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Chapter Text

Harry tilted his head back to crane up at the lofty castle as he stepped forward with the other first years at Professor McGonagall’s gesture. He paused for a moment at the recurring realization of how big the castle was. How many students did the castle hold? How many witches and wizards?

“Harry, come on,” Ron said impatiently. Harry stepped through the doors a little too quickly, hitting his toe on something and slipping on the heel of the other shoe. He overbalanced and stumbled back.

He had time to think Please don’t let me be remembered as the kid who fell in the mud on the first night before someone behind him pushed him back upright.

“Thanks,” Harry said after he regained his balance, turning to see who had caught him.

“You’re welcome,” the boy responded flatly. He stepped past Harry and into the castle. Harry followed, casting about for Ron, who seemed to have disappeared into the other children.

“So, what house do you expect to be in?” Harry asked, hoping to make conversation with the other boy.

“Slytherin, I should hope,” the boy replied. “It’s the only house in which you can actually become someone who matters.” An almost feverish look flickered in the other boy’s eyes for a moment before he glanced back over at Harry. “And you?”

Harry was thrown for a minute. “I suppose I don’t really know,” he said. “I’m told my parents were Gryffindors, so I wouldn’t mind that.”

The other boy shot him a critical look. “I wouldn’t go there, if I were you,” he said. “Gryffindor is the house for people who won’t be anyone important in the long run.”

“Talking about the houses?” Another boy had turned back to look at them. “I’m Orion Lycoris Black of the House of Black, Toujours Pur, so of course I’ll be in Slytherin like the rest of my family. What are your names?”

“Harry. Erm, Harry James Potter,” he said, hoping that these boys wouldn’t have the same reaction to his name as everyone else.

“Related to the magical Potter Family?” Orion Black asked.

“Um…yes, I think so.” Harry was dubiously beginning to think that Black was going to be another sneering Malfoy-type, but he just nodded and looked over at the boy who had stopped Harry from falling.

“And your name?”

“Tom Marvolo Riddle,” he said.

“Riddle’s a Muggle name,” Black observed sharply. “But Marvolo’s not. Are you Muggleborn?”

“I believe my father might have been a wizard,” Riddle said. “Marvolo is my grandfather’s name.”

“So you have some wizarding blood in you somewhere,” Black remarked. “Assuming that your great-grandmother didn’t just have strange taste in names.”

“Do wizards usually have strange names?” Harry asked curiously. “I’ve met one named Ron and another named Draco, but it seems like most have weirder names.”

“They’re not unusual names if you grew up with them,” Black said simply as they stepped into a room off a main hall from where a lot of talking could be heard. The room had the same stone walls and old-fashioned furniture.

“Now that we’re all here,” a voice said pleasantly. Harry turned to look at the speaker and started. He had been expecting McGonagall again, but instead an auburn-haired man clad in lilac robes stood there. He smiled out at the first years. “I am Professor Dumbledore, head of Gryffindor House.”

Harry stared at him in confusion. The Dumbledore on his chocolate frog card had shown an image of an old man. Perhaps this was a relative of some sort.

“The Sorting will begin in a minute,” Professor Dumbledore continued. “You will be Sorted into four Houses: Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Gryffindor. Each House has its own unique qualities and advantages. I’m certain you’ll all do well wherever you end up. Please wait here for a moment.”

Dumbledore stepped out again and the students began muttering together again. Black turned back to Harry. “You said your parents were Gryffindors?”

“Yes, that’s what I was told,” Harry said, unsure where Black was going with this.

“Well, think about it like this, then.” Black paused thoughtfully. “Gryffindor is the House for the courageous, isn’t it?” He didn’t seem to want a response, for he continued on. “Well, the other Houses can tell you that yes, they are brave in that they tend to put themselves in danger to protect people, but they don’t stop to think. The people who think are the ones who can do the most, aren't they? You can help more people by stopping to think and plan. Being willing to consider what you’re doing takes its own flavor of bravery.” Black shrugged and began to turn away. “Just a thought to keep in mind, Potter.”

Riddle was standing alone nearby, so Harry, beginning to feel quite nervous and unsettled by all the discussions going on around him about the merits of the different Houses, decided to talk to him. “So, um, were you raised by Muggles?"

“Have a problem with that, Potter?” Riddle asked, expression mostly blank but with a hint of a glare behind it.

“No, I was too,” Harry hurried to explain. “My aunt and uncle are awful. I mean, not all Muggles are, but they are.” Something about Riddle’s not-quite-a-glare left Harry feeling distinctly wrong-footed. “How about you? Who do you live with?”

“None of your business,” Riddle said with the same touch of coldness.

“Fine,” Harry said with a bit of irritation. An awkward pause ensued before Harry broke it again. “So you want to be in Slytherin?”

“Yes,” Riddle agreed. “I suppose you’ll be an idiot Gryffindor?”

“For your information, I haven’t made up my mind,” Harry snapped back. “And there’s no cause to be rude.” He stepped away pointedly, nearly running into a surly-looking girl dressed in oddly old-fashioned clothes who glared at him. “Sorry,” he muttered, wondering if the outdated appearances of everything were a wizard thing.

“Students!” Dumbledore had returned. “Line up please. It’s time for the Sorting.”

They fell into an awkward line, bunched up in places and with nobody quite willing to go first. Harry could see Orion Black’s long hair several people up the line, and Riddle had disappeared. They filed awkwardly back across the massive, high-ceilinged hall and through the doors that lead to—

Harry gasped, as did many others. The room itself was enormous, with four long tables full of students. The ceiling was covered in stars and looked as though it simply didn’t exist at all, simply opening up to the sky. Torches lined the walls and pale, floating people that appeared to be ghosts hovered near the tables.

Dumbledore lifted a hat so dirty that it would have made Aunt Petunia screech in horror up onto a stool. To Harry’s shock, it quivered before opening up a mouth and beginning to sing:

Many, many years ago
The Founders had a thought.
Is it best to break apart?
But Helga’s warnings were forgot.
They joined together and enchanted me
So that I might tell you lot
In which house you best belong
And where you certainly do not. 

You might join the ranks of Gryffindor,
Whose Hat I used to be.
His folk have nerve and haste
And of those in danger, they cannot bear to see.
Or perhaps you’ll go to Hufflepuff,
A place as kind as Helga herself.
There you’ll learn hard work
And to strive towards everyone’s health.
Maybe it’s Slytherin for you,
Should you be the cunning sort.
If you wish to become the best you can,
Then in Slytherin you’ll hold your fort!
And lastly, but never leastly,
There’s Ravenclaw’s clever ones.
If you value knowledge and learning,
It’s here you’ll find your haven. 

So gone on then, try me on!
I’m a good judge of size.
Wherever you go, you’ll find a way.
For I swear I never tell lies. 

There was a pause as everyone ascertained the Hat really was done singing before the students applauded. Harry was too nervous to join in. Somewhere behind him, a student complained that his older brother had told him that they were made to fight the teachers to get in.

Dumbledore unrolled a scroll and cleared his throat. “Avery, Averil!”

A student that clearly was Averil Avery stumbled up to the Hat, looking anxious, and put the Hat on. There was a pause, and the Hat called, “Slytherin!”

Avery, looking relieved, hurried off to the correct house.

“Baker, Suzanne!”

“Hufflepuff!”

“Black, Orion!”

Black stepped out of the line and up towards the Hat. He didn’t look nearly as nervous as the others.

“Slytherin!” the Hat called again. Apparently, Black had gotten what he had expected.

And so it continued on in alphabetical order. Harry was suddenly struck with the horrifying thought that perhaps the Hat wouldn’t Sort him at all, and would rather call out, “Back to the train!” or something equally horrible. He nervously tried to flatten his hair and looked around, wondering where Ron had run off to.

Finally, they reached the O’s and P’s. O’Flaherty was made a Gryffindor, Perkins became a Ravenclaw. The scowling girl, apparently called “Prince, Eileen!” was then called.

Harry realized in utter horror that he’d been skipped.

“Riddle, Tom,” became a Slytherin, but Harry wasn’t listening anymore. He was rooted to the spot, convinced that he would be sent back to the Dursleys, told that this was all a terrible mistake, sorry, we confused you with the other Harry Potter.

All the students had been called and Harry still stood there. Dumbledore glanced back at his list in confusion before looking at Harry. “And who might you be?” he asked.

“Harry Potter, sir,” he mumbled. The entire school was staring at him.

“Did you sneak onto the train with an older sibling, Mr. Potter?” Dumbledore questioned.

“No!” Harry shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out his Hogwarts letter, which he’d been carrying around. “Look, here’s my letter!”

Dumbledore stepped forward and plucked the letter out of his hand, looking doubtful. He glanced at it and his eyebrows furrowed. There was a long pause.

“Come along, please,” the professor said after a moment. He gave Harry a slight smile but looked very confused. He gestured for Harry to cross the Hall, following quickly after him. The students were whispering and staring, making Harry feel very young and stupid. Dumbledore pointed Harry to a door before turning to speak to the other teachers. Harry opened the door and stepped into the smaller room that appeared to be some sort of meeting place. It had several portraits on the walls and a circle of chairs.

“Are you a first year?”

Harry started and spun around. The portrait looked at him inquiringly. Apparently, not only did wizard photographs move, but their paintings did as well.

“Well?” the portrait pressed.

Harry nodded mutely, feeling very confused.

“What on earth did you do?” The other portraits on the walls were listening in intently. Harry supposed that not many interesting things would happen to a portrait.

The door opened again, saving Harry from needing to answer. Dumbledore and four other teachers stepped through. There was a round-bellied man with a large amount of straw-colored hair, a tall woman who looked to be getting on in age, and a red-haired young woman who seemed to suffer from the same chronically untamable hair as Harry did. Last through the door was a very old wizard who wobbled slightly as he walked.

“Mr. Potter, these are the other Head of houses, Professors Slughorn, Merrythought, and Yancy, and this is Headmaster Dippet,” Dumbledore explained. “Harry, would you mind telling us what the year is?”

Harry stared at him. The year? “Nineteen ninety-one,” he said. What a bizarre question.

His answer caused a stir amongst the professors. Dumbledore held out Harry’s Hogwarts letter for Dippet to examine while Professor Merrythought came forward to inspect Harry.

“Mr. Potter, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to cast a few spells on you,” she said politely. “Just to check you over and be sure you’re all right.”

“I—I guess so,” he said nervously. “Go ahead.”

Professor Merrythought nodded and pulled out her wand. She waved it around him in sharp circular motions. Harry gasped as he lit up different colors with different movements of her wand.

Finally, she nodded and stepped back, looking puzzled. “He hasn’t been cursed with confusion and is telling the truth, as far as I can tell. He has traces of some sort of dark magic on him, but I couldn’t tell you what without further study. There is also a layer of Hogwart’s magic on him.”

“Strange,” redheaded Professor Yancy said. “Very strange.”

“You don’t think he’s a time traveler, do you, Galatea?” Professor Slughorn rumbled.

She shook her head. “It’s difficult to tell, but the magic remnants on him do seem to speak of some sort of displacement.”

Dippet held the letter back out to Dumbledore. “Considering the name on the signature of the letter, time travel seems to be the case.” Even his voice was wheezy and wobbly.

“The signature?” Dumbledore read it and his eyebrows rose. “Well, I did think she seemed like a talented student.”

“What is it?” Yancy asked.

“The name of the Deputy Headmistress on the letter is one of our current students,” Dumbledore explained. “A clever girl, but certainly not old enough for the position right now.” He folded the letter up. “Do you mind if I keep this, Mr. Potter?”

“No, that’s all right,” Harry said shakily. Dumbledore folded it up and put it in his pocket. “What’s all this about time travel?”

“It would appear,” Professor Merrythought said gently, “that you’ve fallen through time, Mr. Potter.”

“Through time?” he asked. “What? How? What year is it?” He had the distinctly peculiar impression that the ground wasn’t quite as firm as it had been a moment ago. In fact, it seemed nearly as wobbly as Dippet’s voice.

“It’s the year nineteen thirty-eight, and I’m not sure,” Merrythought admitted. “With further study, and with your permission, of course, I may be able to reverse the effects and return you to your proper time.”

“Perhaps Mr. Potter could remain here while we try to understand what happened,” Dumbledore suggested. “After all, he came back here to Hogwarts. Headmaster, do you think it might be best for him to remain here where the magic is linked?”

Dipper frowned, considering. “Yes, that might be best. Galatea?”

“The time magic appears connected to Hogwarts,” she confirmed. “I wouldn’t want to risk the effects of removing him from here.”

“Heads of houses?” Dumbledore asked. Slughorn nodded agreement and Yancy hesitated before assenting.

“It’s settled then!” Dumbledore looked pleased by this. “Harry, it will probably be best if you don’t mention anything of the future. It’s far too much to ask you to remain completely silent about this mishap, but if you could do your best to refrain from causing a paradox, I think that would be best. Do you mind if I cast a spell on you to help keep you from bringing up events that haven’t happened yet? I promise it won’t hurt you, just cause a buzzing in your head to remind you.”

“I—suppose so, sir,” Harry said, still feeling as though he’d been whacked solidly around the head. “Go ahead.”

Dumbledore smiled easily and swished his wand. Copper-colored mist rose from his wand and settled around Harry’s head before vanishing.  

“Good, good,” Dippet said. “Well, all that remains is the Sorting, then. Best if we announce what’s happened, I think.” He glanced at Dumbledore, who nodded thoughtfully in agreement.

Harry was escorted back into the Hall and Dippet stood up at the teacher’s table to explain. “Students!” he called when they didn’t fall silent. “Apologies for the mishap. Please welcome Mr. Potter, a time traveler! He will be staying at the castle while we sort out his little mishap with time. Please refrain from questing him about future events—we wouldn’t want to create a time paradox, after all! The Sorting will finish now.”

He sat back down without explaining anything else as a rush of whispers and staring broke out among the students. Dumbledore smiled amiably at Harry before holding out the Sorting Hat. Harry sat on the stool nervously. The Hat was much too large for him, he discovered. It fell right down over his eyes.

“Well, well,” the Hat said. “Harry Potter. I’ve been expecting you in the nineties! What on earth are you doing here? Oh…I see.”

I don’t, Harry thought.

“Don’t worry, Harry, things will be clear in time. Now, where to put you… Oh, my, that’s a lot of courage you have, and a good dose of cleverness… You’ll need to be quick, though, to survive here. Under different circumstances…well, you need to be cunning to be great, Mr. Potter. You’ll need it even more here.”

Oh no, not Slytherin, Harry thought.

“Sorry, Harry. Slytherin will help achieve greatness, and you need that greatness for what’s coming. Yes, I must. SLYTHERIN!”

The Hat shouted this out to the rest of the school. Harry pulled the Hat off his head shakily and handed it back to Dumbledore—whom he suddenly realized was probably not a relative of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, but the man himself, many years younger. He stood up and headed automatically over to the table where Black and Riddle had gone. Orion caught his eye and gestured for Harry to join him.

“Well done, Potter,” he said lowly as Dippet stood again and called, “Let the feast begin!”

“It’s been a while since we had a Potter in Slytherin,” Black continued. Harry gaped at the dishes around them as they filled with food. “The last one must have been…” He trailed off, thinking, before turning to a boy nearby. “Alphard! Who was the last Potter in Slytherin?”

“Henry Potter. Class of 1892,” said the boy that was presumably Alphard.

“That’s my cousin, Alphard Black,” Orion clarified with a nod of thanks to the aforementioned cousin. “He’s in the year above us. I suppose it makes sense, though. A time traveler! How did you manage that?”

“Oh,” Harry said. “I don’t know.” He gingerly reached for the plate of roast potatoes. The feast seemed to have every kind of food imaginable. Black caught his glance at a plate of peppermint humbugs and laughed.

“They’re a favorite of Dippet’s,” he explained. “No one likes them, but Headmaster’s orders, I suppose.” He seemed unfazed by Harry’s time traveling. Were these things common in the wizarding world?

Harry started to eat. With his nervousness from the Sorting worn off, he found himself very hungry and with his mind buzzing along. Time travel? So he must have left everyone behind in the future. Well, he thought, at least there wouldn’t be any Dursleys this far back. Nineteen thirty-eight! He wondered how different everything here would be compared to the nineties. At least the teachers seemed willing to try and fix whatever had gone wrong. He hoped they would be able to fix it. The other students left him alone for the most part, but Harry thought he could feel them watching him, probably planning on asking him questions later.

When the feast was over, an older boy and girl who introduced themselves as the 5^th year prefects led them deep down into the castle, through several winding corridors that gave Harry the uneasy feeling that they were in a dungeon. There were hardly any portraits down here, either.

“Here we are,” the male prefect said. He stopped before a completely blank stretch of stone. “The current password is labyrinth.”

On his final word, the wall slid open, becoming a door. The prefects gestured for them to enter, so they filed in.

“Rules!” the other prefect said. “First of all, Slytherin house will be your home for seven years, so your loyalty will be to us. Don’t go about sharing personal matters before the other houses, understand?”

She waited for them to mutter agreement before continuing. “Secondly, I won’t tell you not to break rules since you’re all just idiot kids, but for Salazar’s sake, do not get caught. And finally, although the other houses don’t agree with this, being a Slytherin doesn’t make you automatically evil. Now off to bed! Girls, come with me. You boys will go with Travis.”

Harry and the other first years followed Travis the prefect down a dark winding corridor to the very end.

“Alright, you lot are in here,” Travis said, pointing to the students in question with quick, impatient gestures. “Time traveler kid, you’re in here, too. Lucky we have the elves to pull up another bed, eh?” Harry mumbled something in agreement and followed the dorm, beginning to feel the shock of the day wear off and leaving him reeling and about to fall asleep standing up. He stumbled through the dorm, decorated as elegantly as the common room, and over to the bed with his trunk beside it. Harry was too tired to spare more than a brief thought towards the question of how his trunk had time traveled with him. He was awake long enough to recognize that that Riddle was sitting on the bed across from him and that the window had an odd tint to the darkness outside it before he fell fast asleep. 

Chapter Text

Harry woke up, disoriented, to the sight of swaths of green fabric. He was very warm and comfortable, lying in an unfamiliar bed that was neither the cot in the cupboard under the stairs nor the bed in Dudley’s second bedroom. There were voices outside the green fabric—

Oh. Right. He was in the Slytherin dormitories, and he’d somehow time-traveled decades into the past. Everyone he knew wouldn’t be born yet, including the Dursleys, which didn’t seem as good as it had the day before. Without the Dursleys, where would he live? Uncle Vernon had often threatened to send Harry to an orphanage if he didn’t behave, and those places had sounded awful to him. Maybe he’d be allowed to live at the school until he was old enough to get a job.

He heard a door slam open. “Wake up, everyone!” Travis’s voice called. There was some grumbling from the other side of his curtains. He sat up and opened them to reach for his glasses on the bedside table. “This is the only time I’ll be getting you up on time, so get out your wands and pay attention.”

Harry had removed his wand from his pocket and had set it down beside his glasses. He picked it up and stared at Travis fuzzily.

“Here’s your first spell of the year,” the prefect continued. “You say tempus and then the hour you want in Latin or English, as it doesn’t really matter, and don’t forget to say morning or night. The movement is a quick jab towards yourself, like so.” He demonstrated with a quick flick of his wrist. “For those who didn’t know, that sets an alarm that will automatically wake you up at the time you specified. Got it?” He didn’t wait for responses. “Good. And in the future, Potter and Elliot, keep your wands somewhere safer at night. Wouldn’t want someone to make off with it while you dream, would you?” He grinned and departed. Harry clutched his wand self-consciously, exchanging a quick glance with the boy named Elliot.

The other boys were shuffling around, collecting clothes and toiletries from their trunks, and Harry hurried to do the same. Harry was brushing his teeth when the first question came.

“So, Potter,” one of the boys said casually. Harry thought his name was something Gamp. His first name was something along the lines of Cloud, but Harry was pretty sure that even wizards wouldn’t name their child Cloud. “Time travel?”

“Uh,” Harry said, and spat out the toothpaste. “Yeah. I guess so.” The others seemed to be looking for more information, so he added, “It was a complete accident. I don’t even know when I switched decades.”

“Strange,” Gamp mused.  “What year are you from, then?”

“Aw, let him be, Claudius,” said a different boy. “Hey, Potter. Raymond Lestrange.” Raymond extended a hand, which Harry shook awkwardly.

Orion glanced up from where he’d been cursing at a tangle in his hair. “Stupid tradition,” he muttered. “For those of you who weren’t paying attention last night, and for whatever reason weren’t previously acquainted with me, I’m Orion Black.” He turned back to the mirror. “Of the very stupid House of Black where nobody cuts their hair until they marry.” He glared at the mirror. “Good thing we’re not Muggles,” he added thoughtfully. “I’d be tripping over it like Madam Melcott.”

“Who?” Harry asked.

There was a slight pause.

“Madam Melcott,” Gamp said. “From the kid’s story.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Er, right. Her.” Suddenly he felt very wrong-footed and out of place. Judging by the looks he was being given, not knowing the names of characters in wizarding stories was some kind of social gaffe. He accidentally caught Riddle’s eye in the mirror and glanced hurriedly away.

The silence dragged on for a painful few moments before Elliot broke it. “If we’re doing the introducing ourselves thing, I’m Alphonse Elliot,” he said, and then quickly added, “Of the smaller branch of the family Elliot.” Harry wondered what was wrong with the bigger branch.

“Claudius Gamp, of the Gamp family, obviously,” Gamp said, heading for the showers.

“Harry Potter,” he contributed. “Family Potter?”

“If your dad’s from wizards and his name’s Potter, then yes,” Orion said, shoving his hairbrush away in disgust.

“Oh. Yes, then,” Harry said, relieved to have guessed right and to know at least something about what they were all talking about. He finished buttoning up his shirt and robes at last and reached for the tie with trepidation.

Riddle had so far been quiet, but Lestrange turned to him and asked, “What about you?”

“Tom Riddle,” he said.

“Ah,” Lestrange said. He reached for his things. “Well, I’m off to breakfast. See you all there.”

Riddle turned back to the mirror with a scowl. Harry had the feeling that Lestrange had just managed to snub him somehow. Were all wizards like this? he wondered. Ron hadn’t introduced himself as part of the Weasley Family, all capitals…but he had seemed wrapped up in thinking about all his brothers. It all seemed very strange to him, but maybe this was ordinary for wizards, like how Orion had said that unusual names were normal for him.

“Well, I think I’ll be heading out, too,” Orion said. “You finished, Harry?”

“Close enough,” he said, adjusting his tie again. It didn’t seem to want to straighten out and was hanging down floppily.

Orion saw what he was doing and laughed. “Try constituo,” he suggested, gesturing towards Harry’s wand. “Or, you know what, hold still.” Suddenly there was a wand in Harry’s face. “Constituo.”

Harry’s tie snapped into place neatly and his shoelaces tied themselves.

“You catch that?” Orion asked, sliding his wand back up his sleeve.

“I think so,” Harry said, still admiring the ease with which Orion used magic. He was sure to be miles behind his classmates if they all knew some magic already.

Alphonse Elliot stepped past them to the door. “You lot coming or what?” he called back.

“You go on ahead, I’ll meet you up there,” Gamp said, returning from the showers.

“Alright then,” Orion said, turning towards the door. “Catch you later.”

They made their way up to the Great Hall in a group, meeting Raymond Lestrange at the Slytherin table. Nobody else asked Harry questions about his time travelling, to his relief, but some of the students were still staring, especially the ones at the nearby tables. Travis and the other prefects were handing out schedules, and Harry was relieved to find out that all the Slytherin first years took classes together. Their first class was Defense Against the Dark Arts, taught by Professor Merrythought. Harry and the others were some of the first people to the classroom, although Tom Riddle had beaten them there. Harry tried to remember if he’d seen him at breakfast and failed.

He didn’t have long to think, as Professor Merrythought arrived soon thereafter and began the lesson. She went over what they would study for the next seven years and then demonstrated a stinging hex and a stinging jinx and told them they would be discussing the difference between hexes and jinxes as a basis for theory work later on. Harry thought that the class seemed really interesting, and his classmates and the Ravenclaw first years agreed, judging by their interested looks.

At the end of class, as they were packing up, Professor Merrythought called for Harry to stay after. His classmates shot him curious looks, but filed out obediently.

“What is it, Professor?” he asked.

“No need to look so frightened,” she chided with a smile. “I just wanted to discuss how we’ll be going about trying to understand what happened to cause time travel of such a degree.”

“Oh,” Harry said, a little bit relieved.

She smiled kindly. “It would probably be best to work together on weekends so I don’t take too much time away from your schoolwork. Why don’t we meet this Saturday at 7 o’clock in the evening? That way you have your day free to be with your friends. I promise I won’t keep you up too late!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said. “I’ll be here on Saturday, then.”

“Good,” she said. “Go on, then, don’t be late,” she added when he hovered for a second, unsure whether he was dismissed. He hurried out with his bag to find that some of the Slytherins had waited for him.

“What did she want?” Orion asked while Alphonse Elliot looked on with interest.

“Just setting up times to meet to figure out how I time travelled,” Harry said, surprised that they were still there. 

“That makes sense,” Orion said. “Is she going to run tests on you or something?”

“Pretty much, I think,” Harry said. “Should we go to the next class?”

“It’s break,” Alphonse said, consulting his schedule. “But it’ll probably take a while to find the classroom. Charms next, right?”

Harry and Orion confirmed this fact, and so they set out.

The first week continued in this pattern. Harry liked many of his classes. Professor Dumbledore taught well and was very talented with keeping every student interested without really seeming like he was putting much effort into it. Professor Yancy taught Charms, as it turned out, and was head of Hufflepuff House. This put the other Slytherins in a mind to disregard her, but Harry thought she seemed very sharp and clever. They had Potions with Professor Slughorn, whom Harry wasn’t too sure about. Slughorn had a habit of favoring the students whose names he recognized, much like many of Harry’s dorm mates. The classes didn’t seem too difficult—yet, anyways—and everyone so far seemed nice and accommodating.

There were some odd things, though. The rest of the school treated Harry and the other Slytherins like they were poison, not wanting to really talk to them, even about schoolwork. And while his yearmates seemed to put on a collective face of support for each other, it quickly became clear who was most important. Raymond Lestrange and Orion seemed to be treated with more admiration by Elliot and Gamp. Lestrange seemed to expect it, and Orion did too, although he didn’t treat the others with quite as much sneering as Lestrange seemed prone to. They all seemed to have decided to treat Riddle as though he wasn’t there, ignoring him at every opportunity. Gamp, Elliot, and Lestrange didn’t seem to quite know how to treat Harry, either. Orion was willing enough to talk to him, but didn’t seem too invested in keeping the others from giving him the cold shoulder when it came down to it. As long as Harry nodded along with what the others said, they didn’t hold anything against him.

Harry found it all rather befuddling, to be honest. He’d never really had friends before, but even the hierarchy Dudley and his friend’s had kept hadn’t seemed quite so stacked as this did. It was much more subtle, for one thing, and the others all seemed to find it normal. Even Riddle didn’t seem too surprised, preferring to stay by himself in the library much of the time, keeping away from them.

The implicit exclusion of Riddle bothered Harry, as he knew very well what it meant to be an outsider. Everybody else seemed to take it for granted, with their knowledge of wizarding habits that Harry didn’t have. He thought that if it hadn’t been for Orion, the other boys would be quite happy to shun Harry as much as they did Riddle.

Surprisingly quickly, the week drew to a close and Harry found himself knocking nervously on Professor Merrythought’s classroom door. She opened it and smiled lightly.

“Ah, hello, Mr. Potter,” she said. “Please come in.”

Harry followed her back into the classroom and took the seat she directed him to.

“Now, let me just explain a few things before we get started,” she said. “I have a basic idea of the magic involved, and really just need to get a closer look at it and cast a few determining spells. I’ll use my notes to come to further conclusions. This won’t take very long, but you’ll need to hold still. Can you do that?”

Harry nodded as she pulled out her wand with a quick, “This won’t hurt at all,” and then everything lit up with colors. Harry watched in awe as, with each twitch of her wand, the colors shifted, condensed and split apart into individual threads, displaying a burgundy and dark gray pattern.

“Aha,” she said, pulling out parchment and a quill and writing rapid notes. She directed the magic in a slow swoop around Harry and made more hm-ing noises as she wrote.

“Very good, Mr. Potter,” she said at last, and with a wave of her wand the magic dissipated. “Now, as I’m sure you’re curious, it looks to me as though you were hit by some sort of displacement spell, meant to move you from one place to another. In your Charms curriculum, you will eventually study a much lower-level version of what I mean, called Banishing charms. Apparation and Disapparation are similar forms of this.”

“What is Apparation?” Harry asked tentatively.

The Professor frowned thoughtfully. “It is the magic of transporting oneself instantly to another place. For instance, from your home to Diagon Alley, to spare yourself a long trip. It’s quite popular amongst adult wizards for how quick it is. In any case, the magic of Hogwarts seems to have interfered somehow and instead of being transported through space, you were transported through time.”

“Hogwarts?” Harry asked, confused. “How would a castle do that?”

“There is magic woven into the very foundations of this school, Mr. Potter,” she said with a touch of solemnness. “The school Founders wove it into the castle to protect the children within. If you’re curious, I suggest you try reading your Hogwarts, a History textbook.”

“Oh,” Harry said slowly. “I think I understand. But why would the castle’s magic do that?”

“Most likely it recognized a high-powered displacement spell as dangerous if executed, and deposited you here, in a time where you could be safer.” She reviewed her noted contemplatively. “I’ll have to do further studies to really understand, but at the most basic level, I think that’s all. Do you have any other questions?”

“Er, yes,” Harry said. “Can it… Could I be sent back to my own time?”

“Honestly, I don’t yet know,” she said. “I may be able to tell you soon, after I have some time to look this over more. I hope you aren’t too disappointed by this…” She trailed off leadingly. When Harry didn’t reply, she added, “It’s only for the time being, really. Besides, we don’t know Hogwarts’ motives in their entirety. It’s possible that you really are safer here. However, we will make every effort to return you to your time and your family.”

“My parents are dead,” Harry said without thinking.

“Oh!” Merrythought looked shocked, but quickly recovered her composure. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“It’s fine,” Harry said, a little embarrassed by her reaction. “I never knew them.”

“Yes, well.” She shifted her notes around awkwardly. “Very well, Mr. Potter. Thank you for your time here tonight. If I need to run any more tests, I’ll be sure to ask you quickly so we can find the underlying cause of this. Acceptable?”

“Thank you for doing this,” Harry said, recognizing the end to the conversation.

“Of course,” she said. “It is my job, you know.” She smiled. “You can find your own way back to your dorms, I assume.”

“Oh—yes,” Harry said, and hurried off with one last thanks. 

Chapter Text

Harry could hear shouting up ahead, but Orion and Lestrange weren’t slowing down, so he hurried along after them. They rounded a corner and saw two older students in a fight. They both had their wands out and were glaring at each other fiercely.

“Just because you’re too scared to—” one of the boys was accusing as Harry tried to inch around them and catch up to the others, who seemed to have magically woven their way through the confrontation without difficulty.

“Oh yeah?” said the other boy. “I bet you don’t have the guts to stop me.” He reached out and grabbed Harry’s arm as he attempted to sidle by, presumably to make a point about his fearlessness. His grip closed crushingly on Harry’s forearm. Harry tried to jerk away and felt a shock of energy crackle down his arm, knocking the older student back several feet in a flurry of electric blue sparks.

“What the—” the student said, and put a hand to his head as if dazed. “You little—how did you—”

Stumbling over his own feet, he made another swiping motion at Harry, who dodged before turning and running to catch up to Orion and Lestrange. They had both stopped at the sound of the commotion to see what was happening. Orion was watching Harry with a distinctly wide-eyed look of surprise.

“What?” Harry asked defensively.

“It’s a bit unusual to be able to do accidental magic once you’ve started school,” Lestrange said slowly. “You might want to keep that under wraps.” His appraising look made Harry feel a bit uncomfortable.

“Well,” Orion said, “considering we’ve only been at school a few weeks, but…if that happens when you’re older, it’s definitely unusual.” He readjusted the strap of his bag and frowned thoughtfully at Harry, who felt a bit like he was under a microscope with the way they were both squinting at him.

“We should probably get to lunch,” Harry said in a very obvious attempt to change the subject.

“Yes, we probably should,” Orion said, sounding a little like he was taking pity on Harry’s obvious discomfort. “Come on, Raymond.”

They headed off to lunch without any further mishaps, but Harry was left feeling uncomfortable under the occasional curious glances Orion shot him, and wishing he didn’t have to deal with being unusual—time-traveler, unfamiliar with wizarding culture in a way that none of his classmates (except Riddle, maybe, but Riddle didn’t talk to them much), and now apparently doing magic that he shouldn’t be able to do.

On the following Friday, Harry received a note from a prefect asking him to come to the staff room to discuss his time traveling with his Head of House and a few other teachers. He'd could almost ignore that he'd time-traveled, apart from the few times he'd run into time period culture differences, and the sudden reminder sent a nasty lurch through his stomach.

When he arrived at the staff room, he was relieved to see Professor Merrythought waiting to beckon him in. “Good afternoon, Mr. Potter,” she said.

“Good afternoon, Professor,” he said politely. Professors Dumbledore and Slughorn were also waiting inside the room. Dumbledore smiled kindly but distantly at him. Harry didn’t know much about Slughorn besides the blatant favoritism of the purebloods and the magically powerful. He had seemed cautiously interested in Harry because of his time travel, but recently he had been more reserved.

“Please take a seat,” Dumbledore said, gesturing to an empty chair. Harry perched on it, uncomfortably aware of the eyes of the teachers on him.

“Are you going to send me back?” he asked after a pause.

“Well, that depends on a few factors,” Merrythought said. “You see, Mr. Potter, the magic that caused you to fall back several decades was, in essence, Hogwarts’ reaction to a student being threatened (if you remember, by the displacement magic we discussed before).”

“Yes, I remember,” Harry said. “You said it was like, er, Apparation?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Now, in this case, the displacement spell cast on you seems to have been a variation on a Portkey that relied upon ritual magic instead of an object.”

Harry didn’t know how to tell her that he had no idea what a Portkey was, so he stayed silent awkwardly.

“What Professor Merrythought is getting to here,” Dumbledore offered while Slughorn frowned with disturbing thoughtfulness at Harry, “is—do you know of anyone in your time who might wish you harm, Mr. Potter? We don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s best to cover all possible variables, you see.”

Harry thought of Hagrid telling him about the wizard who killed his parents. He thought, shocked, that his parents weren’t dead, not even being born yet. Who knew if the evil wizard—Voldemort, Harry recalled—was alive, either. It was an unsettling thought.

“There—there was someone,” he began tentatively. “He killed my parents.”

“Ah,” Dumbledore said softly. “How terrible.”

“The evil wizard, he might be dead—or, er, will maybe be dead—but he might not have been, too…” Harry trailed off, not knowing how to explain in a way that would be clear. He wasn’t sure he wanted these people to know he was famous, not when remembering the reactions of the wizards in the Leaky Cauldron when they found out who he was. “People thought I might’ve killed him somehow, as a baby,” he ended up mumbling.

“Revenge, perhaps,” Merrythought said, evidently having very sharp ears.

“So it might be,” Slughorn agreed.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Harry asked after a moment in which the teachers exchanged meaningful looks.

Dumbledore leaned towards him. “It means that there’s a high chance that you will be in danger if we return you to your time, and as teachers, we can’t allow that to happen. You may have to stay here for a while.”

“Oh.” Harry thought that he should probably be more upset about that, but he thought of the Dursleys. He’d never have to see them again if he stayed here. “What will I do during the summer?”

“We’ll figure that out a little further down the road, if that’s alright with you, Harry.” Dumbledore had the kind of smile you couldn’t say no to.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, and Dumbledore beamed.

“Excellent! I’ll tell the Headmaster that we’ve figured out a course of action. Professor Slughorn, if you would escort Mr. Potter back to his dormitory?”

“Of course, of course,” Slughorn said lightly, placing a friendly hand on Harry’s back. “Come along then, Mr. Potter.”

Harry was escorted out of the room quickly. He craned his neck to look back at the room and saw the teachers’ faces turn serious as the door closed behind them.

“Well!” Slughorn said into the silence between their footsteps. “Time travelling! I’m sure you were quite surprised.”

“Yes,” Harry said.

“Hm,” Slughorn said. “You really had no idea it was happening?”

“Well, I fell over,” Harry said.

“Hm,” Slughorn said again ponderously. “You are an interesting young man, Mr. Potter.”

Harry didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he nodded and stayed silent. The walk fell into uncomfortable quiet for several minutes before Slughorn asked, “You’re friends with young Mr. Black, are you not?”

“We share a room,” Harry offered. He wasn’t sure he could qualify Orion as a friend, exactly, since he’d been kind of standoffish, if politely friendly.

“Yes,” Slughorn said, still thoughtful. “Are you enjoying your classes?”

“They’re very interesting,” Harry said instantly, pleased to have a topic where he knew how to answer. “I really like Professor Merrythought’s class.”

“Ah, a Defense student!” Slughorn smiled. “Many students have trouble with that class. I’m glad you like it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said. His footsteps sped up incrementally as he spotted the secret entrance to Slytherin Common Room. “And thank you for walking me back.”

“Oh, it was no trouble at all.” Slughorn waved him off congenially. Harry ducked into the Common Room as quickly as possible and tried to process everything that had happened that day. 

Chapter Text

“I don’t think it can be reversed, Albus,” Severus Snape said grimly. “I found traces of magic around the area, although it was meant to dissolve once the spell had taken effect. I recognized some of the imprints. This was the work of Death Eaters—the ones who escaped Azkaban. Potter’s disappearance is probably just their last hurrah in the name of their old master.”

Albus Dumbledore sighed heavily and smoothed down his beard. “Did you discover anything about the magic itself?”

“Yes,” Snape said. “It appears to have been meant to spirit Potter off somewhere, most likely right into the hands of waiting Death Eaters, but Hogwarts’ wards and student-protective magic interfered and caused the boy to be flung into the past instead. Merlin knows where he is; he might have been sent back to the Founders themselves. It all depends on what Hogwarts deemed safe at the moment.”

“And the spell was delayed so that it would only react to Harry’s presence?” Dumbledore questioned.

“Exactly,” Snape confirmed. “Thus, the other students were able to safely cross into the castle while Potter was instead knocked back into a different world.”

“How troubling,” Dumbledore said ponderingly. “Severus, do you think that the Death Eaters in question might try anything else?”

“With the failure of their plan, they’ve probably been spooked back into their law-abiding lives,” Snape refuted. “With any luck, it’ll be a while before they feel confident enough to consider doing anything else.”

“Well, there’s that, at least,” Dumbledore decided. “Thank you for investigating for me.”

“It is my job,” Snape pointed out.

“That it is, and you do it very well,” Dumbledore said, sounding pleased. “Yes, very well done, Severus. I don’t suppose it can be reversed?”

“Perhaps with the right rituals,” Snape said. “That would certainly be Dark Magic, however.”

“I think I will look into it,” Dumbledore said. “Thank you for all your assistance.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve made your gratitude clear,” Snape said. “Now, if that’s all…”

An excerpt of a letter from Orion Black to his parents, Arcturus and Melania Black:

…The strangest thing happened this past week in classes. One of my yearmates, a half-blood named Harry Potter, caused quite a disturbance when assailed by an older student. Despite being far enough along in the school year that accidental magic should be quite impossible, he managed to fling the other student back several paces. Imagine our surprise! He didn’t seem to realise that what he’d done was remarkable, so I let the moment pass mostly untouched on… Ought I approach him about this event? I wasn’t certain what the appropriate course of action would be to take here…

Chapter Text

It was late one evening in the Common Room that Orion drew him aside and beckoned him down into their dorm.

“Here, Potter,” he said, holding out a thin wrapped package. “Since you were brought up by Muggles, I thought you might like something to help with our culture. It’s yours now. Do with it what you choose, but do be careful. It’s old, and not everyone would be happy to see you carrying it around.”

Harry took the package. “Oh, um, thank you,” he said, honestly surprised. Black hadn’t spoken to him much since the incident in the hallway, and Harry had been wary of the thoughtful glances he and Lestrange had thrown him over the days following.

“You’re welcome,” Orion said. “Make good use of it.”

He left with a quick backwards glance. Harry hesitated before heading to his bed to unwrap the gift. He had mostly finished his homework anyway.

He drew the curtains around his bed shut before opening the packaging. A book slid out onto the bed.

It was an old book, and the musty smell of it made Harry have to stop and sneeze. There was no title page, so he flipped to the opening words.

A moment later he leaned back from the book with a frown. It was an introductory paragraph setting up a discussion on etiquette. Feeling like Orion might be subtly calling him rude, he flipped ahead to see if the entire book was the same.

Two chapters past was a section on traditional Wizarding holidays. Harry read a part about Yule and the magical uses of Yule log ash and was fascinated. He'd had no idea that wizards celebrated Christmas differently.

He made himself pause and skim ahead, becoming briefly absorbed in a brief account of the use of astronomy in certain rituals. Several rituals required very precise timing of how the stars lined up and could thus only be performed on rare occasions.

He tore himself out of a description of a ritual for blessing newborn children (had his parents performed that for him? he wondered) and flipped to the last section of the book. He read the words as a sinking sensation occurred in his stomach.

The illegality of many of these practices, ritual magic especially, has crippled the unique and vital culture of the wizarding community, the final words read. Much of the understanding of the delights of magic has been lost to the greater society, leaving the true beauty of magic to those few who dare defy the Ministry. Children grow up believing that magic is something tame, a tool, as if it were not a force beyond reckoning that holds the very fabric of reality together. The repression of our history is a true tragedy, and one that should never have occurred in the first place.

The book ended rather abruptly, but that thought was quickly swept away in a river of shock and awe at the descriptions. Harry couldn’t believe anyone would be willing to suppress the stunning beauty that the author had tried to capture in words. The book hadn’t contained an explanation as to why the subduing had occurred, probably assuming that the reader would already be familiar with the topic. He would have to ask Orion—preferably somewhere private, he realized, considering the apparent law breaking that came along with practicing something that they were all born with.

I just don’t understand, he thought. How could anyone agree to that?

With sudden determination, he flipped back through the pages to the beginning of the section on holidays and began to read.

Harry woke with a jolt to the sound of voices. He unpeeled his face from the pages of the book as someone slammed a drawer shut nearby.

He must have fallen asleep reading, he realized, quickly sliding the book beneath his pillow before sticking his head out of the curtains.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Unfortunately, the person nearest to him at the moment was Riddle, who shot him a distinctly unfriendly look before saying, “It’s nearly breakfast time, so you’d better get up.”

“Right. Thanks,” he said, and drew the curtains shut again. Riddle hadn’t been blatantly hostile to him the past week, not that they’d actually seen much of each other. Harry wondered distantly what had changed before he hurried to get up and be ready for the day. He would have to finish his Charms homework during lunch, but other than that he didn’t think he’d missed anything while reading.

He quickly got up and began getting ready for the day, mind still buzzing with everything he had read the night before. He would have to track down Orion to ask about everything the book had contained.

He felt a brief flicker of doubt. Maybe the magic the book described wasn’t all as harmless as it had seemed. Maybe it was illegal for a reason.

Well, Orion would know. He would have to be sure to get him alone at some time over the next few days. Considering the secrecy with which Orion had given it to him, Harry should probably respond the same way.

He should probably hide the book somehow, too. He’d have to do that later, though, as it was getting later by the minute. The only person left in his dorm by then, he packed up his bag as quickly as possible before hurrying to breakfast. He slowed down a little in the hallways, remembering something from the book as he looked around at the stone walls of the dungeons. Places with many people experiencing strong emotions could grow magic of their own. Harry wondered if Hogwarts was like that. The school had to have seen thousands of people come through. Hadn’t Professor Merrythought said something about the school reacting to protect him?

If he concentrated hard enough, could he brush up against the ancient magic lingering in the stones that made up Hogwarts?

A chill ran down his spine and he pushed the thought aside in favor of making it to breakfast without getting lost. There would be time to wonder later. Right then he needed to concentrate on navigating Hogwarts' confusing staircases and how the dungeons seemed to purposefully be trying to bewilder the navigator. 

Chapter Text

“Hey, Orion?”

Harry caught his attention on the way back to the Common Room that evening. Orion glanced up inquiringly, and then smiled oddly.

“Could I talk to you about something?”

“You may indeed,” said Orion, and waved quickly to Lestrange before catching Harry’s arm and tugging him down a different passage in the dungeons.

“There’s a lot of rooms down here,” he explained. “Nice place for a chat if you don’t want to be heard. I’m assuming this is about Libellus Tenebrarum?”

“What?” Harry said. His voice echoed in the gloomy hallway, and he wished he had spoken more quietly.

“Here,” Orion decided, and pushed him inside. It was very dark, but Orion rustled around for a moment and lit a torch on the wall. “The name is Latin.”

“Of the book?”

Orion nodded, turning back to face him. “Did you read it?”

“I did.” Harry’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. “I didn’t understand why all that magic is illegal.”

Orion sighed and moved over to sit in one of the chairs stacked haphazardly around the room. There were tables in the dark corners and odd stains on the ceiling. Once the room must have been used as a classroom.

“It’s really complicated, and I don’t understand it all,” Orion confessed with an expression of sympathy. “But it really boils down to that there were wizards who were afraid of the magic in that book, so it was banned. Owning that book is also dangerous, by the way. You can be sent to Azkaban,” he added alarmingly.

“Sent…where?” Maybe the book needed a better hiding place than under his pillow.

“A prison on an island out at sea.” Orion’s face had darkened. “Be careful with that book. There’s magic in it that won’t let you speak of it—”

“What?”

“It’s for safety,” Orion said impatiently. “Keeps you from talking in front of people you shouldn’t. But I wanted to warn you now—if you want to play around with the magic in Libelllus Tenebrarum, it’s a dangerous game you’ll be gambling with. You could easily find yourself in a place you won’t be able to climb back out of.”

Foreboding dripped down Harry’s mind. Everything about this conversation was odd, from the way the old furniture melted into the dark shadows to Orion’s serious, almost threatening expression. For the first time, he felt the hierarchy that his dorm mates instinctively fell into pressing down against him like a thick, muffling cloth.

“I’ll be careful,” Harry said, and barely recognized his voice.

“Good!” Orion was all smiles and easy movements again. “If you ever want, there are some other people in the school I could introduce you to.” Harry must have made an odd expression, because he added, “whenever you feel like it.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, and nearly tripped trying to edge closer to the door. “I’ll, er, keep that in mind.”

“See you around,” Orion said. Harry thought he could feel him watching with a gaze like a frozen night even after he was long out of sight.

Harry promptly hid Libellus Tenebrarum under a pair of pajamas so ratty that he’d decided not to wear them upon seeing the kind of clothes the others had. The pajamas were likewise hidden in his trunk, which was stored under his bed. He hoped that would be good enough for now.

The book was frustratingly limited in the information it contained. It spoke more about theory and tradition than it did of specific magic, and Harry had no idea where to begin looking for more. He still felt an edge of discomfort when he remembered Orion’s odd, quietly passionate intensity about the subject, and so didn’t bring it up to him again.

Weeks passed fairly quickly, and before he knew it October was nearly half over. His classes were fascinating if a little difficult, and he had to work hard to be sure he understood what the teachers were talking about. Professor Merrythought would smile in in acknowledgement if they met in the hallways, and Professor Yancy awarded him five points for getting a spell on first try in the week leading up to Halloween. Professor Slughorn’s class was interesting, but a little odd. Harry wasn’t sure he really enjoyed having to pick up extremely slimy eyeballs to brew a potion.

Professor Dumbledore seemed a bit eccentric to him, and some of the other Slytherins seemed to dislike him. They always grumbled and called him a Muggle-lover. After one particularly tense class, Gamp snapped that Dumbledore ought to just go teach Muggles themselves if he wanted to relate everything they were learning to them.

The others found this funny. Harry was less certain, but the idea of the Dursleys’ confronted with Dumbledore’s unusual taste in clothing was an entertaining one. His yearmates often made jokes or comments at the expense of Muggles. Harry never knew quite what to say.

Sometimes he caught them muttering things and glancing at Tom Riddle. Riddle, who had grown up with Muggles like Harry.

He wondered if they ever made jokes about him.

Two days before Halloween, Harry came back to the dorm to find it in something of an uproar. Someone had broken in and vandalized Riddle’s belongings.

GO HOME MUDBLOOD was written on the wall beside his bed. Harry knew better than to ask what “mudblood” meant. He had a nasty feeling that his best guess at the meaning was probably right.

Gamp and Elliot were standing together on the other side of the room, talking in barely hushed, excited whispers. Harry caught a glimpse of Lestrange leaning over the sink in their bathroom, looking thoughtfully into the mirror with an expression that didn’t speak of any sort of distress. Orion was nowhere to be seen.

Riddle was standing at the end of his bed holding a bunch of papers and a textbook with pages torn out. Harry couldn’t see his expression.

He moved from where he stalled in the doorway to his bed across from Riddle’s. He set his stuff down slowly and glanced at the grin Gamp was trying to smother.

“Need any help?” he asked as calmly as he could manage.

Riddle all but whirled on him with an expression of loathing. “Mind your own business,” was all he said, but the tone in which he spoke made it very clear what he thought of Harry’s offer.

“Sorry, sorry.” He’d instinctively taken an embarrassing step back, but held his ground. “If you change your mind, I’ll be around,” he added before quickly moving behind the hangings around his bed. He didn’t quite dare look to see how Gamp and Elliot might be looking after that.

His heart was pounding loudly in his ears.

Stop freaking out, he told himself firmly, and pulled out a Transfiguration book he’d borrowed from the library to see if he could understand better. The competitiveness of Slytherin House seemed to have gotten to him.

He stared unseeingly down at the book for several achingly long minutes before he gave up and slid back out of his bed, pretending to be heading for the bathroom.

Riddle ignored him with stiff shoulders, now kneeling to get torn pages out from under his bed. Gamp and Elliot gave him long looks as he passed them.

What’s done is done, he said to himself once he was behind a stall door. There was no telling how people would react. They might brush it off, but he might end up as ostracized as Riddle was.

It’s going to be fine, he told his unbelieving expression in the mirror as he let the cold water pour over his hands. He didn’t quite feel settled, but something warm seemed to be rising inside of him at the thought of what he’d done.

What had been done to Riddle was incredibly unfair. He’d been right to imply that he was siding with him.

Harry took a deep breath and went back to his bed, determined to act as if he’d done nothing strange. 

Chapter Text

The Halloween Feast was magnificent. There was more food than Harry had ever seen in one place before, except perhaps at the Welcoming Feast. There was nothing more wonderful, Harry decided, than being able to eat as much food as one liked.

Of course, it would’ve been nice to eat it with friends, but the quiet tension in the Slytherin first years had grown more noticeable lately. While Harry wasn’t outright cast out from the group, he could feel the implicit exclusion and the way nobody seemed willing to talk to him casually anymore. Riddle was still ignoring him, so that left Harry basically on his own. It was all right, though. He’d spent more time in his life without friends than with, so he was fine on his own, really.

Besides, he’d sort of made friends with a quiet but ruthlessly smart girl named Jessica Farmer who was also a Slytherin in his year. She was willing to swap homework for double-checking and was polite enough, but Harry could tell she didn’t really want to be good friends.

He derailed his thoughts in favor of concentrating on eating.

There was a strange sense of anticipation hanging over the table as they ate. Harry kept catching his Housemates exchanging silent, meaningful looks across the table. Lestrange appeared to have a smirk etched onto his face.

By the time the feast was finished, Harry felt both sleepy and content. The night sky reflected on the ceiling of the Great Hall was enchantingly beautiful.

He followed his Housemates back to the Common Room without too much thought, but was snapped to awareness when a voice called out, “It’s locked!”

Travis the prefect stepped forward. His smile had the same knowing look to it that Harry had felt hanging over the table that evening.

“All right, you lot,” he said. “Time for an old Slytherin tradition.”

The first years turned to face him, some more slowly than others.

“Tonight is a special night,” he said. “A magical night, and to honor that, we play a little game. You’ve all been assigned to teams that I’ll tell you in a moment, and then you’ll have to unravel some clues that relate to this holiday until you can find your other prefects and I.”

Orion and Lestrange were exchanging excited looks. Clearly they’d known about this already.

“Right, if there’s no questions,” Travis said. “Avery, you’re with Black. Prince and Hornby are a team, Gamp and Farmer, Riddle and Potter, and Elliot, Lestrange, and Miller are the last group.”

Any eagerness Harry might have felt fizzled instantly. Riddle looked just as horrified by the prospect of working together as Harry felt.

“Your dorm rooms are locked. They will unlock themselves in the morning or when you find the answer. Understood?”

There was some mumbled assent, and Travis looked satisfied.

“The first half of the clue is here,” he said, gesturing to some slips of paper on the table next to him. “You’ll have to go out into the castle to look, so careful not to get caught if you end up staying out late. Good luck!”

With that he strode quickly from the room as they flocked to the table. Harry rescued a clue and turned to find Riddle slumped in a chair with a dour look on his face.

“You’re not even going to try?” Harry asked.

Riddle scowled up at him. “This is a wizard holiday. I don’t know anything that could help.”

“We’re just firsties, they won’t have made it that hard,” Harry tried. “I’d really rather not sleep in the Common Room if it’s all the same to you.”

Riddle sat up reluctantly. “Read the clue out.”

Deciding to ignore his imperious tone, Harry read, “Seven sisters grieve. The reign of dusk descends. The winter months are beginning. Go where light and dark entwine.”

He lowered the paper. Riddle’s expression was blank.

“Does that mean anything to you?” he asked.

“No,” Riddle said. “I told you, I’m unfamiliar with Samhain.”

A memory flickered in Harry’s mind. “Samhain,” he said slowly. There had been a section of Libellus Tenebrarum that dealt with holidays. “That’s the celebration of the dead and the end of summer.”

“Yes,” Riddle said. “It’s called Halloween now, but the tradition comes from the Celts.”

“Thought you said you didn’t know anything,” Harry said, but there wasn’t any bite in his words as he wracked his brain. The book had mentioned a lot of rituals performed to call the dead or divine the future, but there had been another part that talked about…

“Stars!” he said suddenly.

Riddle looked at him inquiringly.

“There’s a group of stars called, called the Pleiades,” he clarified quickly. “I, er, read about it once. They rise, or maybe used to rise, tonight at dusk.”

“It’s long past dusk,” Riddle pointed out, but he got to his feet. The Common Room had mostly emptied out as people scurried off to try and get a head start. “That’s Greek mythology. The seven stars are meant to represent seven sisters like in the clue. They probably want us to go to the astronomy tower.”

Harry’s spinning thoughts stopped short. “But we’re not allowed.” 

“Come on, Potter, we’re Slytherins, breaking the rules is practically required,” Riddle said impatiently. He plucked the clue out of Harry’s hand. “Are we going or not?”

“There has got to be a faster way,” Harry panted out between breaths.

“There probably is,” Riddle said unhelpfully. “Hogwarts is a magic castle, after all.”

“And how does that help us if we don’t know where to go?” he snapped back without much bite.

Riddle rolled his eyes but slumped gratefully against a wall when Harry stopped to breathe. “I think we’re almost there,” he offered.

“Great,” Harry said. “Then we get to walk all the way back down.”

Riddle shrugged as if he didn’t care at all, but Harry was getting used to interpreting his silent disdainfulness into actual reactions.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he groaned, and Riddle followed as they started the ascent up the tower. Luckily, the stairs themselves weren’t overly long, as they’d already made their way up through most of the castle.

The top of the tower was empty. Only a single telescope was set up, pointing up and out. Harry crossed to squint through it.

“It’s got to be the Pleiades up there,” he called back to Riddle.

“I’ve found the next clue,” Riddle replied from right next to him.

He leaned back to frown over at him. “Already? Where was it?”

“Under the telescope.” Riddle held out the paper silently.

“Down deep in the dark a flame flickers,” Harry read, leaning closer to see the words. “The children of the night gather to welcome the dead.”

Riddle moved away from where Harry had been bent towards him. “I believe they want us to go back to the dungeons.”

Harry stared at him. “You’ve got to be joking.”

He got an eye roll for his response as Riddle tucked the paper into his pocket. “Can we finish this already.”

“Fine,” Harry snapped back. “Let’s go. And don’t walk so loudly this time, they’re bound to catch us for being out so late.”

They were almost caught, in fact. The caretaker prowled the corridor while they huddled shoulder to shoulder into a small space behind a statue. The man’s footsteps and the foul rasp of his breath soon faded into the distance, and Harry released a breath and moved away.

“That was close,” he said. Riddle didn’t bother with an answer.

They got very, very lost in the dungeons. Every corner looked the same as the last, and the cold dankness made them both exhausted and irritable. It was luck that had them turning to find one of the Sixth Year prefects waiting in a passageway, stifling a yawn and holding a glowing blue light.

“Well done,” she said upon spotting them. “Surprised you made it at all without knowing the tricks ahead of time. The room’s just around the turn here. Go on.”

They went; a door was flung open and light spilled from within. Harry froze in the doorway in awe.

The room was large, and the center of it was taken up by a bright, smokeless bonfire. A table stood against one wall of the room with a plate of food and a glass of wine on it. Students stood or sat all around, in groups or alone. Some had what could only be crystal balls and were reading fortunes. Harry spotted Orion off in a corner, talking with his brother.

“What a surprise!” It was Travis the prefect. A few people looked up. “The mudbloods managed to find us, everyone."

His words garnered snickering from a duo sitting near the door, and Harry nearly jumped back in shock at hearing the insult applied to him as well. Tom’s lips were pressed into a thin line, but he grabbed Harry’s elbow and pushed them both into the room. Nobody seemed invested in the apparent novelty of their appearance, so they crept around the side of the fire, deeper into the room. A girl knelt, staring intently into the flames. She reached forward and took hold of the fire so that it burned in her cupped hands, even while her skin remained unhurt.

She glanced up and met Harry’s eyes with an odd smile. “I’ll teach you, if you like. Both of you.”

Harry glanced at Riddle reflexively, but slowly moved to sit beside her. A quiet shuffle of shoes told him that Riddle had followed.

She stood and moved so that she sat between them. “Give me your hands.”

Harry offered up his left arm. She took their wrists and guided them forward until the heat seared Harry’s palm.

“Trust me,” she said, and held them in the flames.

The heat flared and then dropped away, leaving a sparking rush of magic that smoldered in the bones of his arm.

Slowly she drew them back. Flames danced on both their arms for a long second before going out and leaving nothing but soot marks behind.

“Now all you’ll have to do is remember how the fire’s magic feels and you can touch it safely,” she said, and released them. She had moved back and was gone before Harry could think to thank her.

Riddle was staring silently at his hand. Emboldened by the flickering light and the low-thrumming energy that filled the room, Harry reached forward, concentrating as hard as he could, and caught a handful of flames.

He grinned and moved. Riddle yelped when the flames were waved in front of his face.

“You know what?” Harry asked.

“What?” Riddle looked put-upon.

“I think you’re not half-bad after all,” Harry said.

“I think you’re an irritation that can’t take a hint,” Riddle said, but something off the edge of the malice usually in his voice was gone.

The night passed in a blur. Someone read tea leaves for him, but he couldn’t remember what he’d been told. He thought some people might have been singing at some point, but soon things feel quieter as the hours dragged on into the early morning. Some left for the comfort of their dormitories, but many remained, asleep or talking in soft whispers.

Harry ended up by the fire again near Riddle.

“I had no idea how differently wizards celebrated holidays,” he said. The stone floor was warm from the fire that had begun at last to burn down.

Riddle shrugged. Harry knew he wouldn’t have known, either.

“Hey, Tom?” he asked sleepily, barely keeping his eyes open.

“Yes?”

“I’ve got a book about this stuff if you’d want to borrow it,” he yawned. “It talks about all kinds of things…traditions and holidays and rituals…”

He couldn’t remember if Riddle had replied, as he was quickly deep asleep. 

Chapter Text

He was cold, cold stone and an ancient power that reverberated throughout time. He was a silent, breathing entity that did not die. He held lives within his stomach, weeping and raging as they did. He was lashing wind against high-built stone and—

“Potter.”

—he was secrets kept within the deepest places—

“Potter!”

Harry snapped awake, the memory of the dream fading quickly from his mind. “Huh?” he said inarticulately.

Riddle was kneeling beside him with his usual scowl affixed to his face. “It’s morning.”

The dungeon room was as dark as it had been during the night, but very few people remained. Nearly all evidence of the night’s celebration was gone, and as he watched, a student used magic to make the ashes left from the fire vanish. He thought that he could see a faint, glowing afterimage of the fire still dancing in the center of the room, but he blinked and it was gone.

He sat up slowly, wincing from the chill that had worked its way inside him during the night. “What time is it?” he asked, watching a pair of teenagers make their furtive way out of the room.  

“Nearly six,” Riddle said.

“We should probably head back to the dormitory,” he said.

Something behind Riddle’s eyes changed, but his voice stayed as level as always. “Most likely,” he said, and they went.

Something felt a little different to Harry when he stepped back into the atmosphere of the dorm. It wasn’t that the distinct feeling of unfriendliness that he had felt in the past week had lessened, as he could still feel the exclusion that his year mates emanated, but something about it seemed to have solidified into apathy rather than a sense of being unwelcome.  

Or maybe he was just imagining it like he had the ghost of the fire. 

Chapter Text

The library was cool and silent when Harry ventured there later that day. The weight of Libellus Tenebraum seemed to burn in his bag as he made his way deeper into the shelves, where he hoped he might be able to find Riddle. It was well-accepted knowledge that Riddle was often to be found in the library, and Harry was starting to realize that he was most likely trying to learn more about the wizarding world.

As it turned out, he didn't have to look far to find Riddle. He was sitting at a table surrounded by perfectly neat piles of books, and looked deeply engrossed. 

Harry came up to him and paused awkwardly when Riddle tensed at his approach. 

Riddle seemed inclined to say nothing at all and to just stare at each other in prickly silence, so Harry cleared his throat and dropped his bag on the empty chair. "I know I said I had a book I could lend you, except I don't remember if you said anything back. But I brought it." He pulled out the book, sloppily rewrapped in the paper Orion had given it to him in. It looked very out of place in the middle of all the neatness. 

Riddle stared at the book before reaching out slowly to pick it up. 

"You should probably not read it here," Harry hastily added. "I don't think it's legal, exactly." 

Riddle nodded and slid it into his bag. His silence was beginning to unnerve Harry. 

"I'll just go, then," he said, picking his bag back up. 

"If you want, I could point you to a few other books on magical history," Riddle said abruptly. "They're very...biased, and not very thorough, however." 

Harry recognized the attempt at reciprocation for what it was. "That would be nice," he said, trying to be as neutral about it as he could be. 

Riddle nodded and dug around in his bag for another moment. "Try this one," he said shortly, pushing it across the table to Harry. 

The book was called A Concise History of Medieval Magic. Harry glanced up to find that Riddle had gone back to studiously ignoring him. 

Harry hesitated. He slowly let his bag drop to the floor. When Riddle didn't say anything, he slid into the empty seat and opened the book. 

The silence felt claustrophobic and uncomfortable at first, and Harry had to fight down the urge to fidget. It took several long minutes for him to be able to actually concentrate on the (somewhat boring) book. He found a chapter discussing the relationship between the rise of Christianity and the hostilities between wizards and Muggles and tried to lose himself in it.

He was jerked out of his concentration after a lot longer time than he would have expected. Riddle had put some of his books back and looked like he was thinking about leaving.

“It’s time for dinner,” he said, and then paused uncharacteristically. “Shall we go down?”

“Alright,” Harry said, and felt himself smile. “Here, your book.”

Riddle took A Concise History of Medieval Magic back from him and dropped it in his bag. “Let’s go, then.”

They went. He thought with tentative hope that Riddle didn’t seem to dislike him so much anymore. Harry wondered if he had been lonely.

They sat together at the Slytherin table that night.

“There’s a shortcut right about—here.” He plucked Harry’s sleeve and they ducked behind a tapestry that concealed a steep, tightly winding staircase. Harry climbed second, using his hands to keep his balance and trying not to choke on dirt and dust that swirled up under his feet.

“Tom, I’m freezing,” he complained in a whisper.

“We’re almost there, don’t whinge.” Tom scrambled up the last few steps and disappeared. Harry followed him up and found himself crawling out from under a desk in the very back of the library.

He could see that Tom had already crept down to the end of the row of shelves, and hurried to catch up.

They stuck close together, moving silent from the bowels of the library towards the Restricted Section. Tom had determined that the books they should be reading would probably be in there.

Tom waved him to a stop and leaned over to whisper, “There might be spells on the books to keep us from taking them, so we might have to run if something goes wrong.”

“Got it,” Harry said back. His pulse was loud in his ears and excitement bubbled in his stomach.

They slipped over the rope that held the sign reading Restricted Section. Harry came to a stop and watched Tom run his fingers over the spines of the books. They all looked ancient and molding, and Harry fancied he could hear them whispering.

“This one,” Tom decided, and slid it from the shelf.

The whispering grew into muttering. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but Harry thought he saw Tom throw the shelves an apprehensive look.

“We should go."

Harry just nodded. Tom under his arm and set off at a quick pace towards the back of the library and the secret passageway.

They must have tripped a ward, because the door to the library was flung open and light streamed in. They both took off running deeper into the shelves, trying to be completely silent. They made it back to the desk safely and ducked under it, Tom holding the book to his chest with one arm.

The caretaker’s voice called out suddenly. “Come out, boys, I saw you run. It’ll be less painful for you if you don’t hide…”

Tom was fumbling with the wall. Harry risked hissing, “Hurry up!” under his breath.

The secret door unlatched and Tom scrambled down out of sight. Harry followed, nearly falling down the unexpectedly steep steps. He closed the door behind him once he had moved far enough and stopped to catch his breath.

Tom was a little further down, awkwardly trying to climb down one-handed.

“Here,” Harry said, reaching for his wand. “Wingardium Leviosa.”

The book popped out of Tom’s hold and bobbed like a cork a foot above him. Tom, startled, nearly losing his footing.

“Sorry,” Harry said. “I didn’t mean to make you fall.”

“I’m fine,” he said, and hopped down the last few steps. “Let the book go, I’ll catch it.”

Harry thought that he was more likely to get a face full of aging paper, but he let the spell end.

Harry should have anticipated that Tom would catch the book with magic, not his hands.

He hurried down the stairs as Tom was already leafing through the pages with his wand lit.

“Rituals,” he said, when Harry tried to crane over his shoulder. “The book’s gone quiet now.”

So it had. Harry wondered what triggered the spell’s end.

“Let’s go back to the dorm and look at it there,” Harry suggested.

Tom nodded and snapped the book shut, stowing it under his arm. They made their way back through the cold, empty halls of the castle in almost complete silence, broken only when Harry tripped over a step and when Tom spoke the password to get back inside.

“It’s late,” Tom said abruptly. “We can read it tomorrow night.”

Harry, who was very tired, found this decision agreeable. Harry opted to fall directly into bed, but he could hear Tom still rustling about, getting the dust from the stairs off of his clothes. Eventually the dorm fell quiet except for the sound of footsteps making their way back across the room.

Harry stuck his head out of the curtains. “Night, Tom.”

Tom turned back to him, looking tired and ruffled except for the gleam of delight in his expression. “Goodnight, Harry,” he said, and disappeared behind his curtains.

Harry flopped back onto his pillow and grinned wonderingly up into the darkness. Somehow, he had made a friend out of the most unfriendly boy in their year.

He turned over to get more comfortable and fell quickly asleep. He dreamed of dark corridors and books stacked up all the way to the ceiling. 

Chapter Text

“I can’t wait to go to Hogwarts,” Ginny said for the thousandth time, eyes bright and hair fluffing out all a mess around her head.

“Finish your breakfast,” Molly scolded gently. “And you’ll get to go soon enough.”

“Ron said he’d write me, but he hasn’t yet,” she said, not listening. “I bet it’s wonderful there.”

A Ministry owl tapped politely on the window, and Molly got up to let it in. She unfolded the letter quickly upon seeing that it was from Arthur.  

Molly,

I might be late coming home tonight, there’s no way to know yet. Harry Potter’s gone missing, apparently, and everything’s in an uproar. From the sound of it Death Eaters tried to kidnap him in some sort of last hurrah.

Love,

Arthur

Molly dropped the letter onto the sideboard. 

“Mum?” Ginny asked from the table. “Mum, is something wrong?”

Chapter Text

“What was the future like?” Tom asked one day, sitting across from Harry on his bed where they had been studying.

Harry frowned as an insistent buzzing started up in his head as he opened his mouth to answer.

It took him a moment to figure out what was going on. “I’m…I don’t know if I can tell you about it,” he said. “Dumbledore cast this spell on me—”

Tom scowled at the name.

“Why do you hate him so much?” Harry asked curiously.

“It’s not that,” Tom said resentfully. “It’s him who doesn’t like me.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I said some things he didn’t like when he came to tell me about Hogwarts. Dumbledore’s biased against Slytherins anyway, so it’s not like I had much of a chance.”

Harry tilted his head back to look at the curtains around Tom’s bed. “The future was…not that different, I guess. I’d have to go to London or somewhere to really tell.” He ignored the buzzing as it grew louder before ebbing away.

Tom looked somewhat disappointed.

“Did you realize you had magic?” Harry asked after a moment, giving up on his textbook.

“Yes, I knew,” Tom said.

“I didn’t,” Harry admitted. “It’s a little silly in retrospect. I mean, I jumped from the ground to the roof once. Made the glass on a snake’s cage vanish.”

“People believe what they want to believe.” Tom was making notes on a scroll of parchment, his quill darting quickly and efficiently across the page. There was a pause before he asked, “Do you like snakes?”

“They’re all right,” Harry said. “I talked to a boa constrictor once, and it was nice enough.”

Tom laid down his quill.

“You talk to snakes?” he asked, a strange note echoing behind his voice.

“Um, yeah.” Harry frowned. “That one time, anyway. Why?”

“Dumbledore told me that not many people can,” Tom said, his eyes brightening with something like elation.

“Really?” If he’d had to guess, Harry would’ve thought talking to animals would be common among wizards.

“I can too,” Tom said in a suddenly hushed voice, leaning in close. “Can you understand me?”  

“Of course I can,” Harry said, baffled.

Tom’s expression was still lit up with an almost alien delight. “You do speak it!”

“I speak—what?” Harry made himself listen to the words and the way they hissed and curled over his tongue. “Oh! Is this snake language?”

“Has to be,” Tom said, and slid off the bed in a flurry of movement. “Come on.”

“Huh?” Harry asked, but moved to follow automatically. Tom had already moved to the door, and Harry had to hurry to catch up. “Where are we going?”

“Come on.”

Harry stopped asking questions and just tried to keep up as Tom ducked deeper into the dungeons.

Only the low-flickering lights of the torches illuminated the corridors deep beneath the school. Tom found a deserted classroom far enough away from the Common Room for him to deem in safe, and wasted no time in pulling Harry inside.

"Didn't want to risk anyone eavesdropping after how Dumbledore reacted," he explained. "Now then. Have you always been able to speak to snakes?"

"I suppose," Harry said, a little lost. "I don't really remember doing it other than that time at the zoo."

"I've always been able to," Tom said. "Snakes come find me."

"Good for you."

Tom ignored Harry’s tone. “Strange that the both of us can speak it when it’s so rare.”

“More like brilliant,” Harry said, giving up on commenting on Tom’s superior tone. “We can talk and no one will be able to understand us.”

“I wonder if it can be written… We’ll have to do more research.” Tom’s face was alight as it always was at the prospect of learning about obscure knowledge. They had spent all their free time pouring over the stolen book from the Restricted Section, trying to garner as much information from it as possible. The book discussed very advanced Transfiguration magic that often went straight over Harry’s head, as it was far beyond anything close to First Year level knowledge. Tom understood a bit more than he had, but only a little. He’d gone back to the library and checked out an enormous stack of books to try grasp the subject matter better.

They began to try and learn about the snake language—Parseltongue, as Harry was soon to discover. He and Tom spent hours sitting side by side in the library, sneaking in at night to read huddled together under the light of one wand. One of the first things they learned was that Parseltongue was closely associated with the descendants of Salazar Slytherin.

Tom became unbelievably excited at this news. “We could be related to Slytherin!” he exclaimed as quietly as he could manage. “I might be better than all of those snooty Pureblood brats.”

“Do you think we’re family somehow?” Harry asked, caught up in Tom’s delight.

“Wouldn’t that be strange,” Tom said. “Maybe you’re my grandson.”

“I think I’d rather not find out that my best mate is actually my grandfather,” Harry said drily, earning himself an eye roll. Wouldn’t that be something, though, if Tom was family, if Harry had somehow managed to stumble onto someone related to him who actually cared at all.

“We should see if the Potter line traces back to Slytherin,” Tom decided. “There’s got to be books that will tell us which families are related to him.”

“Then we can find out who your family is,” Harry said.

Tom didn’t reply, but there was something desperately yearning hiding deep in his eyes that Harry recognized all too easily.

There was homework to be done, so they retired from the library for the night, ease of practice making it easy for them to wind down through the castle and into the dungeons.

“We should find out where the rest of these tunnels go,” Tom mused.

“Lots of rooms people have forgotten about.” Harry contemplated that. “There could be things hidden down there—” 

“We’ll look sometime,” Tom agreed, and they slipped back into the dormitory.

The thing about darkness was, Harry decided, if you stopped trying to see when it was impossible, navigating wasn’t really all that hard.

He tripped over something in the darkness and bit back a particularly creative curse he’d heard Gamp use the other day.

He and Tom had split up when the tunnel forked away from itself, and Harry, it seemed, had gotten landed with a corridor that refused to allow him to light his wand. He pressed his hand harder against the wall and patted around hopefully in case a torch might make a helpful appearance.

No such luck. He considered turning around and heading back to try and find out where Tom had run off to, but the thought of facing his friend with nothing to say but, “It was dark so I turned around,” left him feeling distinctly disgraceful.

He took a determined step forward and resumed counting. 205, 206, 207...

Harry slammed face-first into a wall.

He let himself fall back to the ground with a groan, patting his face to check for blood. His glasses were gone, and he found them in pieces on the floor after a few moments of frantic searching.

Alright, that was it. He slowly climbed back to his feet, head swimming a little, and started back the way he came.

He hadn’t gone very far when he heard something moving ahead of him. Harry drew his wand instinctively.

“Who’s there?” he called.

“Harry?”

It was Tom.

“Oh!” he said. “Why are you here?”

“My wand wouldn’t light and I couldn’t see where I was going, so I turned around,” he said, the words sounding like a completely viable excuse when coming from his mouth. “Obviously you didn’t.”

“Obviously not,” Harry said crossly. “I got something like two hundred paces in before I ran into a wall.”

“Not literally, I hope.”

“Literally.” Harry shuffled forward with a hand outstretched until he felt Tom’s shoulder. “I don’t suppose you know how to repair glasses?”

“I’m sure it’s in one of the textbooks,” Tom said, which meant that Harry was going to have to keep wandering around half-blind until he figured out how to fix them. “Come on, we can come back some other time to try and figure out what’s down here.”

“Lovely.” Harry reached out and found the wall. “Let’s just get out of here.”

The corridor gradually lightened as they approached the beginning of the torches along the wall, and Tom glanced over at him and spoke. “You’ve got a nosebleed.”

“Do I?” Harry felt at his nose. His fingers came away red and he groaned.

“Just hold a handkerchief to it once we get back,” Tom said, looking unconcerned. “It’ll stop on its own.”

“I know what to do, this isn’t the first time I’ve had a nosebleed,” Harry said, barely holding back from snapping. He was tired. Tom was insistent on starting to explore the dungeons at once, which meant that he was now getting a lot less sleep than he should have been. “Let’s not split up next time.”

Tom seemed to find that suggestion agreeable, and they fell silent as they moved through the more often used part. They had to make a detour to avoid walking by Slughorn’s rooms, just in case he was, by some miracle, awake still.

“I’ve got plans to get another book,” Tom said under his breath.

“Restricted Section?”

“Of course.”

“What about?”

Tom paused to whisper the password to the dormitory. “I want to know more about basic rituals that we could learn.”

Harry, also being interested in the subject, waited for him to proceed.

“I’m going to need you to ask Black or an older student about recommendations for books on Dark Magic,” Tom began.

Dark Magic. The name still gave Harry pause. He had a deeply uncomfortable feeling that Hagrid had said something about the wizard that killed his parents being Dark.

It’s different, he repeated to himself.

“Why me?” he said aloud. He held the door open for Tom and they both crept over to Harry’s bed.

“Because you have more status than I do,” Tom said, a little bitterly, drawing the curtains to prevent anyone from overhearing. “Black might still be willing to talk to you.”

Harry made a dubious noise and settled down across from Tom against his pillow.

“I said might.” It was always a lot harder to tell what Tom was thinking when he couldn’t see his face, as Tom had a knack for defaulting to keep his voice bland and inoffensive. “He seemed weirdly set on having you educated.”

“Could be he thought I was just some time-displaced Pureblood mistakenly raised by Muggles.”

Tom made a soft noise. “No...it felt more than that. He seemed...invested in drawing you over to the Pureblood side for whatever reason.” His voice was slower than usual. Harry knew he was tired, even if he pretended otherwise.

He changed the subject abruptly. “Are you staying here over the winter holidays?”

“Yes,” Tom said with a little more bite to his tone.

Harry hastily continued before he could bristle up all the way. “Just that would be a perfect time to get access to the library and study without worrying about the other students turning us in. Obviously I’m staying as well.”

“Obviously,” Tom agreed, and then let the silence hang.

“We should go to bed,” Harry said, as it was politer than saying, “You sound exhausted.”

“I could just sleep here,” Tom muttered. “Make you have to move.”

It was rare to catch him in a teasing mood. Harry was surprised and a little delighted that Tom had begun to relax more around him.

“I’d take the pillow with me, and then you’d be uncomfortable,” he said, happy to play along.

“Always the details,” Tom said, but shifted as though he was planning on getting up. “We’ll have to talk more tomorrow—you said 200 paces, right?”

“Right,” Harry said, agreeing to both things. “’Night, then.”

“Goodnight,” Tom said, sounding like he was on the verge of a yawn and unhappy about the implications to his dignity. “If we grab toast at breakfast we can go and look over our notes for Charms before class.”

Harry didn’t bother to hold back his groan. “Go to bed already, I’m falling asleep sitting up.”

Tom made an irritable noise but slid off the bed. “Have it your way,” he said, and was gone in a rustle of curtains.

Harry was asleep in seconds, still wearing his shoes, and knowing for a fact that he’d just as well as agreed to skip a real breakfast in favor of studying. As it was Tom, he’d probably insist on looking even further ahead than they already had, too. He was so obviously incredibly gifted that Harry thought sometimes that the teachers should have just stuck him with the Second Years.

He felt like he’d blinked and found that in the instant his eyes had been closed it had become morning, with pale green light filtering in from the lake.

The reason for his waking had stuck his head in around Harry’s curtains, looking perfectly put together and wide awake. “Get up already, it’s getting late.”

Harry shoved his head into his pillow, but he could feel Tom trying to stare a hole in his shoulder. “What time is it?” he asked through his pillow.

“Just seven.”

“I hate you,” Harry said, and rolled off his bed onto the floor to demonstrate this before heading to the bathroom to at least try to look presentable.

“I found a spell to hold your glasses together until you can fix them,” Tom said.

Harry stuck his head out of the bathroom. “You did?” His surprise was obviously clear in his voice, because Tom made an odd face.

“Shut up, you two,” Alphonse Elliot groaned from his bed, and Harry quickly ducked back in to get ready as quietly as possible. 

Chapter Text

“I’d highly recommend that you give this strong consideration,” Slughorn, his Head of House, said, and those words rang in Harry’s ears as he numbly stepped out the door with the letter clenched tight in his hand.

While his family may be dead in the future, apparently the Potters of the past were alive and kicking, and they wanted to meet their time traveller relative.

He found that he had made his way unthinkingly back to the dormitory. He took a breath and went to find Tom.

“There you are,” Tom said, not looking up from where he was scribbling on a roll of parchment. “Look at what this book says about—” He glanced up, frowning, when Harry didn’t respond.

Harry held out the letter mutely. Tom took it and read it quickly.

“Ah,” he said.

“Should I go stay with them for the holiday?” he asked, desperate for some help.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Tom stood up and began packing up his books. “Here’s your chance. You can be another extraordinary Pureblood brat. I know you wanted to.”

“I didn’t—” Harry felt frozen in shock. It had been a while since Tom had acted lashed out at him.

In the seconds it took him to gather up his tongue, Tom had swept from the room in a flurry of second-hand robes and a dark scowl.

After a moment, Harry picked up the letter from where it had fallen onto the floor.

Dear Mr. Harry Potter, it read. We would like to cordially invite you…

Harry shoved it back into his pocket and crossed glumly to the bed. The icy tone of the letter seemed to exist only to mockingly reflect Tom’s shift from gradually warmer to anger.

He flung himself facedown on the bed and toed off his shoes, trying to calm down his whirling thoughts enough to go to sleep. It was early still, only eight, but Harry felt to miserable and confused to face going back up the tunnel to the Common Room.

Eventually, after several long minutes, he drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Harry woke, gasping, from a dream that was already fading from his mind. The room was dark, and his curtains had never been shut. He sat up, shivering a little at the coolness of the air, and shrugged his cloak off, draping on the end of his bed and pulling the curtains closed. Quickly he pulled the blankets back and huddled beneath them, swiftly fading back into a doze.  

His last conscious thought was that if he took the Potters up on their offer to visit them over Christmas, Tom would be the only first year left in Slytherin. He’d be all alone again. Harry slept.

“I wrote them back and told them I’m can’t go,” Harry announced in a low voice. The librarian was known for kicking students out of the library for a week straight if they disrupted the quiet.

Tom looked up from his book after a moment. His face was indifferent and cold. “Why?” he asked.

“We’re in the middle of all these projects,” Harry said. “I can’t leave now, not when we’ll have all this time off to see how far down the dungeons go.”

Tom considered that answer. “You should go,” he said. “You could have a family.” His expression was inscrutable.

“I haven’t had much luck with families so far,” Harry said, and then, carefully, “Can I sit down?”

Tom moved his books off the chair.

“Besides, the letter was sort of rude and demanding,” Harry added, and sat down, feeling infinitely more cheerful. “What are you working on?”

“I found a record of the various lines that may have descended from the Hogwarts Founders,” he said. “It’s…long.”

“Where are you starting from?” Harry asked.

Tom shook his head. “Each family line is in a different section, and they’re in no logical order. I was trying to make a list of which family traced back to whom.”

“If you want, I could write while you search,” Harry offered.

Tom’s fingers curled around the edge of the quill before he slid the parchment over to Harry silently.

Harry picked up the quill, still warm from Tom’s hand. “Alright,” he said, and smiled tentatively. “Who’ve we got?” 

Tom looked back down at the book. “Next are the Smiths, related to Hufflepuff…”

They made a stop at the Owlery on the way back to the dungeons. Harry mailed his response to the Potters, declining to stay with them over the break, and suggesting instead that they meet some other time. He watched the school’s owl soar away into the distance.

“For Yule,” Tom started, “we should do a ritual in the Forest.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Harry twisted to look at him.

“Not with the right intentions on the night of the Solstice.” Eagerness lingered in Tom’s expression, and Harry let himself get pulled into the thrill.

“What ritual?” he asked, and managed to pull something like a smile onto Tom’s face. 

Chapter Text

The Forbidden Forest loomed very dark and menacing at night. Harry hesitated in the shadows and the edge of the trees.

“You’re certain this is a good idea?” he asked nervously.

“It’ll be fine,” Tom said dismissively. “We’re Dark, the forest’s Dark, and it’s a night to celebrate the Dark.”

“We’re not very Dark,” Harry said protestingly. He nonetheless ducked under a branch and let the forest swallow him down.

“Very good, Harry,” Tom said. “Now we just have to keep going deeper.”

“Lovely,” Harry grumbled, but he lit his wand and hopped forward a step to catch up with his friend.

There was an eerie silence over the forest, and it rang in Harry’s ears. It was far too quiet.

“Come on,” Tom breathed, and he led the way through the brambles and snow. At one point Tom disappeared entirely and it took Harry a panicked moment to realize he’d dropped down to crawl along a nearly invisible trail left by some animals.

Thorns caught and tugged at Harry’s unruly hair as he crawled after Tom’s feet. “Tom, where are you going?” he hissed.

“Just a little farther,” Tom replied unhelpfully. Harry kind of wanted to hit him. Instead, he scrambled forward a little more, soaking his trouser knees, and found that he could stand up again.

“I think this will do,” Tom said decisively, as if they hadn’t just stumbled into what looked like the most perfect place possible for a ritual on the longest night of the year.

“What do we have to do?” Harry’s voice came out unintentionally hushed as he darkened his wandtip, matching the silence that hung from the trees.

“There isn’t much to it,” Tom said, his voice also low. “Cast a circle, call out a few words, and then stay here and listen.”

Harry didn’t question his instructions, and instead pulled out his wand and began to trace a circle around them with its tip. Tom mimicked him, starting from the end of Harry’s line and drawing along until they met, magic tingling with sparks down to their fingertips.

Tom, looking unusually subdued, beckoned Harry forward until they stood at opposite sides of the circle.

A rustle came from the bushes, startling them both. Harry drew his wand instinctively.

“Who’s there?” Tom called out, wand also in hand.

Orion Black and Lestrange slipped out from the trees. “An older student saw you out here,” Black explained. “There will be a collective ceremony that you are invited to attend.”

Harry glanced at Tom, whose face was blank.

“I think I’m fine here.”

For a second, Harry didn’t realize he’d been the one to speak. Lestrange’s face twitched.

“You’d dare to deny an invitation from some of the most powerful students in Hogwarts?” he sneered.

Harry paused, and then found himself glancing around deliberately. “I’m sorry, but the most powerful student in Slytherin House here is Tom.”

Tom looked over, startled. Lestrange’s head snapped up.

“I’m staying,” Harry said firmly, and looked to Tom.

“I will as well,” Tom said.

“Come on,” Black said, placing a hand on Lestrange’s arm to pull him back into the shadows.

Harry waited until he was sure they were gone. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to speak for you.”

“No.” Tom shook his head once with an odd flicker of a smile. “You were fine. Shall we begin now?”

Harry nodded, repositioning himself. Tom stopped for a breath before placing his wand in his hands and holding it up like an offering.

“We give ourselves over to the night to die and be reborn,” he said softly, and the words hung in the air with a buzz like insects in the grass.

“The wheel of the earth is turning,” Harry finished, having practiced at least this much beforehand. The air was cold and still as the death of silence.

Harry felt something shift behind his eyes, a flash of light in the empty spaces of his brain. He drew a breath to call out to Tom, suddenly irrationally terrified, filled to the brim with the thought that he was no longer alone, that something else pressed at the contours of his thoughts, tasting and judging his worth. 

The darkness of the sky sank into him.  

He was the silence at the end of a spell was the moment before the mind was carried away by fever was the exhalations of the endless forest was the boys asleep beneath the lightening of the last of the long nights The ones have come again at last was the bird asleep high above them was the dwindling remains of a fire was the silence of

Harry woke with melted snow in his hair with every bone of his body aching with phantom pain with the word everything hanging in his mind like a wish.

“Tom,” he rasped out. His throat was dry and his voice crumbling.

“Magic.”

“Huh?” he groaned, and laboriously forced himself upright. His glasses had dug painfully into his cheek at some point in the night.

“Magic,” Tom said, bright-eyed and flushed and wild, “spoke to me.”

“What?” Harry wasn’t quite awake enough to process this. He felt like he’d slept for several months. 

“I heard it,” he said, completely enlivened. “I could hear magic alive inside my head.”

“Oh!” Harry said. “I think I might have, too. Was that supposed to happen?”

Tom just shook his head.

“It’s morning,” Harry said. “We have to hurry to not be caught—we can figure out what happened some other time.”

“Yes, we must,” Tom said as if it had been his idea all along, and he stumbled stiffly to his feet. He crossed to help Harry scramble up as well.

“Thanks,” he said, and squinted around. The forest looked entirely different in the icy near-morning paleness.

Tom scrubbed out part of the circle with his foot. “Let’s go.”

They snuck back into the castle, barely dodging several teachers on their way to breakfast. After quickly changing and attempting to be alert enough to face classes, they made their way to the Great Hall. An owl waited there for Harry, carrying a very curt letter from the Potters suggesting meeting during the spring instead.

Harry felt as though nothing could shatter the odd sense of lightness that hung in his stiff joints. 

Chapter Text

...Two boys in my year channeled Magic during the Solstice night. I’ve never seen anything like it. If anything, rather than blocking each other out, their trances were increased by each other...

The letter made its way to the family of its writer. The owl, for all its intelligence, had no idea what the words were setting in motion. 

Chapter Text

Nearly all the students had gone home for the holidays, leaving Tom and Harry to share the library with only a few anxious-looking OWL and NEWT students. Tom had taken to trying to teach himself all of wizarding history, as the ghostly teacher for the class was one of the worst professors Harry had ever known. Currently he was working their way through an enormous book with very small print, because Tom had of course deemed their textbook insufficient. Harry had given up on squinting at the words and was idly reading a book about the magical side to the tales of King Arthur. He was nearly done with his homework for the break, and was taking the chance to relax. Tom didn’t approve of putting off homework until later. Even though he’d never been too taken with books as a child, he found the ones about magic much more engrossing—particularly considering it was Tom’s favorite activity, and therefore something he ended up doing a lot anyways.

The Christmas celebration at the castle was nice, with lovely decorations everywhere about the castle and large trees adorning the Great Hall. There was something very peaceful to having an entire castle to nearly to themselves. They had finally figured out how to bypass the spell that turned some of the corridors in the dungeon pitch-black, and were working on exploring the network of tunnels beyond.

“Do you want to go out on the grounds tonight?” Tom asked abruptly.

Harry tore his attention away from the book. “If you want to,” he said.

“Do you want to?”

It was an odd question for Tom to ask; Harry had grown used to his somewhat bossy nature.

“I think it could be fun,” he said, and so he found himself shivering in the frozen night as he hurried to keep up with Tom.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“There’s something I found the other day on my own. I want to show you.”

“Alright then,” Harry said, dropping the conversation in favor of casting another short-lived warming spell. They were headed towards the Forest—again, Harry thought—and the trees seemed strangely much more dark and ominous than they had on the Solstice.

“It’s not far,” Tom muttered under his breath.

“Lucky for you that I don’t mind the cold,” Harry grumbled.

Tom ignored that comment.

Harry fell reluctantly quiet. Tom led him not far into the Forest, stopping in a clearing.

“I saw this animal, like a horse, it lives around here somewhere,” Tom said, stalking to one end of the clearing. If Harry had tried to put words to him, he might’ve said nervous.

“Tom, what’s this about?”

Tom stopped peering behind the trees. “It’s my birthday today,” he said.

“Oh! Happy birthday.” That explained Tom’s odd behavior. He didn’t like divulging personal information very much. “If I’d known earlier I would’ve gotten you something…well, no I don’t have any money, but I could have made something I’m sure.”

“No, I don’t want anything,” Tom said a little too sharply. “There’s a ritual you can do for a birthday. The one I found was really long, so I shortened it.” He paused. “Would you cast the circle for me?”

Harry moved to do so, silently, with the distinct impression that Tom had made himself uncomfortable somehow. He paused before closing the line.

“Do you want me to join?” he asked.

“If you want.”

Harry traced the line shut and crossed to kneel next to where Tom had crouched down.

“Draw your wand,” Tom said softly. He was already spinning his between his fingers.

Harry fished it out. “What do I do with it?”

“Ignus,” Tom said. His wandtip lit up with a flickering light like a flame. When he touched the tip of it to Harry’s, his came to life like a struck match.

“Stick them in the ground.” Tom pressed the handle of his wand into the frozen earth until it would balance upright, and Harry copied him silently.

He reached across the flame, much brighter now combined, for Harry’s hands, and pulled both their fingertips into the fire. Harry flinched but didn’t draw away, not allowing the heat to reach his skin.

“As the snake sheds its skin, so do I shed any negative forces affecting me,” Tom murmured. They stayed there for a moment, hands still twisted together with fire flickering and stinging through the gaps, before Tom leaned forward and blew out the wands. Harry blinked as the darkness crashed down over his eyes abruptly.

Tom pulled away to break the circle.

“Well,” Harry said, standing slowly. “Happy birthday again.”

“And New Year,” Tom said, looking up through the trees to the clear night sky.

“Do you want to go back inside?” Harry asked.  

“In just a minute,” Tom agreed, so Harry sat back down to use the light of his wand to admire the soot smeared across his palms.

Headmaster Dippet stood up from the head table. “Students!” he called.

The murmuring of voices slowly died down.

“I am afraid that I have a grave announcement to make,” he said. He paused for a long moment. “Evidence of Dark Magic having been performed in the Forbidden Forest has been discovered.”

A low rumble of sound rose from the tables. Tom was very still beside Harry.

“As you all know, the consequences of dabbling in such evil magic are very dire,” Dippet continued, voice clear despite the wheeze behind it. “If anyone has any knowledge of who might have been involved in these actions, he or she is urged to step forward so that we may put an end to this before anything worse can happen.” He sat down, looking unusually stern.

Some of the students in the Hall were turning to look accusingly at the Slytherins as the murmuring grew louder. Harry felt very small and guilty. He glanced over at Tom to find him already looking at Harry.

“You don’t think?” he asked hesitantly, as quietly as he could manage.

Tom shook his head. “Not here,” he said.

“Oh, right.” Harry tried to look as unsuspicious as possible.

“It had to have been one of them,” a Gryffindor said loudly from behind them. “Everyone knows the Slytherins get all the Dark freaks.”

Harry winced, and Tom looked at him oddly.

“Do you want to repeat that, Prewett?”

Lestrange had stood to tower over the Gryffindor, who was wearing an ugly sneer as he eyed him.

“Alright,” he said, and stood as well. Lestrange was several inches shorter than him, as well as obviously several years younger. “Listen here, then. We’re going to find out which ones of you this was, if it wasn’t all,” and here he stopped to twist his face into an even more gruesome grimace, “and when we do, believe me, you’ll regret coming to Hogwarts.”

Lestrange didn’t back down. “Yes, I’m sure an incompetent, idiotic excuse for a wizard such as yourself will be the one to find the perpetrator.”

“You little—”

“Prewett, get yours hands off my little brother.”

A much taller and powerful looking young wizard had silently come to join the confrontation. Harry saw Professor Dumbledore stand from the head table.

Prewett paused. “Lestrange,” he acknowledged.

Raymond Lestrange’s older brother stared down at him as if he was a flea feeding off of a particularly grimy dog. “If you accuse my brother again,” he said slowly, “then I do think I’ll be forced to make sure the one feeling regret is you.”

Prewett’s eyes flashed, and he opened his mouth to snarl back.

“Students,” Dumbledore said firmly as he descended upon them.

The fire went out of Prewett’s stance, but both of the Lestranges stood braced still.

“Mister Prewett, sit down at once. Any worries you have ought to be brought straight to the teachers. Rest assured we will find the one who did this.”

Prewett slunk back into his seat.

“As for you, Mister Lestrange.” Dumbledore turned a stern expression on the elder. “A threat of violence as severe as you implied is no laughing matter. Twenty points from Slytherin. And as for your brother,” Dumbledore turned his eyes to Raymond now, “While it was good of you to defend your Housemates, I would encourage you to not attempt to provoke confrontations in the future.”

He swept away in a flurry of blue robes. Harry stared after him.

“But that’s not fair,” he said.

“Nose out, Potter,” Lestrange snapped. He moved as if to sit down again, but his brother caught his shoulder.

“Raymond, I think we need to continue this conversation elsewhere,” he said tightly, shoulders stiff and eyes hard as iron. He marched his brother from the Hall.

The rest of breakfast was very subdued, and Harry found that he had lost most of his appetite. He pushed a few bites around his plate whereas Tom didn’t even pretend to eat.

They left soon after in silent, mutual agreement. Many students had already filtered out.

“Do you think it was us?” Harry asked lowly once they were away from the Hall.

“Be careful where you discuss that,” a familiar voice called.

Orion Black was standing a few paces behind them. He’d clearly been following them.

“What do you want, Black?” Tom’s voice came out more wary than the distain he’d clearly been aiming for.

“It was the two of you, actually,” he said. “Come on.” He brushed past them to stride away down the hallway. Harry and Tom exchanged fleeting glances before catching up.

Orion pulled them into an empty classroom and locked the door with magic. “I wasn’t joking. You do need to be more careful,” he said. “We Purebloods grew up with caution and fear instilled into us. Probably should have anticipated that you’d be careless.”

“If you’re just here to lecture us—” Tom snapped.

“I’m not, actually,” he said sharply. “There are spells to erase traces—it’s in Magick Moste Evile in the Restricted Section, but there should be a ritual to do it in Libellus Tenebrarum.”

“That’s lovely to know,” Tom said, “but if you don’t have anything more to say—”

Orion’s expression grew tighter. Harry glanced at Tom and tried to tell him to be more polite without speaking.

“There’s significance to what happened on the Solstice,” he said shortly. “The meaning of it could lead to you earning great power among the Dark community. Not everyone hears Magic speak to them on a night of power.”

Tom stilled, and Harry’s attention snapped in closer.

“Magic?” Tom asked. “If you’re trying to say that magic is a sentient entity, well, that’s just ridiculous.” Harry tried not to look at him with too much surprise. Tom had expressed nearly exactly the opposite sentiment before. 

“Muggleborns,” Orion said with a flicker of impatience. “Figure it out yourselves, why don’t you. When you do I’ll be more than happy to introduce you to my family and thereby the community at large. Until then, do try to be more subtle.”

The door thudded shut behind him. Harry reflected distantly that he’d never seen Orion lose his temper before.

Tom looked wide-eyed.

“Do you really think he’s joking?” Harry asked.

Tom just shook his head.

“We’ll look up that ritual he mentioned,” Harry decided. “We can see if he’s telling the truth later, alright?”

Tom nodded slowly. “Class,” he said.

“Class,” Harry agreed, and picked up his bag from where he’d dropped it on the floor. “Let’s go.”  

Chapter Text

1931:

“Mummy, tell the story again,” begged the child.

The stately young woman sighed and gathered her robes around herself before sitting in the chair beside the bed.

“Alright, Orion, but only once, and then you must sleep,” Melania said.

Her son stared at her bright-eyed.

“When the first wizard in our family, thousands of years ago, first met other wizards, he was very confused,” she said. “You see, he had always had magic whispering in his ear like a very clever friend, giving him tasks and hints to help him along in his ambitions. The other wizards he met, however, hadn’t the slightest clue when he tried to explain this to them. They all thought he was mad.

“When he did find a wizard by the name of Malfoy who understood him, and they banded together to search for others with the same gift. They came upon a witch named Prince, who also spoke to magic, but was known to be a cruel and vicious woman. The two wizards invited her to join them, and the rest of the community shunned them for it.

“Her ability to not only hear magic, but communicate in return, was far stronger than the abilities of the Black and Malfoy wizards, and soon as they discovered more wizards like them, it was clear that her gift was abnormally strong.

“The three had fallen into a close friendship by this point, and they stood as a beacon to the families of the wizards now turned away for following Prince. Nobody was entirely sure how it came to pass, but a rift opened between the greater public and the wizards who would be come to known as Dark wizards due to the wilder and more dangerous forms of magic they dealt in.”

Melania paused and ran a hand through her son’s hair. Orion forced his eyes open.

“She found a secret hidden in the depths of their practices, a secret that would give them power and a hope they could cling to,” she said softly. “She underwent many trials with the assistance of her dear friends and became the first Lord of Dark magic.”

“And there’ve been Lords ever since,” Orion said sleepily.

“Yes, there have,” Melania agreed. “Not for some time, but one will come again. You must always hold that hope as truth, for with it you will never lose your way.” She stood. “Bed now.”

“Yes, mother,” Orion said obediently, and burrowed further into the blankets. “Mummy, do you think I’ll get to meet the next Dark Lord?” 

She laughed softly from the door. “One can hope,” she repeated, and spelled the lights to darkness.

The shadows had always spoken to Orion Black. They had crawled into his cradle and whispered mysteries to him long before he knew the meaning of language. They had tangled around his feet and led him directly to where he needed to be.

His shadow had put him in the path of his uncle on one important day in March, and had let him discover that he was to have a younger cousin before he and Lucretia were informed.

He trusted the shadows with the instinct of a child, and his belief in their guidance only grew with the encouragement of his delighted parents. So rare, to have a child like him, particularly in the current times, their friends said. Melania received many congratulations on the prospects of her young son.

Lucretia did not particularly enjoy her little brother stealing all the attention, but she learned to make do and how to listen in to conversations where she was often ignored.

There were not many wizards like Orion left, not in his day and age. He was something of a miracle child, and his feet never failed to lead him directly into step with wizards who would grow to be powerful.

Chapter Text

There must have been something on the floor, because suddenly Harry’s feet went out from under him and he landed hard on his wrists, his books spilling everywhere.

“Ow,” he said, and glanced up, expecting to see Tom looking down with his usual amused condescension.

“Hello, Harry,” said the smiling old man. “I’m Professor Dumbledore.”

“What?” Harry said. “No, you’re not, you’re…”

His twinkling blue eyes and glasses were exactly the same. Harry felt like his stomach had suddenly disappeared.

“You’re from the future,” he said.

“Quite so, Harry,” Dumbledore said.

He glanced around, stunned and cautious.  He saw that he had fallen in the center of a circle traced in—ink? blood? all about him, with many runes and alchemical symbols building up the edges of the circle.

Harry got to his feet and picked up his books slowly. When he looked back up, Dumbledore was eyeing his tie with something like surprise.

“A Slytherin!” he said. “Unexpected for someone of your temperament, but admirable nonetheless. I was a Gryffindor myself.”

“What am I doing here?”

It was slowly dawning on Harry that he’d never expected to return. Everyone he was used to—the school he loved, too—were all in the past. Tom would be an old man in this time.

“We’ve been working hard to retrieve you from where the Death Eaters sent you,” Dumbledore said gently. “The Death Eaters would be the servants of Voldemort, the evil wizard who is responsible for your parents’ deaths.”

So that was how it had happened.

“I see,” Harry said slowly. A feeling of dread was rising up in the corners of his mind. “And…you’ll be keeping me here?”

Dumbledore sighed. “I’m afraid that it isn’t possible at this point. I’ve been hard at work since September to bring you back where you will be safest from all the wizards who would seek to hurt you, you see, but we haven’t yet found something that will allow you to stay here permanently. As long as you stay inside that circle, you will be here with us, but I’m sorry to say that you’ll likely have to return for now.”

“Oh.” Harry was relieved, surprisingly so.

“Do you mind if I ask, however…” Dumbledore began delicately.

“No, go ahead,” he said quickly.

“What year have you found yourself in?”

That was a simple enough question. “Nineteen thirty-nine.”

Dumbledore’s face grew pale and taught. “Listen to me, Harry,” he said quickly. “You must know—you are in grave danger.”

“Harry?”

“There is a boy in Hogwarts…” Dumbledore said, but his voice had begun to waver and the room was spinning. Harry’s stomach turned over, and he bent in two. “…your year…”

“Harry!”

Familiar hands caught him as he fell to his knees, retching, the familiar stone floor of the corridor beneath his hands.

“You vanished,” Tom said. “What happened? Where did you go?” He sounded almost angry.

Harry coughed and wiped his mouth. Tom made a disgusted face.

“I was in the future for a minute,” he said. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he added, indicating the mess.

“The future?” Tom was paler than normal. “What was happening?”

“Professor Dumbledore was there, only a lot older,” Harry said, tremors creeping up his limbs, leaving him shaking in the grip Tom still had on his back.

“I’m taking you to the Infirmary,” Tom said decisively, and pulled Harry to his feet. “Come on, we can send someone else to deal with this.” He led Harry carefully down the hallway. The world was spinning around him now, much like it had in Dumbledore’s office, and the dizziness that crept into his mind made his stomach lurch again. He must have made a noise, because he was being lowered to the floor, something soft draped over him. Someone far off was saying something, but his ears didn’t seem to quite be working right.

His mind fell in and out of darkness for a while. He thought he felt the sensation of movement for a bit, the sound of voices nearby. Someone was prodding at him for a while, poking him with needle-sharp pain all up his sides and the feeling grew stronger and stronger until suddenly it was gone entirely.

He opened his eyes to find himself in the Hospital Wing. The fearsome matron was bending over him, holding her wand like a knife.

“You’re awake finally,” she said. “It’s a good thing Mr. Riddle’s such a good friend to you, boy. Drink this.”

Harry choked down the disgusting concoction without complaint. He’d heard horror stories of all sorts about Madam Spinks. After a moment of spluttering, he registered that the blanket covering him was actually Tom’s cloak. He pulled it closer around him, still shaking with the magical aftershocks of the brief time travel.

“You’re to remain here until Professors Merrythought and Dumbledore can come examine you,” she said curtly. “If you feel like eating anything, food will be provided at lunchtime on your bedside.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said, and sank back onto his pillow when she had left him. Someone, presumably Tom, had set his bag down beside the bed, and Harry hauled out his Transfigurations textbook with a groan. If he had to spend his day in bed, he might as well study in the meantime.

At lunch Tom showed up briefly with a roll of parchment. "Here’s everything you missed this morning,” he said, dumping the paper into Harry’s lap. “Slughorn said to tell you he hopes you improve soon.”

“Does he,” Harry said.

“Yes.” Tom reclaimed his cloak. “Are you feeling better?”

“A lot,” Harry confirmed. “I’m not nauseous at all anymore, and I haven’t popped back into the future or anything.” He paused before confessing the truth. “I don’t want to go back, I don’t think. I like it here.”

Tom said nothing, but looked somewhat pleased nonetheless.

The next words came more slowly. “I lived with my aunt and uncle. They were Muggles.”

“Mm?” Tom had a way of being encouraging without actually changing anything about his face.

“Well, I’m in no rush to get back to them is all,” Harry said. “Neither of us liked each other very much.”

“My situation is much the same,” Tom agreed. “I’m glad you wish to stay.”

“Think you’d miss me?” Harry grinned up at him.

Tom shrugged. “You are a fairly efficient researcher.”

“Thanks.” Harry let the moment hang for a minute, relishing the comfortable silence. “Don’t you have class?” he made himself ask eventually.

“Yes,” Tom agreed. “Do you have all your books? You could borrow one of mine for the afternoon.”

“I’ve got my bag,” Harry said, gesturing to the side. “Thank you, by the way. For helping.”

“Of course,” Tom said without batting an eye. It still made Harry unreasonably happy to remember that he had a friend who truly cared about him.

“Go on, then,” he admonished, and Tom made his way out to the next class.

Professor Dumbledore dropped in before dinner to apologize for taking so long to show up, and promised to come by after dinner. Harry, now very bored, wasn’t overly inclined to be forgiving, but was pleased to know the wait would soon be over. Once Dumbledore and Merrythought showed, he explained what had transpired.

Dumbledore was very amused by the description of his older self, but sobered when Harry told him about the warning that had been interrupted by the ritual failing.

“Do you remember any of the runes or symbols inscribed?” Merrythought pressed, but Harry didn’t have any specific recollection.

“As it is,” Harry said slowly. “If this happens again, I think that as long as there isn’t any specific reason why I shouldn’t, I’d like to stay here. In the past.” He checked their expressions for protest, but both looked encouraging enough. “My friends are here, after all, and my family’s all dead in the future.” The words were true but he regretted the last sentence when he saw Professor Merrythought wince.

“It is entirely up to you, barring any danger to your person,” Dumbledore agreed.

“Can I go, if that’s alright?” he asked. “I’d like to get caught up on what I missed today.”

“That seems fair enough to me,” Dumbledore said. Madam Spinks huffed from her desk nearby but didn’t protest.

“Great!” Harry sprung out of bed with a lot of enthusiasm. Dumbledore’s mustache quivered when Harry knocked a book off the bed by accident in his haste to pack up. “Thank you so much for all your help, and thank you, Madam Spinks.” He waved hastily from the door with his free hand and hurried back to the dungeons to explain to Tom everything that had happened in the future and see what he thought of it.

Chapter Text

“The weird bit,” Harry mused, “is how the Dumbledore in the future didn’t recognize me. You’d think he’d ought to. I am his student, after all.”

“Technically by existing in the past you oughtn’t be here at all,” Tom said without looking up from his essay. “You might change the future enough that you wouldn't have been sent back in the first place.”

“I hate paradoxes,” Harry decided, staring up at the ceiling.

Tom made a faint noise of assent and nudged him with a foot. “Don’t you have the essay to write for Herbology?”

“It’s almost done,” Harry protested, but grudgingly sat up and dug out his quill.

“Are you going to stay with the Potters for Easter?” Tom asked after a few minutes of silence.

“I think so,” Harry said. “If I don’t now they’ll likely never invite me again.”

“You should,” Tom said. “It would be helpful to be on good terms with a Pureblood family.”

“Yeah, hooray, a bunch of snotty, stuck-up Purebloods,” Harry complained, but let it go. He let the quiet help him concentrate as his quill scratched across the parchment. “Done,” he said cheerfully. “I’m going to work on the family lines project.”

Tom glanced up, surprised. “I’d nearly forgotten about that,” he admitted. “What with everything after the solstice.”

“I don’t blame you,” Harry said as he dug out their notes. “I still can’t find anything on what Black was talking about before.”

“There will be something,” Tom said with confidence. “And if we can’t find anything in the library, we’ll just have to start looking in other places.”

“Right,” Harry said, knowing well enough that Tom had probably already begun work on how to break into the older students’ rooms to steal their books. “Well, I can do this in the meantime.”

He flipped open to the page he had left off on and began tracing the family line, trying to follow and see where it had split off into other families. It was tedious work to say the least.

Half an hour later Harry stopped. He made an incredulous noise and Tom looked up.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“The Potter family is related to Gryffindor,” Harry said in disbelief.

Tom was across the room the moment he said that to peer at the page. “You, a Gryffindor?” he said with skepticism, but frowned at the page consideringly.

“You can’t be related to me, then,” Harry said, not without a flicker of disappointment. “There’s no Riddle nor Marvolo anywhere here, and only one Thomas from the seventeenth century.”

“Hm,” Tom said. He frowned at the page. “I can’t see you as a Gryffindor at all. You’re much too ambitious.”

“Me, ambitious?” Harry wasn’t sure where that idea had come from.

Tom gave him his patented condescending look. “Harry, you’re not digging through a seven hundred page book on lineage to figure out why the both of us can speak an incredibly rare magical language for fun.”

Harry considered that. “Maybe you’re right,” he conceded, and finished jotting down the Potter family tree.

“On a related note, I’ve combed the library and can’t find a single book with a comprehensive explanation of Parseltongue,” Tom added.

“Let me guess. Most things just called it evil and Dark and maybe mentioned Salazar Slytherin.”

“You’re not far off.” 

Harry huffed out a sigh. “We’ll find something eventually,” he promised. “Maybe the Potters will have some books I can look at.”

It was the day before spring vacation that the confrontation came. Harry had been walking back from the library when the boy appeared.

“I hear you’re paying the Potter Family a visit this vacation, time travel boy,” Rabastan Lestrange, Harry’s yearmate’s older and much more intimidating brother, said casually, as if he hadn’t intentionally positioned himself so that Harry couldn’t escape.

“Yes,” Harry said cautiously. He didn’t volunteer any more information.

Lestrange turned to him with a frightening glint in his eyes. “If you breathe a word of what goes on in our House—and don’t play coy, you know exactly what I mean—the Ministry will tear this school apart. You and your mudblood friend and every last child in Slytherin will go to the dementors. If you say a singly sentence that could in some way bring danger to my family and every Slytherin here, I will hunt you down and you will wish the Ministry had found you first.” The weight of his glare landed heavily on Harry. “Do you understand, boy?”

“Yes, I get it,” Harry snapped. “I know it’s illegal, I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You had better not,” Lestrange repeated darkly. He fell back enough to let Harry hurry on ahead, and he tried to keep himself from running to the dormitory.

Tom was there already.

“Tom, do you know what dementors are?’ Harry asked the second he was sure they were alone.

He turned to him with a frown. “They are the guards to the prison Azkaban,” he said. “They possess the power to suck one’s very soul from one’s body.”

Harry snapped abruptly into stricken, revolted silence. “Rabastan Lestrange just threatened me about telling the Potters about how much Dark magic is practiced in Slytherin. He said we’d all be sent to the dementors.”

“He’s right, at least with a bit of exaggeration added on top,” Tom agreed softly. “We’d be arrested for sure. Dark magic is no laughing matter in the eyes of the rest of the world.’

“I didn’t realize,” Harry said, stunned. “I thought—“ He didn’t know what he had thought.

“It’s a dangerous game,” Tom agreed.

“I’ll keep my mouth shut,” Harry promised.

Chapter Text

Dorea Potter looked down her nose at him. For a Potter, she had a startling resemblance to the Blacks, and Harry suspected that she had married into their family.

“Come along, then,” she said. Harry barely had any time to glance backwards before she had shrunk his trunk in one easy swipe of her wand while taking his arm in a vice-like grip with the other hand. She half-towed him out of the way of the passing families but paused when a voice called out to them.

“Dorea, darling.” A man’s voice rose above the cacophony as he came striding out of the masses. “How have you been?”

Her face shifted from stern to something a little softer. “Hello, Maxwell,” she greeted. “I have been well. Yourself?”

“Well enough,” he concurred. “Who is this young fellow?”

“Harry Potter, sir,” he said, and accepted the proffered hand to shake.

“Ah!” he said. “That time traveller the Ministry’s been all abuzz over, is it? I heard your professors have been working very hard to keep them off of you.”

“Oh, er.” Harry was unpleasantly surprised to hear this. “I suppose they have.”

“Hm,” he said.

Harry felt very out of his league. Purebloods his age were one thing, but Maxwell seemed to be boring a hole in his head with his gaze. Harry tried not to fidget.

“Come for tea soon, won’t you?” Dorea Potter asked. “I have to get this boy out of the station before people start to stare.”

“Of course, I understand completely,” he said. “I’ll be by tomorrow if that’s acceptable for you?”

“We’ll be expecting you,” she agreed, and took a firm grip on the back of Harry’s shirt. “Until then.”

He waved and headed back into the crowd.

“Have you apparated before?” she asked.

The term was familiar, but he hadn’t. “No, ma’am.”

She sniffed a little, looking far too prim and intimidating for someone quite young still. “Try not to be sick, then.”

The world twisted. Harry tried to cry out, but his voice was stolen as every bone in his body seemed to be crushed by an insurmountable force. His eyes were blown wide but nothing but a living darkness could be seen.

They appeared at a gate and Harry nearly fell. Dorea Potter clutched the back of his shirt firmly and pulled him back upright.

Harry’s eyes were streaming and his head was spinning. He heard his companion sigh a little and rummage around.

“Drink this,” she said. Harry took the bottle blindly and swallowed it, belatedly realizing that he should have asked what it was first.

His stomach settled and so did the world around him. Dorea looked a touch more sympathetic now.

“It’s a difficult sensation to adjust to,” she told him. “Come along now.” The bottle vanished with a swipe of her wand, and another had the gates creaking open.

Harry followed her, nearly stumbling over his own feet when he saw the triplet manors looming ahead of them. She had kept up a brisk pace and Harry hurried to keep up while simultaneously staring up at the gargoyles lining the roofs. He followed her, not without trepidation, into the house in the middle.

Harry folded his hands nervously into his lap as Mrs Potter (as he’d been instructed to call Dorea) led elderly Lady Potter into the room. The Potters were a difficult family to adjust to. Mr Charlus Potter had been polite but distant. Master Harold Potter was strange, Harry thought, and overly curious in what the future was like. The Lord and Lady Potter mostly seemed a little confused, being very, very old.

Dorea and her sister-in-law had kept their distance from Harry, apart from insisting he join them in tea with Maxwell Longbottom, whose smile had been too wide and his eyes too sharp for Harry’s comfort, and he had already been nervous trying to match the adults’ impeccable manners.

The worst bit was the clothes.

They had appeared on his bed with a note saying that any Potter relative was expected to be dressed according to their stature, and they were miserably uncomfortable. Harry was twitchy under the sharply starched robes.

Dinner began shortly, cutting Harry’s musings short. Dorea broke in after a few minutes of silence.

“Harry,” she said, “I would like to show you our library after the meal. Would you accompany me?”

Harry looked up, startled. “Of course, ma’am,” he said after a moment of surprise.

“Excellent,” she said, and returned to her demure quiet.

They took their meals in near-silence each day. After months of the roar of the Great Hall, Harry found that every rustle and twitch seemed to echo in the cavernous room. Despite the comfort in which they lived, tension held taught over the table.

Harry was glad when they finished the meal.

He caught Harold’s sharp glance as Dorea stood to usher him away, but Charlus stepped neatly in the way to kiss his young wife’s cheek.

“I’ll see you later this evening,” he promised, and Harry was surprised once more that evening. Affection clearly flowed between them.

She bestowed him with a rare smile before taking Harry’s arm (more gently than she had at the train station) and leading him out of the room. They all gathered to dine in the central manor, and Dorea didn’t have to lead him far to bring him to the library.

It was not as big as Hogwarts’, Harry instantly noted, but much grander. He tilted his head to see the way the columns along the ends of the bookshelves curled up in spirals and the intricate designs along each shelf.

Dorea let him pause and feel his awe at the books for a moment before carefully leading him forward and sideways into the rows. Her pace was slow and graceful, and her face changed not at all when she said, “I can sense the Dark magic that clings to you.”

Harry’s foot caught on the floor and he stumbled in surprise. “I—”

“Don’t lie,” she said. “I was born into the Black family. I know what kinds of magic you’ve likely been exposed to in Slytherin House.”

Harry tried to be as quiet as possible as she moved them deeper into the room.

“I also know how tempting and beautiful that magic can seem to be,” she continued. “There’s a book I want you to have that might help you expand your understanding a little more.” She drew to a halt and slid a single volume free. “Listen to me when I tell you that when I turned my back on my old family forever I had many reasons, most of which had to do with the kind of wild, vicious magic they used.” She slid the book into Harry’s hands. “The decisions is yours to make, but do so with knowledge of the consequences.”

She was gone then in a sweep of expensive robes, leaving Harry half frightened and half fascinated, all the while clutching the book bestowed into his grip.

Chapter Text

Tom looked up as Harry stepped off the train.

“Hi,” Harry said, coming to a stop next to him.

“Something wrong?” Tom asked.

Harry’s brain was still whirling from everything that had happened in the past week. “They were…weird,” he managed. “Very weird.”

“Pureblood weird?” Tom asked.

Harry shook his head. “Not like Lestrange or Black, like… They had the same sort of stuck-up act, but they hate…” Harry paused and glanced around. “C’mon, I’ll tell you on the way.”

Tom moved to fall in step with him, clearly sensing that Harry didn’t want to be overheard.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Harry continued.

“They hate Dark wizards Tom, I mean they really truly hate them.” He stared ahead somewhat blankly. “They think they—we’re all awful, evil people who go around, I don’t know, torturing and murdering…” He trailed off and looked over to his friend. Tom had been suspiciously quiet so far. “We’ve barely learned anything yet, we’ve only really scratched the surface. Do you think they’re right? Do you think that the other stuff, the spells and potions and complex rituals are all…evil?”

“No,” Tom said. “I don’t think that.”

“Dorea Potter, she married into the family. She’s a Black, really, but she left because of the magic. She gave me this book—”

“Dark magic is power,” Tom said, cutting him off.

Harry fell silent.

“Many people fear power,” he continued. “And while power can often be used to wreak evil, it’s not anything unless you make it so. We’ve been given a chance to use this magic to become better than what the rest of the world would have us be.” He pulled Harry to a stop and spoke earnestly. “The purebloods think we’re inferior to them because of how we were born, but that isn’t true. We use their magic even better than they do. Think of all the things we could do with it!”

He caught Harry’s conflicted look and continued without pausing. “Yes, there are some horrifying curses out there, but many of them aren’t Dark at all. Dark magic comes from a special source, and that makes us stronger, more important, because we can wield it so well. Would you really give that up?”

Harry thought about all the times he had gotten locked in his cupboard for things that weren’t his fault. “No,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t.”

Tom smiled then. It was a rare thing to see him genuinely smile. “Neither will I,” he said. “We’ve cast our lot and we’ll see it through to the end, won’t we?”

“I suppose we will,” Harry said. He tried to let Tom’s delight at their magic reach him.

“I’ll read that book you were given,” Tom promised. “But I don’t think it’ll be much more than propaganda once we pick it apart. Come on, let’s get inside.”

They sloshed the rest of the way through the mud and spelled their shoes clean afterwards. Harry very slowly began to smile, too.