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He hadn’t been sure what to think of the great Harriet Potter.
The way Ginny wrote of her, he had expected a Valkyrie bearing a greatsword and carved of marble; with the curse scar his other self had given her displayed like a crown, declaring her queen. The inaccuracy of this image led to immense disappointment.
Her cropped and wily hair, like Perseus had missed Medusa’s head and had shaven the snakes instead, hid the scar from his gaze. The skinny thing, all bone and muscle sinew from the look of the arms that peeked from the curtain of a shirt, quivered in the presence of the grand chamber. She had jumped at the trick of light on the giant snake statues that cast shadows upon the watery surface. Pathetic. Lacking.
It made him furious with embarrassment. How had this measly little girl defeated him? The other him. The one who had gone on to control the world, to make the name of Lord Voldemort known throughout the land.
And perhaps, just a fraction of that embarrassment was for himself. Tom had been deceived in the pages.
Her will had throbbed into the ink, like her heart beat inside the very liquid itself, making it living, breathing.
Such a terrible cruelty - not knowing what was wrong with me. What made me so freakish and undeserving? That the knowledge had been knowingly withheld from me, not just from my family but from the magical community. No one had checked on me. No one.
Her words had writhed with pain in his hands. Burning and flaring his own anger for oh, how he remembered his own. No one from the magical community had checked on him, and it was only some strange compulsion, placed by the school's founders on the staff, that had brought him to Hogwarts. Dumbledore surely hadn't wanted him in the halls. Had made it clear what he thought of Tom. But no others had offered home. None had offered to save him, not as a child and not from the war that descended from the skies and lit up the London skyline.
He hadn’t felt so alive in a long time; every moment her words seeped into the book, he felt real again. Not just a memory on a page. Just as Sisyphus had been forced to roll the rock, so had he been doing this entire time. But when Harriet wrote, the weight of the stone had been removed from his tired shoulders, and for those minutes, he’d been free. Yes, Harriet Potter’s sarcastic, straight, and true words echoed in the corridors of his fake Hogwarts, bringing life to the flames even after the book had long since closed.
Eventually, it faded, though, and the load he took again to bear. The silence even heavier than before. And then Ginerva’s dull whine and fear, this time of him and not of the world, had returned, making the load even worse. He’d forced himself to act.
He’d none to confess to. But like Ginny, he’d imagined Harriet Potter altogether larger than life. That her presence would fill a room just by being in it. Like her words had filled his book. But no, the girl took up no space in the vast corridor. Even the shadows were bigger than her. Even the water glistening in the torchlight was louder, for she made no sound as she covered Ginny’s body with her black cloak as if to bring warmth back to the dying body.
It felt like he’d been lied to. He hated to be lied to. But he’d lied to her, too, hadn’t he?
“Why, Tom?” Harriet hissed out, her body rising from the wet floor. She stood between Ginny and him, as if that could stop the process. She raised her wand. The wrong grip, and it quivered in her hands.
A quick flick of his wrist and the wand flew into his hand. Why? So simple a question. Why had he done all of this? “I do not want to die. A life for a life.” It was why anyone made Horcruxes.
Her eyes glanced to the wands, to him, and then she looked back to Ginny. Calculating her attack? He’d kill her quickly. A slice across the throat. He’d grab her handful of hair just like Perseus and be free of the gorgon that had wreaked havoc on his other self.
She stopped quivering. Her fingers curled into a fist, and when she turned back around, her chin jutted out. “Take me instead.”
That… Hadn’t been the words Tom had been expecting.
But no, those had been the words she’d said. Her green eyes gleamed in the torchlight. The shadows twisting, her shadow looked larger and hair more wiggling - perhaps Medusa still?
He barked out a laugh. His great enemy, offering herself to him willingly. A trick, no doubt, to somehow gain the advantage against him. Did she think when she drew closer, she’d be able to overpower him? Her waif second-year body against his tall own?
Again, the gaze dropped to the red head. “Ginny’s mother has a warm embrace, my Aunt Petunia has never…” Her quiet voice spoke more to herself than to him, and her words trailed off. Her back straightened after a moment. Her fist uncurled. And when she turned to meet his gaze again, there was something in them, a gleam he could not parse.
She took a step forward. “Her father laughed at my jokes and patted my head like I was his own.” Another step. Sloosh. Into the water that was ankle deep, taking the shortest path to him instead of walking around. “Her twin brothers, courageous and foolhardy enough to break me free.”
She stared through him. As if she either saw the past of these prior actions replaying in her mind's eye, or as if she could divine the very future. “Her older brother, bless him, has tutored me several times - often repeating the same lecture as my attention lacked.” One more step and her shadow encroached upon his toes. “And her other brother, he’s my best mate.”
He stopped her there, raising the wand she’d once wielded to her chest. His own chest breathed heavily in fiery anger. “What meaning does that have? You think you owe them for meager kindnesses? Pathetic.”
She blinked at him, behind cracked glasses. Looking ever more the fool, had she not even attempted to repair them with magic before a fight with the monster in the chamber?
Finally, she spoke. “Meager though they may seem to you. They are not to me. But that is not…” She shook her head. “I’m not repaying some debt.”
“No? Then what?”
“I’m offering you a better trade.” Her voice didn’t waver. Her gaze didn’t drop. She truly believed her words.
He let out a biting laugh. “I revive before your very eyes, dear Harriet. I need no trade.”
“Orphan for orphan.”
The words almost made him lose his grip on the wand; instead, he tensed. “What?” he hissed in anger, parseltongue slipping out.
“The life of an orphan for the life of an orphan. If any life would do, the roosters would have brought you back, no? This ritual requires a certain balance. So… Don’t rid the world of a child that is wanted in it. Take what is the equivalent of your own.” She extended her left hand up to him. Confidence rang in her voice. “Equal value.”
The words sting, as if the hand had held a blade and struck him upon the cheek. “I am—” wanted? No, no one wanted poor orphan Tom Marvolo Riddle. They’d made that perfectly clear long ago.
“You’ve been stuck for 50 years in that book. If someone wanted you, they’d have gotten you out by now.”
His wand hand shook in rage. How dare the insolent little brat —
“I would be stuck too,” She said quickly. “No one would get me out either, well, Hermione might try, but that's not quite the same thing, I think.” Her smile twisted wrong at the corners. “You may want the world to want you. I may want the world to want me. But the desire of fools blinds truth. We will never get what we want.”
He took a step forward then and pressed the stick against her chest and loomed over her waif-like frame. “I will take what I want from the world.” And he had, and he would continue to do so.
She didn’t react to the threat. Instead, her smile loosened as if that was precisely what she expected of him. “Then take my life and continue yours. I don’t have much going for me. Just a ghastly spirit that wants me dead. Dumbledore seems to think he’ll return and I’ll defeat him, again.”
She’d never spoken of Lord Voldemort to the diary. But here. A key! “How? How was it you defeated him before?” He'd been dying to hear about it.
Her head tilted sideways in thought before she then gave a cheeky smile. “The power of love, I suppose.”
He poked her with the wand, and she winced from the pain. “You truly want to joke with me?” he threatened.
“No, but it is the truth. Dumbledore said it was my mother’s love that defended me.” Her smile brightened as if she were not standing in a vast old chamber being held at wand point. “But doesn’t it seem like a good joke. And maybe this will see it out fully.” She raised both hands, ignoring his wand which held steady against her chest bone, and motioned to the room around them. “Maybe it's you who will see it out.”
Right, she had no idea who he was. Who he would become. “Me?”
“There is no greater love than to die for one's friends,” she motioned to Ginny. “And there’s also that bit about loving one's enemy as yourself.” She nodded as if the reasoning she’d just given wasn’t littered with flaws. She pressed forward, letting his wand dig further into her chest. “You must go on then, defeat a Dark Lord for me. Maybe that is what you’ve always been made to do.”
Had the killing curse addled her brain past repair? Removed the sanity of all humans who yearned for life? He backed away from her, and before she began to pursue him again, started laughing.
His laughter at least gave her some pause.
“It makes sense,” She said, sounding offended. “There can be no greater love, and thus, there can be no greater power than this which I am giving you. You’ll be able to make something of yourself. You’ll defeat Lord Voldemort.” Her confidence was back, her shoulders straight, like she was a queen knighting him for duty.
“What if I am him?” He readied himself to make the anagram. To show her exactly who he was to her, as he chuckled to himself.
“I must commend you for regrowing your hair. Less unicorn blood in the diet really does wonders.”
His laugh died in his throat. Unicorn blood? “The great Lord Voldemort has given himself a half-life?”
“Got to watch him take dinner out in the Forbidden Forest.”
The sarcastic wench! He would never! Unicorn blood would make men nothing but a shell. The whole point of Horcruxes was to live! But her face was childlike and innocent; she had no reason to lie about this. What had he become? There could be no life worth living for his other self.
And now it all made sense. His other self had become some low, grovelling wraith. No wonder she’d been able to defeat him. Love. Balderdash! He’d become pathetic, bringing down the name Lord Voldemort with him. He’d need to deal with the wraith then. Return the name to glory.
“So.” Harriet drew him back to the present. She smiled softly as she committed her life away, but a deep sadness set into her eyes, reminding him of the street urchins that curled beside the trash cans during the Christmas season. “What do you say? Defeat a unicorn blood-drinking dark lord and don’t kill Ginny, so she can go home to her family. Oh! And maybe make that snake of yours go back to sleep. What purpose would more deaths serve anyway? A life for a life. You only need one.”
Fear, he wanted to tell her. Fear gave him power over people. But instead, Tom stepped forward with Ginny’s wand, pressing it back against Harriet's chest. He raised the holly wand to her forehead and used it to move back her hair. The scar looked just as the books on curses described. The flesh puckered in a freshish-looking way, like a deep cut scab.
Equal value? No. Harriet was but a worm compared to him. But compared to the whiny little girl on the floor, she was at least more than that. For she was his greatest so-called enemy and defeater, yet here she stood handing her life away so easily. Very well, he’d take it. It would be poetic justice.
“I accept your trade.” He withdrew the wand from her head. He then motioned to Ginny’s prone form. “Lie beside her. I’ll transfer the spell to you.”
She did as he bade without hesitation. As if she did not agree to give him her very breath for now and always. She lay in the water as if she’d been born to be baptized into death for him. Her hair sprawled up around her face, but the strands did not come alive and attempt to turn him to stone.
He raised his wand and said the words. He cut the sapping of life from Ginny, letting the girl’s life force return to her, and then trained the holly wand on Harriet.
She didn’t dodge the white, slow wispy light as it reached her, burrowing its way into her chest. In fact, a sigh of relief seemed to come from her as if this somehow loosened a deep burden inside of her.
Perhaps he should have been wiser to a trick. But a tiny little second year, in hand-me-down clothes, in a waifish little body, he could not dream of overpowering him. Not when he had both wands in his possession.
He watched the light wisp come back out of Harriet and come towards him. He stepped forward to receive it, coming close to the two bodies. His new life would begin by defeating his other's great enemy!
Harriet’s lifeforce hit him just like her words did on the pages. He fell to his knees before her. He could taste the damp cold air, feel his throat swallow for the first time in half a century. A burning life entered him, and he gasped as his lungs reformed. But no — That couldn’t be possible! In a few hours, they would come slowly, but not like this.
Movement out of the corner of his eye had him drawing his wand. Between gasps, he tried to look threatening at Harriet’s outstretched hand.
His heart reformed then, beating so loud it hammered into his ribcage in a painful, terrible way. How? How could this be? In his pain, his attention shifted. When his gaze cleared of black, Harriet had pulled her wand from his grip. Before he could even think to draw Ginny’s wand, though, she set her wand on the watery floor between them.
Her hand reached back out and grabbed his. Holding it.
Warmth permeated his being.
“I always wanted someone to hold my hand when I was little. When I was in pain. When I crossed the street…”
She, too, felt this pain. Why had she not cried out? “Neither of us should be feeling pain,” he told her. Something must be wrong with the spell for it to work so fast. Transferring it should not have caused this.
“Oh, I’m not.” She gave a yawn. “Just tired. But well… you look as if you wanted someone to hold yours.”
Another spike of searing pain went through his heart again. As if another chamber were being created while they were forced to pump simultaneously. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Blood returning to his body. His grip tightened on the hand before him, and he could not help the cry of pain that escaped him.
Harriet tugged her hand and him with it to her chest. Her other hand rubbed his back. The warmth of her spread through him, making his own pain almost fade away. She continued to stroke him, as if he were a child.
His brain came next. Gods, the migraine. Tom crushed himself against her as his vision went white and he choked out a cry. It didn’t feel like it would ever end. His body being remade from her power. The spell was meant to take over seventy-two hours to work, and yet, in just two minutes, it had come this far. He didn’t think he could have borne this pain for so long without going mad.
But her hand gently petted him, keeping him just sane enough. Slowly, slowly, until her petting stopped, her hand dropped, and the pain abated.
It was over. It was done.
The drips in the chamber echoed out in the silence. Tom could feel the water now; it soaked his clothes. So cold, except for where his body touched hers.
He pulled away from the slumped form, his lips curling in disgust. How had he curled into her in his weakness? He looked at the pale lips and shuttered eyes. Then Tom raised a hand to her throat.
How… How was she still alive? Her soft pulse rose against his fingertips.
Tom glanced at Ginny. The girl’s color was returning to her, so it wasn’t as if Ginny had powered him. No. It had all been Harriet. He looked at her again.
Her hair had gone limp, removed from the pool of water, and was lifeless with the wet, a bit of it sticking to her cheek.
He lowered her into the water, where the hair spread out again. He stared down at the sleeping face, trying to see how the body had contained the power.
But she looked more frail in sleep. Her pale lips opened just a fraction. She looked more like death and thinner than when she walked into the chamber, trembling at the shadows. Now she looked as if even a shadow would smother her.
The magic was supposed to be straightforward. Horcruxes were a deathly simple exchange, with a bit of complicated rune work. Life for life. Returning, just as similar. A simple act of sapping life force and complicated wand work… And again. Life for life. Equal value of exchange given to Death.
Equal value.
His fingers froze on her throat.
For the first time, in a very long time, he felt small. Like how he had stumbled into Diagon Alley looking very much like he did not belong and feeling as if he was covered in filth like a street urchin, even though he’d worn the best clothes he had. Like when he held his wand, and magic had swooned within him. Like when he saw the great castle from the boats. Like when he’d first opened the passage and walked into this very hall. The world widened. Like discovering a secret society, like feeling magic raw at his fingertips, like knowing he’d live in a castle like a prince of a fantasy, like learning his blood and ability to speak tied him to a great wizard.
His world widened as he stared down at the face before him. Not all lives were truly equal. That was what made the difference. It would have worked for Ginny, just as intended. She’d be dead on the floor and he alive. But.
He felt smaller than the body of the second year he loomed over.
His first impression, as well as that of Ginevra, had been correct. Harriet may not have had physical presence to her, but inside of her skin, there was some essence too great to contain.
His life was not of equal value to hers. That even he — genius, powerful, and brightest wizard of his age—was not the same weight in the scales as Death that had measured him against Harriet. That he was more the equivalent of a whiny, pathetic little first year.
His nostrils flared, and he reached a hand to her throat to crush her windpipe. But his fingers could not close. He could not move them.
He let out a bitter laugh. Of course. The trick. She was no Medusa, noValkyrie, but Loki. The real one. She’d given her life freely. Not just for Ginny. Not just for the castle. But also for him. Both of them owed her a life debt. And not only that, she’d named her price and he had all but accepted the terms. Defeat Lord Voldemort, don’t kill the other girl, and close the chamber.
His shoulders heaved as his laughter became even more hysterical in his rage. Worse than drinking unicorn blood, he’d tied himself to the waif of a girl. She’d defeated him. Hadn’t she? He’d taken her queen, thinking it would lead to checkmate, only for himself to fall.
How? Had she known?
His fingers finally rested on her warm throat. The impulse to kill, gone.
He stared at her again. His fingers rose and traced her cheek; there was no chubbiness of youth. Like her own childhood, he had also starved. Even when there had been plenty. That she’d confessed to him in the diary when she had learned he was an orphan.
Where then, what made them so different? Anubis had weighed and found them different. Why should her life be so heavy on the scale? What was this power he knew not?
Had she been right, that love had truly tipped the scales in her favor. To die for a friend and for enemy alike?
“Bah, Humbug,” Tom hissed at himself, feeling like a fool. He’d long outgrown fantasies. “What a load of hippogriff dung.” There was something else. A magical power or core so powerful within her that it marked her differently.
Tom’s gaze once again returned to Ginevra. A life of equal worth. He raised his wand to her. Memory spells were complicated bits of magic, but his natural legitimency helped here. It took time to rewrite the last school year. Yes, the story would be that he’d been trapped in a book. She’d taken pity on him. And the chamber, let the chamber be a separate matter. A wraith-like figure — yes, place the blame on Lord Voldemort. No details, a vague, creepy voice attempting to kill the young girl, leading to her fainting. Done.
He lowered his wand and let out a breath of exhaustion. He leaned over and pressed his forehead again to Harriet’s bosom. Just for a moment. Then he steeled himself, Harriet next. This he must do.
Tom raised his head, only to freeze before he could raise his wand.
Green eyes blinked up at him behind cracked glass. “What did you do to her?” Harriet asked.
“Modified her memories.” And yours would be next, he wanted to add, but he didn’t want her to struggle. No, best not. He felt quite lethargic. Like his bones would not move to obey him, to even get up.
“What’s the story?” she said simply, not even a question. As if she’d known what he had done.
Her words caught him off guard. “Story?”
“What are we to tell the professors?” She asked again.
We. She would lie for him? Could she lie well enough?
“Lord Voldemort opened the chamber in his wraith-like form and stole Ginerva down for a ritual to rebuild himself. She was at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Going to the bathroom on the second floor,” Tom said.
She did not flinch or grimace at the tale nor sneer. “And you?” she asked.
Yes, he. What to do about this? He could vanish into the night —
“You must have caused the ritual to backfire,” she reasoned, “Being on her person and unexpected and unaccounted for. The ritual freed you from the book you had been trapped in.”
“And Lord Voldemort?” he asked.
She raised herself from the floor and wrung out her wet hair in the most unladylike fashion. She sighed and seemed to size up the walk back to where she’d come. She turned and looked at Tom. No, through him. Like again she could divine the unknown. “I thwarted him yet again.”
Indeed, she had.