Through the Looking Glass 08 - LV/HP
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Yeah, so this chapter sucks balls. But The Avengers have stolen all of my motivation and attention and love, so, it’s been a very long while. Thanks for waiting patiently :)
Thanks to Star_Faerie for beta’ing this for me! Appreciate it, hun!
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Words: 3,980
Chapter 8
December 25th 1991. Hogwarts.
It was their first Yule at Hogwarts and neither of the Potter children particularly felt like leaving just yet. Lily, being a professor, also stayed at the school whilst James flooed over on Christmas morning, and together with his children and (unfortunately) Severus, they met in Lily’s office at 6am that morning.
Harry and Tarrant had woken half an hour earlier, each the sole occupant of their dormitories, and each with a pile of presents under the tree in their common room. Tarrant, recognizing Peter’s hand writing on one box, had gathered all of his presents but that one and carried them precariously to his mother’s office. Harry had gathered all of his presents up, uncaring what was from who because they were presents, and still in his pyjamas he had run all the way to the Muggle Studies corridor.
Harry bumped into Professor Flitwick on the way, shouting an apology as he ran past. The small professor only chuckled, crying back, “Merry Yule, Mr Potter!”
It was a Potter household tradition to open presents on Yule morning surrounded by family. The main family was there, along with Harry’s godfather Severus. The floo lit up in green, and Remus and Sirius tumbled out. Peter was missing, but that wasn’t very unusual: Lily didn’t really like him visiting unless she could help it, and Severus was always quick to back her up.
When everyone who was coming was there, the children scrambled down to sit on the floor by the tree, and the adults took various seats around the room armed with tea and coffee and scones. One by one the presents were opened up, and the majority of them were the general ‘I didn’t know what to get you so I got you this’ gifts that people receive at Christmas, or when they have enough money to buy things they want so no one knows what else to get them but stuff they don’t want. However, this year, Harry received a very special gift.
It was a cloak, and on the outside it shone in purples and blues and silvers, and on the inside it was very dull indeed, until someone was inside of it. And then it simply disappeared, as if it had never been there at all, and it took its wearer with it.
“AN INVISIBILITY CLOAK!” Harry hollered, sounding every inch the eleven year old he was. “Cool! Thanks dad!” It was more than just an invisibility cloak, but Harry didn’t know that yet, and James had yet to realise it either. But someone else had, so it was no surprise really, that Albus Dumbledore had gifted Harry with his sister’s old copy of ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’ that year, annotations and all.
Tarrant skipped breakfast that morning, choosing instead to let everyone head to the Great Hall while he practically ran back to his dormitory. He tore into the box from Peter, frantic and angry, determined, desperate to have a better gift than an invisibility cloak inside. And there was. There was! Though they weren’t expensive or pretty or valuable, the books within the box were the best things that anyone had ever given Tarrant. One was entitled ‘The Darkest Dark Lords’ and another ‘The Greatest Wizards of Your Lifetime’, and the last wasn’t titled at all but on the cover was a picture of the dark mark and Tarrant’s eyes almost fell out of his head when he opened the front cover and realised it was a manifesto, written by none other than T. M. Riddle.
He waited until breakfast was over, flicking quickly through the pages of one book after another, trying desperately to force down his excitement until he thought he would burst. But he couldn’t hold it back anymore. Tarrant was overwhelmed by the need to see Harry, to gloat that his gifts were better, even if they had been cheaper, because surely Peter had gotten the manifesto from the Dark Lord himself? Where else would he have gotten it? It wasn’t likely that this Riddle fellow had tried to promote their ideals publically before the Dark Lord rose, was it? So, obviously this gift, this one in particular, was for Tarrant from the Dark Lord (even though it wasn’t and Peter actually had simply found it buried under a pile of dusty books in Borgin and Burkes). Tarrant wanted to brag, to be better, more special for once in his life. And he was halfway to the Slytherin dormitories when he realised that even if he did go to see Harry to brag, and even if he really was that petty, he couldn’t tell his brother what was so important about this gift, because Harry wasn’t a Death Eater like him and Tarrant didn’t want Harry knowing anything about his Lord Voldemort.
Fortunately for Tarrant, he found something else to take his mind off of the disappointment that dawned in the wake of that realisation. There was an empty classroom to his left whose door was usually kept locked, but today as Tarrant walked by it, the door was left wide open and he caught from the corner of his eyes something glinting brightly. Curious and disappointed, Tarrant allowed his feet to bring him into this classroom instead of back to Gryffindor Tower.
There was a mirror inside. It was huge, almost the height of the ceiling, and beautifully engraved with words that Tarrant couldn’t read and pictures of things he had only seen in story books. But the best part about the mirror was that when he looked into its glass, he saw two people and those two people were happy. Tarrant’s reflection was dressed as it had been in Voldemort’s dream, in a strippy pinafore with a wide brimmed hat and strippy socks. He was older, taller and his eyes were a wide hazel, half-hidden beneath the fringe of his curly, dark hair. Behind him stood a man who was even taller than Tarrant had grown to be. He was pale, with dark hair and the strangest coloured eyes Tarrant had ever seen, and when the man bent down to kiss him, Tarrant knew exactly who he was.
“My Lord?” Tarrant breathed, reaching out to brush the fingers of his right hand over the mirror. The couple continued kissing, but Tarrant’s reflection glanced away from Voldemort’s face for a moment to meet Tarrant’s gaze. Hazel clashed with hazel, and the reflection’s eyes narrowed, but Tarrant thought he would have been smirking if his lips hadn’t been attached to the Dark Lord’s right then.
XXX
May 6th 1992. Hospital Wing.
“What are you doing here?” Ron asked, shifting slowly to sit up in the small hospital bed he had been lying on. The sheets were bunched up at his feet, but the closer Tarrant came to him the more eager Ron was to pull the sheets up to his chest and hide the embarrassing homemade pyjamas he was wearing. He usually slept in his boxers in the dorm, but Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t let him sleep so unclothed in her domain, and so Ron had been forced to pull out the ugly yellow and red knitted pyjamas his mother had made him last year. They were garish, and itchy and the arms and legs were too short, and they had a horrible orange ‘R’ sewn on his chest and snitches all over his legs, and Ron’s face turned as red as his hair as his eyes travelled over Tarrant’s obviously expensive, but now burnt, school robe.
“Got hurt practising a spell,” Tarrant told him stiffly. He didn’t want to admit that Voldemort’s manifesto had included a handful of curses, jotted in hurriedly almost as an afterthought, to make up the final chapter of the book. There were directions on wand movement and pronunciation, and one or two had a hand drawn diagram that hadn’t been very helpful, but since there was no counter curse mentioned, Tarrant had no option but to go to the infirmary after one of the curses had backfired and burnt his arm. He had wiped the tears off of his face at the door, because he had seen Ron’s head through the little door-window, and he hadn’t wanted to look weak in front of his dorm mate. However, when the spell had failed, Tarrant’s screams had been heard by every ghost loitering in that particular ‘empty’ hallway. “What happened to you?”
Ron sighed loudly. “I suppose you’ll hear about it tomorrow at breakfast. My mum will probably send a Howler.” He sighed again, frowning heavily, and Tarrant wondered for a moment if Ron was really as worried as he was making himself out to be, because Ron usually loved the attention that followed pulling a particularly stupid stunt. Like that duel they had challenged Malfoy to a couple months ago, and ended up with detention in the Forbidden Forest, but receiving a round of applause from their housemates when they had finally been allowed to go to bed. Ron had enjoyed that. Tarrant had been happy, because the detention had been with Professor Quirrell. “Hagrid was raising a baby dragon in his house. Hermione and I had to help him sneak the dragon out to my brother, who works on a dragon reserve in Romania, but the dragon escaped and I got hurt. Hermione is ok though. Madam Pomfrey checked her over and said she could leave, but she had to regrow some of my bones and the burn paste isn’t working as quick as it should, so I have to stay.”
Madam Pomfrey choose that moment to appear, hand over her chest from the shock of seeing Tarrant, red eyed and puffy faced from crying, with the sleeve of his left arm melted into his skin. “What happened to you?!” She exclaimed, rushing towards him with her wand out.
“He-” Ron started to say, but was stopped by Tarrant butting in over him.
He didn’t want anyone to ask where he had learnt the spell from. He didn’t want anyone to take the books away! Tarrant certainly didn’t want Harry hearing about this and deciding to do some extra studying of his own, because this way only Tarrant would be smart, advanced, special, and not Harry. Tarrant would be the one people would pay attention to then. When he had mastered all of these spells, and surprised everyone at the duelling competition his dad said the Ministry were going to hold at Hogwarts next year (they had even asked Gilderoy Lockhart to teach them!), then no one would dare think that he was less than Harry ever again.
“I was with Hagrid earlier! I didn’t want my mum to find out so I didn’t come here, but now it really hurts Madam Pomfrey, it really hurts! Please don’t tell my mum?” Tarrant sniffled, trying to look pathetic.
“But-” Ron said. The red head shot Tarrant a look, brows furrowed in confusion, and when the medi-witch had her back turned, Tarrant shot Ron a filthier look back. Ron shut his mouth, still frowning, but didn’t bother to try and correct Tarrant again.
XXX
June 4th 1992. Hogwarts.
When the last exam was over, Harry, along with nearly every other person in Hogwarts, disappeared back to their dormitory to celebrate the end of the school year. The first years excitedly started packing up their things, even though the train didn’t leave Hogsmeade until the 20th, because the OWLs and NEWTs were still on-going. The second years, having learnt from their mistakes the year before, left their stuff alone and joined the third and fourth years in their common rooms for sweets and drinks and games. The sixth years generally had private parties of their own, with Butterbeer and the occasional snuck in Fire Whiskey or rum and blinding headaches the next day. The fifth and seventh years hadn’t had an exam that day; instead, they were all holed up in the library studying for the exams that would begin during the following week.
Tarrant, Hermione and Ron, however, were doing none of those things.
They were as luck would have it, on their way to stop Professor Snape from stealing the Sorcerer’s Stone. “I told you Snape was a traitor,” Ron hissed, jogging breathlessly behind Hermione.
“Professor Snape,” Hermione corrected, not looking over her shoulder though the boys knew she was scowling.
Tarrant brought up the rear. He was running slowly, which forced the other two to slow down every now and then to let him catch up, but that was a good thing. Because he wasn’t there to stop the professor. Not that he even thought it was Professor Snape, no, because Snape was with his mother right then, talking about plans for the school holiday, and Tarrant had only let him out of sight for ten minutes before Hermione and Ron had grabbed him, shouting about how Dumbledore had left the school and that now was the time. So it couldn’t be Snape. But if it was the Dark Lord that wanted the Stone, then it might be Quirrell trying to steal it, and Tarrant didn’t want to stop him. Oh no, Tarrant wanted to help him, so that Voldemort would see, would know, that he was loyal and useful and special. But he wanted to give Quirrell a chance to find the Stone first, before his friends drew too much attention to the hiding place and the third floor corridor.
XXX
Voldemort glanced in the Mirror of Erised. He looked out through Quirrell’s eyes, waiting and hoping, and eventually his mate appeared beside his reflection. But he did not look as he did right then, less than human; instead, he was more like his old self, tall and thin with curly dark hair and dark blue eyes, and handsome. His mate, by his side, in his arms, lips against his lips in the mirror, was wearing the strippy pinafore from his dreams, but there was a line across his face like a magical blindfold that obscured his eyes. Voldemort could see the sockets and the lashes and the eyelids, but the colour of his mate’s eyes escaped him. They could be emerald or hazel or any other shade of green in existence, and all Voldemort could make out was that they were green.
The Dark Lord was moments away from shaking the mirror and demanding it let him view his mate fully, when noise behind him startled him.
Quirrell spun around, wand outstretched. Voldemort felt the lips on the other man’s face curl up, cruel and cold, and the Dark Lord chuckled loudly even as Quirrell began to speak. “Harry Potter, so you have come,” the Professor whispered, while Voldemort fell silent to watch.
“Look in the mirror, boy!” Quirrell ordered, when Tarrant didn’t respond.
The youngest Potter glared, annoyed at being mistaken for his brother. But then he remembered his first Potions class, and Snape telling him his potion was rubbish, and his Gryffindor friends joking that no one could tell him and Harry apart. Maybe the same could be said for Voldemort? After all, creatures couldn’t actually find their mates through innate magic until the younger was at least fifteen, and Tarrant wasn’t even twelve yet, so maybe Voldemort knew it was him, but didn’t really know it was him?
So he allowed himself to be pushed in front of the mirror, smiling softly as the same couple he had seen before appeared in place of his reflection. He would get them the Stone, Tarrant told himself silently, holding out his hand as his double did the same. In the mirror was a fat red stone, and Tarrant reached out for it, knowing he did not want to use it for himself, but for another, to gain favour from another. Having no use for the Stone, Dumbledore’s protections failed to block him, and the Stone appeared, dark and tempting in the palm of Tarrant’s hand.
“Potter!” Quirrell shouted, but his voice had taken on a hissing quality, like static when two radio stations attempt to play over one another, when the frequency is wrong. “Give us the stone, Harry!”
“My Lord,” Tarrant whispered. He turned from the mirror, lowering himself to his knees with the Stone held out from his body, offering it up to his future lover.
Voldemort glanced down at the boy again, taking in every one of his features, from the curly dark hair to his hazel eyes and frowned. He had felt uneasy with the boy in the room, uncomfortable with Quirrell’s hand on the boy’s shoulder, but he had assumed it was a part of the prophecy, or left over from what protection had defeated him many years ago: had assumed that this was Harry, not Tarrant.
“Mate?” He questioned quietly, unnerved when Tarrant stared up at him with wide, adoring hazel eyes. They were not the green of his dreams, spitting fire and challenging him with every glance; but then, Voldemort hadn’t had a dream of his own in such a long, long time, so perhaps he was forgetting the details or confusing them with dreams of Quirrell’s own. This was his mate, this boy, and Tarrant would grow up and so, Voldemort would grow into the connection they shared, surely?
“Stupefy,” Quirrell murmured, waving his wand at Tarrant.
When the boy was unconscious, curled with his legs against his chest on the floor, Quirrell left Hogwarts. He took the Dark Lord and the Stone with him, and was never seen again.
XXX
June 8th 1992.
Tarrant woke up four days later in the hospital wing. His mother was there, and Remus, but no one else. When he had asked where everyone was, they had told him with Harry.
Feeling worried for a reason unknown to him, because Tarrant hadn’t worried about Harry in a long time after all, he pulled himself from the bed and begged to be dismissed. When he was allowed to roam the school again, he went in search of his brother (likely to reassure himself that when Voldemort left him behind, he hadn’t taken Harry along). He found Ron and Hermione first, leaving the great hall and scowling over their shoulders. The room was bursting with sound, cheers and applause and excited whistles from one end of the room to the other, and Tarrant leant over the stairs bannister so he could peek in through the gap in the doors. Dumbledore was standing at the head table, with his arms spread wide, and behind him, and from every ceiling beam, hung a Slytherin embroidered banner.
“What’s going on?” Tarrant asked, jogging down the stairs to meet his friends.
“We lost ten house points each,” Ron muttered, kicking angrily at the ground, “for endangering ourselves needlessly. Bet we would have won points if we’d stopped Quirrell.” Hermione obviously agreed because she didn’t correct Ron’s less than respectful address of the man.
Tarrant felt a little guilty about that, because really he was the one to let Voldemort get away without even trying to do anything to stop him. “Right. So Slytherin won?”
“We had equal points.” Hermione told him, as she crossed her arm over her chest. “But you missed the last Quidditch match of the year while you were unconscious, and Harry caught the snitch, and Slytherin won by ten points. But Gryffindor and Slytherin still had equal House Points, until the Headmaster took ten away from each of us.”
“Slytherin won,” Ron grumbled, “slimy cheating bastards.”
Tarrant glanced up, angry at Harry now, though it wasn’t really his fault, rather than worried. When he searched through the hall for his brother, instead of catching Harry’s eyes, he caught Dumbledore’s. The elder man had taken his seat again, and he sat at the head table with his fingers steepled beneath his chin, watching Tarrant with a frown on his face and a suspicious squint to his eyes. The man suspected him, certainly, but he’d never be able to prove anything, Tarrant told himself, narrowing his eyes at the Headmaster in return before looking away.
“I’m not hungry,” he told his friends, blood traitor and Mudblood though they were, but they were his and not Harry’s, so they’d do. “Let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Ron agreed, and Hermione nodded, “I don’t want to go back in there anyway.”
XXX
June 20th 1992. King’s Cross.
There was a man standing right at the exit of Platform 9 and three-quarters. He was tall, and thin, and he was wearing a nicely cut dark suit that could have been blue or could have been black, but Tarrant thought it was probably black, because he couldn’t imagine the Dark Lord in navy. Red eyes watched curiously as children were herded past him and out through the barrier. Some people apparated away and some took Portkeys, but the majority of them had to walk, unsuspecting, by Lord Voldemort to get home. Tarrant watched, eyes wide and anxious, for something, some sort of recognition, for anything. He was moments away from throwing himself at the man’s feet, and pulling at his pant leg like a child, when Voldemort’s head finally turned away from the busy barrier.
Voldemort glanced over at the train, eyes narrowed and intense as they focused on one person and one person alone. Harry Potter jumped down onto the platform, Hagrid meeting him there just long enough to hand him an early birthday present before shooing him in the direction of Tarrant and their parents. Lily and James smiled and nodded at him, James’ left hand on Tarrant’s shoulder in what should have been a comforting gesture but that just felt heavy and unnecessary instead. His mother was on his other side, an arm slung arm his shoulders, and Tarrant flinched away from her as she moved quickly, almost elbowing him as she took back her arm, to run to Harry and hug him instead.
Voldemort’s eyes remained on Harry as Lily hugged him, and then as James hugged him; they narrowed when the Malfoys appeared and Draco pulled Harry into a tight hug and made him promise to come visit as soon as possible. Never once did his attention leave Harry. Voldemort might have been telling himself he was studying the enemy, might have mentally insisted it was necessary, this staring, to destroying Harry in the long run, but Tarrant had seen the look Lord Voldemort wore before. There was something in his face, in his eyes, that reminded Tarrant of James Potter whenever he knew both boys would be out of the house simultaneously. Tarrant had caught him looking at Lily like that once, and asked what it meant, why he was doing it. James had said he was hungry, and Lily had giggled, and Tarrant had scrunched his nose up and left the room, not wanting to watch his parents kissing, (which by the way had nothing to do with eating, since they were supposedly hungry and all). Voldemort looked ‘hungry’ too, and maybe not in the same way as his parents, since Harry wasn’t wearing the same expression his mother always did; but Voldemort was wanting, and wanting someone other than Tarrant.
As the Potter family made their way out through the barrier, Tarrant reached out and let his hand brush lightly over the sleeve of Voldemort’s suit. Even at the small touch, the Dark Lord did not look up at him, nor look away from Harry. Tarrant found himself regretting the fact that the Hogwarts Express stopped moving once it docked at the platform, because, he thought while glancing over his shoulder at his mate who continued to watch his brother until Harry was through the portal, he would have dearly loved to push Harry under a train right now.
XXX
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Thanks again! And, fyi, Voldemort won’t find out that Harry is his mate until the twins turn 15 and come into their ‘inheritances’, so to speak.
Bad news? I have exams for two weeks in five weeks, so the next two months I’m going to be (hopefully) non-existent. Or I’m trying to be, but I can only stay away from fandom for so long. But after that, work or otherwise, I’m going to work on loads of stuff and have it ready for posting for when life gets hectic again! So, yeah.
NEXT CHAPTER HERE