Butterfly 28 - LM/HP
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This would have been up sooner except I had to fill out an application form for an internship... and it was like banging my head off of a wall. Took a lot longer than I thought it would have.
Also, uploaded a LV/HP oneshot the other day, hint. New Divide will be soon… or another oneshot... or maybe I’ll work on The Abyss (but it’s looking to be very long so it won’t be posted for a while longer yet). Enjoy.
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Words: 3,253
Chapter 28
January 6th 1993.
Harry had waited until his dorm mates were asleep before he pulled the invisibility cloak from his trunk and wrapped it around himself. With careful, silent steps he made his way out of his dorm and into the common room. There was a small blond girl, probably a first year, curled up on one of the couches reading a book upside down. Harry looked her over curiously, from her bare feet, to her silvery-blond hair, and to the book she was immersed in, before gazing at her face. When he looked up, she was staring back at him, as if she knew he were there, as if she could see through the cloak. Harry shrugged away the thought, dismissing it as the girl hearing his footsteps or breath or something, but she certainly wasn’t able to see him.
He walked past her, not noticing the way her head turned to follow him as he left the common room.
Harry made it to the Forbidden Forest without passing anyone else. It was pretty late, and it seemed that even the teachers and prefects had gone to bed. It was raining lightly, small drizzles of water that somehow always managed to get you wetter than the heavy, pounding rain could. Harry cast a charm, blocking the water from his cloak and skin, and moved deeper into the forest.
A snowy white owl soared over head, screeching in greeting as she saw him. Harry smiled up as Hedwig passed by. He hadn’t seen her for a while, not since agreeing to borrow her to Evan. Draco’s eagle owl delivered their mail for them, or the school owls, or a rather ridiculous looking parrot that probably belonged to Lockhart pre-possession. Harry was rather glad to see Hedwig return to him; he had missed their talks in the owlery. Talking to an animal, Harry thought, what would Evan say?
Then again, he used to speak to the butterfly too, years and years ago.
Evan waited for him in the forest, armed with a small pewter cauldron and a low burning fire. “Hello, Caen,” the Death Eater whispered.
Harry had only returned to Hogwarts three days ago. He had spent the majority of the Christmas break at Malfoy Manor, with Lucius who was as enthralled as ever, and with Draco and Evan and Narcissa. It had only been three days since he had seen his father, and yet he found he had missed him. Without giving Evan warning, Harry ran into his arms, clinging tightly to the man’s waist and whispered, “Hi.”
“The potion is ready.” Harry looked up at the sound of Evan’s voice. Then looked down at the cauldron, and just as Evan had said, the blue liquid was simmering lightly over the fire. “Just drink a few drops. Hopefully, it will work the way I was told it should.”
“If Voldemort wanted me to find the diary, wouldn’t he have helped me himself? Why tell you? Are you sure it was him who told you, and not his crazy house elf?” Harry leant down to cup a handful of the potion, curling his fingers up to try and keep it from escaping. “If I die because of this, I’ll haunt you.” And then he ducked his head, slurping the liquid from his hand in an ungainly manner, accompanied by unattractive sucking sounds.
“How’s it taste?” Evan asked chuckling. His Lord had informed him that nothing could touch the potion but the cauldron and the one who intended to use it. Therefore, Harry had no choice but to drink it from his bare hand.
“Kinda tastes like me,” the boy said, while wiping his mouth on the back of his clean hand. “Not bad, actually.”
Evan opened his mouth to speak, but aborted the attempt, choosing instead to dive forward, arms catching Harry as he fell. He shook the boy lightly. Harry’s eyes were closed, but flickering wildly beneath the lids and his mouth was parted slightly as he breathed heavily. He didn’t react to Evan’s shaking, and so the Death Eater stopped. He sat on the ground, cross-legged, and pulled Harry’s unconscious body into his lap. Then, he waited.
XXX
No one had really explained what the potion was going to do exactly. Harry had only been told that it would help him find the diary.
He hadn’t expected to wake up on the floor of a large stone cavern, surrounded by dust and leaking pipes, with Tom Riddle staring down at him. Harry rolled to his feet, feeling rather disorientated and then terrified as he realized that he was transparent.
“The potion killed me, didn’t it?” He asked calmly, wondering if the shock had set in yet.
“You are in the diary,” Tom told him. The navy-eyed boy watched him with awe and glee on his face, unhidden. He strode closer to Harry, hands coming out, striking like a snake, to grab the lapels of Harry’s shirt and tug them even closer. “You are here! I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Harry Potter!”
Harry broke Tom’s grip, and found himself falling backwards onto the floor. He grunted as he hit the ground, and climbed painfully to his feet once more. “Where are you? Who has you?”
“It won’t be long, Harry. I have everything in motion, the first stone has been cast and you really shouldn’t interfere.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Harry told him honestly. Whatever was attacking students was none of his business, because despite the rumours that Harry was actually behind the attacks, he didn’t care either way about it. He didn’t hate the Muggleborns being petrified and he didn’t like them either, so he just didn’t care. He only wanted to know, to learn what was going on, and study it, research it until he was satisfied that every detail existing was within his knowledge. “I just want the diary back.”
“I’ve opened the Chamber of Secrets,” Tom breathed excitedly, moving closer to Harry again. Harry didn’t ask how. Instead, Harry took several steps back, mentally groaning as he ended up standing in a rather deep body of water. “This is the Chamber, here, now, as I remember it from fifty years ago.”
The diary was a Horcrux, Harry knew that. So he also knew that it contained a piece of Voldemort’s soul, a piece that he had split from the rest of his soul fifty years ago. That was when he had first opened the Chamber, Harry assumed, since Voldemort must have been within it before the Horcrux had been made for Tom to retain the visual memories of it. The Chamber was open again, and apparently that was a big deal. Pity Harry didn’t actually know what the Chamber of Secrets was, but it would be the first thing he’d do once he woke up… after he got his diary back!
“Who has the diary, Tom?”
“She’ll help us, you know. She won’t mean to, or realize she is helping us, but she will.” Drops of red began to rain from the sky, and Harry looked up with wide-eyes, subconsciously likening what was happening to how living in a Tim Burton movie would be like. Fat red droplets landed on the floor, and the walls, and spread into the lakes of water. They clung to Tom’s face, and Harry’s and ran like tears down their cheeks. “Even now,” Tom breathed, licking the blood from his lips, “she helps us.”
Whatever the girl who stole the diary was doing, though it appeared as if she were bleeding on it, as strange as that thought was, it was making Tom stronger. He was no longer as transparent as Harry was within the diary, but growing more solid, more defined, with every drop of red that touched him.
Harry narrowed his eyes. Wondering about how the diary worked. It was absorbing the blood. Like it absorbed the ink on its pages. Feeding off of them.
“Have you been feeding off of me too, Tom?” Harry asked quietly.
Navy eyes widened as they met his, and Harry wasn’t sure if the young Dark Lord was honestly surprised by the question, or if he were faking the emotion. The Dark Lord was known to be a brilliant manipulator after all.
“You are like me!” Tom said, obviously startled. It took him a moment to gather himself, to regain his composure, and he straightened his robes before speaking again. “Before I knew you were like me I would have done, yes. But fortunately for us both that silly girl cut herself upon my pages, and I managed to link myself, my existence to her. I grow stronger faster now, because she keeps offering me her blood, but before, I did use some of your emotions but not enough to harm you. Just enough to keep me existing, until I could find someone better.” Tom turned his face away. “Someone less worthy,” he added in a whisper. One Horcrux to another, one dark Wizard, one half-blood to another, both worth more in Tom’s eyes than the life of a blood-traitor’s child.
Harry thought back to the early days, when he had first stolen the diary. Who had even seen it, been allowed to touch it while it had still been new and precious to Harry, and still coveted?
On the Hogwarts Express, there was one girl who had seen the diary, touched it, bled on it. Harry gasped as he realized who Tom was talking about. He thought back to her actions, the way she always stared at him star-struck, followed him places, enquired around the school about her diary which she had lost but had yet to write in. “It’s very important to me,” she had whimpered pathetically to him one day, her eyes fixed on his robe pocket, “it’s blank though. One of a kind.”
Tom was feeding off of someone, sucking away their life and soul and magic to sustain himself. Had that been Voldemort’s plan all along? To use Harry, exchange Harry’s life for Voldemort’s Horcrux, and then use Tom to return to power? Had Evan’s Lord really planned for his death… despite telling Evan otherwise?
“He keeps an eye on us, you know,” Tom said, as if he knew what Harry was thinking. “My other self, I mean. He watches what we write, follows you in the dead of night when you think you are alone with me, he makes sure that I do not hurt you. Lord Voldemort never lies to his friends, Harry Potter-Rosier, and he keeps his promises.”
They met each other’s eyes again, navy and emerald, and Harry felt something like relief within his chest, expanding and growing, pushing away the niggling doubt that had spawned within his mind. He hadn’t picked a side yet, not yet, but he was leaning towards the Dark. To learn that Voldemort was already planning his death would have been quite a blow to his long-term career goals.
“Ginny Weasley?” Harry asked, maintaining eye contact. He didn’t ask what Tom was doing to Ginny. Whether he was merely draining her life, or whether there was more. Whether he could possess her, or leave the diary of his own accord, or whether Harry could ever return to the diary again. “Ginny?” He asked again, instead.
Tom nodded, leaning forward to lightly brush his lips across Harry’s scar. And then Harry was falling, arms flailing and splashing as he landed in the water. All he could see was Tom’s face hovering above his own, and then he woke up.
Evan’s face was above his own, calm and unconcerned, but relieved to see green eyes blink up at him owlishly. “Welcome back, my son.”
XXX
January 7th 1993.
Ginny scowled at the diary she held between her hands. Tom still hadn’t written back. She’d had him almost two weeks now, and apart from the first time, he wouldn’t reply to her, or acknowledge her, and he had even stopped absorbing her written words into the page. In her frustration she had ended up cutting herself twice more on the edges of Tom’s pages, dripping blood onto the ink filled pages, and while the ink remained, the blood disappeared before Ginny’s eyes.
What’s so great about my blood? She wrote curiously, one time. Tom didn’t reply.
Are you a vampire? She asked, another time. Tom still didn’t answer her.
In the end, she had done something very stupid. She had purposely cut her hand, allowing herself to bleed on the pages in the hopes of gaining Tom’s attention. It had hurt, and she had felt very dizzy afterwards, but it had had the intended effect.
Tom wrote back.
Stupid girl. I’d thank you, but you wouldn’t be worth the effort to be honest. Now, give me back to Harry. His writing was red this time, still cursive and pretty, and Ginny admired it despite the horridness of the words. She felt rather smug knowing that he was writing back to her in her blood. He was hers now, whether he admitted it or not. Not Harry’s.
So she had kept doing it, kept bleeding on him. But instead of written replies, Tom now drew her pictures. Small doodles, usually of stick figures, but it weren’t hard to guess that the mutilated figures lying on its back was meant to be her. Tom repeatedly drew pictures of her dead, but Ginny ignored them all, brushing them off as unimportant because Tom was hers now. He wouldn’t hurt her.
No, no I wouldn’t. I would never hurt you. Just like you would never hurt me. You’d help me, wouldn’t you Ginny? If I asked. I’m asking now. I need your help. I need you to do something for me. Two somethings actually. Please, Ginny. Please? There is no one else I can ask. No one else I can trust. Only you. The voice was inside of her head, gentle and loving, and it was stupid of her to listen to it, stupid of her to continue to cut open her hand, but there was nothing else she could do. Tom was like the Imperious curse: she just couldn’t resist, couldn’t fight back. She had to obey.
Harry found Ginny outside a few hours later. There was blood on her hands, and as he was walking over Harry could hear the sounds of birds squawking and necks snapping before silence stretched across Hogwarts’ grounds. But he said nothing about the dead roosters and hens, and nothing about the claw-scratches on Ginny’s arms.
“Give me my diary, Weasley,” he ordered, not actually expecting her to comply. Harry pulled his wand out of his sleeve and held it, ready to force her to give the diary back.
Ginny had done one of the things Tom had told her to do. She didn’t want to do the other, but Tom had asked, Tom had made her promise. So she handed over the diary without a fuss, a horrid scowl on her face, and her eyes watered as Harry snatched her only friend from her shaking fingers.
He turned without a word, the diary clutched against his chest.
About time, Harry, Tom wrote, and Harry could see him, now that he knew what Tom looked like, plain as day glaring at him in annoyance. I was getting rather sick of her pitiful whining. Despite her uses, she really was very annoying.
Most little girls are, Harry wrote back, pulling a quill from his pocket. It had become a habit of his, to walk everywhere with a quill and a vial of ink, just in case Tom decided to speak to him.
This one particularly so though, he wrote. Harry thought about writing how whinny Tom was, but then thought better of it, and tucked the diary into his pocket along with the quill. He went back into the castle, and to the dungeons to seek out Draco and Theodore, and he didn’t notice how Ginny stared after him.
Go back inside, Ginny, the voice in her head told her. Don’t tell anyone about me. Not even Harry. No one can know about us, Ginny.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered out loud, despite knowing that no one was around to hear her.
I won’t leave you. Don’t worry! I’ll let you know when it’s safe for us to meet again. Then the presence in her mind was gone, and Ginny Weasley shook her head harshly, blinking up at the sun and the sky, and wondered how she had come to be outside.
XXX
February 14th 1993.
Whose side are you on, Harry? You are my other self’s Horcrux, you possess another part of his soul, being myself, and yet. Yet you never speak about him, or his plans, or our goals, and you don’t ask about the Chamber. What are you going to do when He rises again? Whose side will you choose?
Harry would have probably told Tom about his indecision, about his desire to wait and bide his time until the Dark Lord returned, but now he knew better. Tom had told him that Voldemort could read what they were writing, and he had spent the last month worrying about all of the past things he had written and whether they had sounded disloyal or rebellious, and whether Voldemort would decide to kill him based off of his private conversations with an empty book.
I don’t want to talk about it right now, Harry wrote back sloppily. He had textbooks pilled upon the library table in front of him, scribbling notes onto a piece of parchment that was balanced on his laps.
Hermione sat opposite him, watching him curiously out of the corner of her eyes. She still hadn’t told Harry what she had found while she had been researching his ability to use Parseltongue, and she wasn’t sure if she ever would. Harry was researching the Chamber of Secrets now, as he had been for the past week, and she was helping him because the more Hermione knew about how little Harry knew, the more she trusted him again, the more she believed in him and not the worrying rumours that were circulating in the castle.
She didn’t say anything when Harry scowled and shoved the diary away from him. It was happening more often lately, Harry seemed to be angry with the black book more often than not now and Hermione wondered what he was writing in it that would upset him so much. He used to smile while writing it in, she remembered.
She leant forward curiously, keeping her eyes on Harry until satisfied that he wasn’t watching her, and then she peeked down at the open page.
Harry’s words were gone, but Tom had left his reply upon the sheet. You’ll have to pick a side eventually. There is no fair in love and war, not for anyone, but especially not for you. It read as if Harry were writing someone a letter, or composing a tragic love story of some kind, but Hermione felt deep within her gut that it was neither of those things. She thought, as insane as it sounded, as if the words were not from Harry, but addressed to him, as if someone were writing back to him.
But that was ridiculous, she told herself. Then, she promptly turned away from the diary and began to read about Slytherin’s monster, all innuendos aside, it was apparently quite large.
XXX
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Thanks for reading. According to my notes… Year 2 will be ending shortly… Time skips ftw! :P
Words: 4,100
Chapter 29
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