surface, the room appears to be a relatively normal (if ostentatious) bedroom. With closer inspection, however, Harry discovers that the books on the shelves are all written in languages he doesn’t understand, the drawers of the desk are all locked, and there isn’t even anything remotely sharp he could stick up his sleeve and use as a weapon. He is in the midst of an attempt to break a leg off of the wooden bedframe – a splintered piece of wood is better than nothing – when he spots, out of the corner of his eye, the shimmer that precedes the appearance of the door.
Sure enough, Gus walks into the room a second later and beckons Harry over. He complies, albeit cautiously, but slows to a halt when Gus steps back out of the room and holds the door open for Harry to follow. The man sighs.
“C’mon, kid, I’m not gonna bite.”
“Where are we going?” Harry asks, even as he edges past Gus into the hallway beyond.
“The Dark Lord wants to see you.”
“He what,” Harry spits, recoiling as if he’s been burned. “No way.”
“Look, he isn’t going to hurt you–”
“That’d be a new and interesting experience.”
“–he just wants to talk,” Gus finishes, turning to face Harry once he realises that he has no intention of moving. Harry gives himself one, two, three deep breaths, and then resolves to play along with the charade for as long as it takes.
“What could he possibly want to talk about?” asks Harry, letting a thread of panic bleed into his voice. “He has no idea who I am.”
“Exactly,” Gus says gently, taking Harry by the arm and guiding him down the hallway. “And yet you not only know him, you also know his birth name, which he keeps firmly under wraps.”
“I…” Harry trails off. That’s a good point, and he knows it. He curses his half-asleep, shock-stricken brain for saying Riddle’s name earlier, but it’s too late to take it back now. He’ll just have to roll with it – say nothing of importance, even if it’s already known, and most importantly, play along.
They make their way up a flight of stairs, and the decor becomes more ostentatious – in line with what Harry imagines Malfoy’s house might look like. The floors change from stone to a dark, richly coloured wood, containing no breaks in the pattern of the wood grain, as if the length of the entire hallway was paved with a cross section of a single massive tree. The walls are papered in blue and covered in portraits that Harry can feel his eyes shying away from – some form of concealment charm, no doubt. The ceilings are high, causing their footsteps to echo in a way that puts Harry on edge.
After countless turns that Harry doesn’t even attempt to keep track of, they arrive at a door. It is relatively unremarkable, but when it swings open on silent hinges, he can see that it leads into the room he was first brought to after Gus took him from the Department of Mysteries. And there, standing at the head of the long rectangular table beside a chair so ornate that it might as well be called a throne, is Tom Riddle.
It’s strange to know that this is what the man must’ve looked like before his original defeat. It’s also strange to consider the amount of effort that must’ve gone into this scheme. For Harry, Voldemort is and always will be the skeletal, serpentine being that rose from the cauldron that night in the graveyard. That man and the man who killed his parents are one and the same. He wouldn’t have thought twice about it if Voldemort had appeared before him in all his snake-faced glory, claiming to be from the eighties. Of course he’s realised, intellectually, that something must’ve come between the handsome sixteen-year-old memory stored in the diary and the monster with which he is most familiar. Seeing Riddle standing before him, however – cheeks sunken, skin pale and a bit waxy, but otherwise undeniably, uncomfortably human – is a whole different experience.
Harry doesn’t realise he’s staring until Gus nudges him into the room, closing the door behind them with a quiet click. He sends the man a panicked glance, but gets no sympathy this time – only a prompting nod toward the Dark-Lord-shaped elephant in the room, who has been studying him just as intently in return.
“Well? I believe you owe me an explanation, little time traveller.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” Harry snaps back. Then he bites his tongue and stares at the ground. So much for not backtalking the Dark Lord.
When he hears Riddle move, he flinches back, but instead of flinging a curse as Harry expected, the man just steps away from the throne and approaches the two of them. Harry glares into his eyes – still red, at least that hasn’t changed – before remembering his disastrous Occlumency lessons and shifting his gaze to the bridge of Riddle’s nose. Which is present and accounted for, something that is kind of weirding him out.
Riddle stops a few feet away. He studies Harry’s face for a moment, then seems to have a silent conversation with Gus over Harry’s shoulder. When he speaks again, it’s not in the high, cold voice that Harry is familiar with, but a low tone, almost coaxing, that makes Harry all the more wary.
“What do you know of prophecies?”
Harry stiffens, recalling the battle that took place mere hours earlier. He hadn’t had the time to think much on it then – a little busy fighting for his life, thank you very much – but now… the memory resurfaces of a dusty glass sphere in his grip, of demands for him to hand over the prophecy before someone gets hurt… The taunts of the Death Eaters, mocking him with hints at the knowledge that had been hidden from him, the knowledge of why his parents had died…
“Nothing.”
“Really?” Riddle says, but it sounds like a statement, not a question. “Well then, little time traveller, let me enlighten you. A prophecy is a glimpse into the future, provided by a seer. All record of them is kept under lock and key in the Department of Mysteries, inaccessible to all but those who work there. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to witness the prophecy firsthand… which is exactly what one of my loyal servants did.”
He pauses – for input or for dramatic effect, Harry doesn’t know which.
“You see, there is a prophecy pertaining to myself, the Dark Lord. It speaks of one with the power to vanquish me… Quite the conundrum, is it not? I had, at first, thought it referred to a child not yet born, but now I see how the words could’ve been misinterpreted. It was wise of Augustus, here, to bring you to me once he made the connection… Wise of me, as well, to entrust him with the words of the prophecy that he has thus far been unable to retrieve for me.” With this, Riddle sends a dark look at the man standing behind Harry.
“The prophecy speaks of a child born as the seventh month dies… Or does it? It’s a dangerous thing, the spoken word. So many misunderstandings can be caused, so many mistaken assumptions formed. Augustus, in a–” he sneers– “rare moment of competence, realised upon your arrival that perhaps the prophecy did not refer to one who is born, but one who is borne.”
Harry must look exceedingly confused, because Gus nudges him from behind and, ignoring his jump of fright – he had almost forgotten the other man’s presence – whispers into his ear: “Borne, with an ‘e’ on the end. It means carried, or maybe delivered. Sort of.”
The explanation seems half-hearted, and only eases Harry’s befuddlement on the most basic level. It doesn’t make sense for Voldemort to be telling him all this. The desperate, hysterical feeling of surreality still roils in his gut, making him want to scream and bash his head into a wall, but he manages a shaky nod of acknowledgement.
“So, little time traveller , when you arrived last night, as the seventh month met its end… Landing in the Department of Mysteries, who have thrice denied me the right to see my prophecy… Well, there is no other conclusion I could’ve reached, is there?”
Riddle steps forward once more, his expression blank, and moves his hand slowly towards Harry’s face. Harry has no choice but to allow it. His escape route is blocked by the Death Eater standing behind him, so he stands stock-still, squinting his eyes shut and bracing himself for the pain that always accompanies Voldemort’s touch.
It doesn’t come.
His scar lies dormant as Riddle tilts his chin upwards with one finger – not even a twinge, much less the searing agony that shot through it in the graveyard last year. His eyes shoot open in surprise, and he meets Riddle’s crimson gaze.
“It seems that you, little time traveller, are the other subject of my prophecy.”
Harry is shaking his head, dislodging Riddle’s hold on his chin, before the man finishes his sentence.
“I’m not.” Because that seems like it would lead to ending up very dead, very quickly.
“Oh, really?” Riddle asks, one eyebrow lifting in condescension. “And how do I know you’re not just saying this to save your own skin?”
“I guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”
Riddle’s handsome face twists into an expression that Harry might’ve found funny if he wasn’t so utterly terrified.
“Take him back,” he orders, and Harry is pulled quickly from the room by a wide-eyed Gus.
“Merlin, kid, you have one hell of a death wish.” The man looks like he just watched his life – or Harry’s – flash before his eyes.
“Yeah, thanks a lot for the help back there,” Harry retorts as he tugs his arm out of the Death Eater’s grasp. “Augustus.” He knows, now, why the man looks familiar – his picture was next to Bellatrix Lestrange’s above the article about the Azkaban breakout. Rookwood, he recalls, convicted of sharing Ministry secrets; although the man in front of him appears to be in much better health than the one in the photograph, it’s undoubtedly him.
The Death Eater grimaces. “Just Gus, please. The only ones to call me Augustus are the Dark Lord and my mum.” He snorts, probably realising the absurdity of that statement.
They say nothing more to each other during their trip through the labyrinthine hallways, but Harry can tell that Gus is brimming with questions from the way he keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. Harry keeps his gaze fixed firmly ahead, which is the only reason he realises that the path they are on is not the one they took to get to the throne room. Gus is leading him somewhere else.
“I thought you were supposed to take me back to the other room?”
Gus gives him a considering look. “Well, he didn’t say that, did he? I figure it’s in the best interest of your health to remove you from my lord’s vicinity, so I’m taking you back to the Department of Mysteries instead.”
Harry narrows his eyes. “Why would you disobey your lord for my sake?”
“Not disobeying,” Gus corrects. “I’d say it’s more like an… alternative interpretation.”
“Right,” Harry scoffs. As if any of Voldemort’s cronies would dare consider one of his orders as ‘up for interpretation’. Gus does seem to have more spine than all the Death Eaters from the graveyard put together, but Harry thinks it’s still more likely Riddle took Gus aside beforehand and told him his true intentions so Gus could pretend it was his idea and become more trustworthy in Harry’s eyes. Harry is determined not to let it work.
The hallway widens into a foyer, at least two stories tall with marble columns stretching up towards the vaulted ceiling. Staircases frame the room to the left and right, but in the centre of the opposite wall, where Harry would expect the front door to be, there is instead a hearth so large that even Hagrid could step inside without stooping. A wide, shallow bowl filled with glittering Floo Powder rests atop a small table to one side. Gus stops next to it and draws his wand, casting something that creates an incomprehensible jumble of smoky letters in the air. Once he waves the smoke away, he scoops up some Floo Powder and tosses it into the grate.
Against the backdrop of roaring emerald fire, the Death Eater becomes little more than a silhouette with one hand outstretched. Harry hesitates, casts one more glance around the room, but then places his hand in Gus’ and steps into the flames with the thought that no matter where the man takes him, it has to be an improvement, if only by virtue of being farther away from the Dark Lord.
Gus shouts “Parsimony!” and they’re gone.