Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The boy from the book, charming with his words, had been dealt a fatal blow. Ink gushed out of his chest like blood, staining his immaculate clothing as he screamed. Once again incorporeal and unseen, he fell backwards and lay there in a fetal position, the pain wracking through his body unbearable. Unacknowledged tears of ink ran from his eyes, leaving a trail of dark gray on his face.

The diary left the chamber, but he did not.

Crack, snap!

His finger broke faster than he could react to the old man’s knife. It happened quickly: the ring on the finger, the release of the curse and the knife flashing as the old man responded to the attack.

The spell should have killed the old man instantly. Tom raged at the indignity of being defeated by such an old man. It took him a while to notice that he was now alone in the ruins of the Gaunt hovel.

Screaming as his eyes burned, Riddle stepped back and tripped over the rock that the locket had lain on. Profanities streamed out of his mouth, his sight now gone. He barely felt the snow beneath him as he swore revenge against the boy who destroyed him.

He woke up to a burning pain in his arm and a younger version of himself sitting and watching over him.

“They got to you, I suppose. You wouldn’t be here if they didn’t,” was the only thing that his companion said.

The Tom Riddle who lived in the cup frowned and looked around, ignoring the pain in his arm. Recognizing the Chamber of Secrets, he asked, “How did I end up here?”

“I don’t know. I was stabbed with Emmie’s fang. I think they must’ve done the same to you. You don’t remember anything?”

Tom noted the ink stains on his younger self and found himself staring at the hole in his chest.

“You have one too,” the younger said, pointing to Tom’s arm, “It’s bright green though. Maybe because you weren’t so full of ink like me.”

He finally looked down at his arm and saw the gaping wound oozing bright yellow-green pus. It made him feel almost sick to his stomach looking at it, not from the grossness of it, but from the knowledge of his destruction and failure. All he could say was, “They never drank from the cup. I couldn’t have known.”

Molten metal streamed down his face and he screamed as it burned, pulling him away from the world that he had tried to cling to with all his might. Shatter, crack! went the diadem and he was now trapped in limbo.

It looked a lot like a burnt-out room of requirement.

The flayed child choked and struggled to draw breath.

It didn’t see Harry as he passed by.

Nagini, his familiar, came to rest whole and entire in the land between. Intuitively, she knew it was not time yet to lead her master to the world beyond.

And in the end, lay Tom Riddle on the grounds of Hogwarts, only a fraction of his former full self. Now he was lost and wandering the fog of the land between, unable to accept his death and to find those parts he had so violently sundered from himself.

Several years later...

Harry was increasingly haunted by dreams of the suffocating child.

As far as nightmares went, it was one of the tamer ones and left Harry more sad than terrified. Much better than the dreams Harry would wake up from with a jolt, his pajama top soaked through with sweat.

He rarely screamed, not like Ginny did when they were still a couple and sharing a bed. It was rare for either to have a restful night’s sleep in those horrible days after the war ended. It was comforting at first to have another to cling to in those dark hours of the night when your pulse was still racing, knowing that you weren’t alone. They had all lived in so much fear that it was almost impossible to believe it was all over.

Yet in time, it seemed that the trauma they had gone through also brought them into conflict. Both had heard the voice of Lord Voldemort in their head, playing with their mind, their memories, but Harry would forget that Ginny knew what it was like. This would lead to arguments and eventually they had decided that it was better to go their separate ways before they lost their friendship entirely.

It was then that Harry put all his energy into his Auror training, focusing on the single desire to prevent what had happened to him and his friends. Children should not have fought this war. The adults should’ve been able to head off Voldemort if only they had listened. He was treated with more respect than he would’ve been otherwise by his mentors, but only because he had already proven himself in their eyes.

They would still not listen. It happened with supervisors later on too. There were too many problems he saw and he gave up on changing things. He did things as he was told, went where he was supposed to and eventually just couldn’t anymore. After years of trying, working, and finally accepting that no one was going to listen, even to The Boy Who Lived, he asked for a year’s leave for personal reasons. It was granted. He had not taken a sick day in years and his supervisors were more than relieved to see him go. He had worried them for some time.

A week into his much needed vacation, the dreams started. Even when his memories of the war were fresh, he did not dream of that otherworldly King’s Cross in the mist and the strange events that occurred there. But now, they came to him. Slowly at first and only vaguely remembered, the dreams increased until he had them almost every night.

They always began the same: the mist, the awareness of the noise that the Thing made, and the glass ceiling coming into existence above.

All these things seemed to happen all at once, yet not. As if by an unseen force, he would find himself drawn to the child-like being he would only allow himself to think of as a creature. He felt pity for it regardless. Rooted to the spot, he would watch as it gasped for breath and tried to move its legs and arms.

It had changed since Harry died in that forest long ago. Still helpless and pitiful, it no longer appeared flayed. The skin seemed to have grown back, pale and fragile. Harry felt that if he had touched it, he would break that skin, causing it more pain.

The first dreams always ended there, before anything could happen. Before Harry could act.

But the dreams grew longer and each time Harry felt less repulsed and more tempted to reach out to that pitiful, pained Thing. His paralysis before it faded and he would begin to reach out for the child. Before he could touch it, however, someone would jerk him away and say, “You cannot help him.”

Pulled out of the dream, he would wake up. After several nights of this, Harry realized in the darkness of his room, barely lit by conjured fairy lights, that the voice was Dumbledore’s. He stared at the foot of his bed, where his cat was peacefully sleeping, as awareness of this fact filtered through his mind. The warmth of another living being reassured him, especially after the realization that he had just heard the voice of a long dead man. Even hearing it in a dream chilled him. He had thought that time of his life was over.

Suddenly he found himself sobbing, as he began to wonder precisely why Dumbledore was so insistent on Harry not helping the broken soul of Voldemort. Dumbledore’s conviction that Tom Riddle was not worth saving bothered him in ways that he couldn’t understand. It frustrated him that he even felt an urge to help the man who killed him, his parents, and countless others. The two of them were connected, yes, but death should’ve severed it. His scar had even stopped hurting. Yet these dreams made him feel otherwise.

His heart hurt and it didn’t make sense.

A small meow cut through Harry’s thoughts. He looked up and through his tears, he saw his cat padding her way up his leg.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, he muttered, “Sorry for waking you up Professor. I had a bad dream.” She settled on his lap. Petting her calmed him down, though his questions about Dumbledore’s reasons lingered. He had years to grapple with how Dumbledore had maneuvered him and had come to certain conclusions.

The next night, he dreamed the dream again, but this time instead of reaching out, he turned around and confronted Dumbledore.