Fic: Shadow in the Glass for dmitchell1985
Title: Shadow in the Glass
Author/Artist:
Giftee: dmitchell1985
Characters/Pairing: Harry/Tom
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4835
Author/Artist's Notes: Thank you 1. mods and giftee for this fun assignment, and 2. my nameless (for now) beta for her hard work. *ear tug*
Summary: Post-war, pyrrhic victory. While living in reclusion, Harry discovers an undestroyed Horcrux.
I. It’s your mirror, Harry! You have to destroy it - it’s the last one!
The stern urgency in Hermione’s voice still echoes in Harry’s mind. It wasn’t a desperate cry, although it was the last warning she ever spoke. She had remained true to herself, true to their cause, even in her dying words.
Harry spins the mirror between his fingers by its handle, watching light bounce and reflect from the silver and glass. I couldn’t, he thinks, internally chiding himself for the failure of his resolve. It was the last thing Sirius ever gave me… and it was my father’s.
“Hermione?” he says to the mirror. It says nothing in return.
He carefully wraps the mirror in its silk cloth and lays it back on the bedside. He goes to the only window in his bedroom and rests his elbows on the sill, props his chin in his hands, and watches the snow fall lightly onto the stone statues in his garden. He feels cold, like snow and stone or glass and silver. Something inside of him says that he deserves it. The cold belongs to him. (It was the last thing Sirius ever gave him… and it was his father’s.)
Hermione is dead. Ron is dead. Ginny is dead. He had lived, again. Voldemort is dead, but that hardly seems to matter with a victory so Pyrrhic. The irony is that Voldemort died easily. Hermione had been wrong - there was no missing Horcrux. He had destroyed them all. Voldemort fell with a quick green flash and a thud. Her last words were wasted - something Hermione would have hated.
II. Harry hates eating transfigured food. It feels spongy in the mouth, and it leaves an aftertaste of whatever material from which he transfigures it. Still, he isn’t ready to go out yet - not for food, not for company. He knows there are Muggle cities full of crowds in which to lose himself. There is London. There is Paris. New York. Tokyo. He could go to Moscow. He could go to Rome.
But the Muggle world has been no kinder to Harry than the wizarding world. Muggles have robbed him of his past, while wizards have robbed him of his future. Still, he can’t leave - not completely, not when there are so few of them left. And he feels like he owes the memories of the ones who died. He has to stay among wizards, even if it means reclusion in this Hogsmeade cottage, even if it means he eats transfigured food for weeks on end, food that never quite fills him and always leaves him longing for something more.
He eats his transfigured soup, (onion, with the aftertaste of a lichen-covered rock), and wonders if anyone is about in the village today. They don’t say much to him when he does go out - only polite words, obligatory words. He gets looks, of course. He reckons that not too much has changed.
III. He never stops trying the mirror - a different name every day. Sirius? Professor Dumbledore? Ron?
How could Hermione have ever thought this mirror held any additional magic? The only thing Harry ever sees in it is his own reflection. He feels stupid for even trying. There is no one out there holding the other mirror, and most of these names he calls - well, he knows they are dead. He saw them die. What does he expect to happen?
But he can’t resist picking it up at least once each day. Once it is in his hands, he has to spin it. Once he spins it, he sees the dance of the light and glass and metal, and the shadows it casts make him feel less alone. Then, he can’t help himself. He has to call to someone. Anyone.
M-m-mal- er… Draco?
Nothing.
IV. He goes out for a little while today. Not very far into the village, just past a few cottages and a shop or two, and then he turns around to walk home. He sees a few people: a witch wearing a tired look on her face and a howling baby on her hip, a wizard using his magic to mend a cart, a teenaged boy flying low on a broom. They each say “Hello,” and wave without really looking at him. People have always been wary of him at best, or else eager to be involved with him in some way, for their own benefit. Now, there’s not much left for anyone to lose or gain from associating with Harry Potter, and he has even less to offer.
His reflection offers better companionship than this. Still, when he gets home and calls aloud, “Severus Snape” toward the silvered glass, he knows he must be desperate for un-company. Yes, he is definitely running low on names.
(And for what it’s worth, Snape doesn’t answer, either.)
V. Zacharias Smith?
Daphne Greengrass?
Kingsley Shacklebolt?
“This is getting ridiculous,” he says, raising his arm, preparing himself to fling the mirror against the stone cottage wall. He can’t do it, though. He is attached to this mirror now, and he doesn’t know why other than (…it was his father’s) that he must be going slightly mad.
He forces himself to go to the village today - all the way in to the village, right up to the doors of the Hog’s Head. It is open, although someone who is definitely not a Dumbledore is behind the bar. There are two patrons, nondescript wizards, about whom there is nothing special. He sits at the bar and drinks a bit of mead. He listens to talk about weather and how few appealing witches there are in the village. He nods when he should, says agreeable things, feels older than he is.
The barman refuses to take his money. (And that really was the last thing Sirius ever gave him, right? Money, a dodgy place in London, and a house-elf.)
He runs home to his mirror, barely thinking.
Kreacher?
“Kreacher!”
The silence goes nowhere.
VI. A fire crackles in the hearth, flooding the room in orange and red and deep black shadow. Harry still feels cold inside, but the heat that cavorts around him makes him smile. He loves having a fireplace, even if the Floo Network no longer exists. He never liked traveling by Floo, anyway.
He remembers how disoriented he felt the first time he used the Floo, when he fell into Borgin and Burkes covered in soot. He thinks of Knockturn Alley, of Diagon Alley, of his early days as a wizard, delighting in the likes of Florean Fortescue’s, cringing at the sight of hags selling fingernails. The awful food and the stale smell at The Leaky Cauldron float to the front of his mind, and he can almost hear the laughter and the grumbling of the patrons and staff.
Overwhelmed by impulse and sense-memory, he finds his mirror and hastily removes the protective silk. He giggles when he says the name “Tom…” and has to stop, because “the Barman” isn’t a proper surname. This must be his low point, he assumes, and starts to put the mirror away with a shake of his head.
“Yes?” says the smoothest voice Harry has ever heard.
The reflection in the mirror isn’t his.
Harry stands as still as he could ever hope. He. Does. Not. Move.
But he should move, and he knows this. Right now, this is the hour-minute-second when he must put down this mirror, grab his wand, and start the hours-long spell, the only thing other than a Basilisk fang that can destroy a Horcrux.
Because he’s holding one. A Horcrux. (Just like Hermione had said.)
The face of Tom Riddle peers up at him from the glass, his eyebrows slightly raised. Inquisitive. Superior.
Familiar.
“It’s James, isn’t it?” Tom asks, a slight smile on his lips, moving slowly in shades of grey beneath the glass.
Harry drops the mirror on his bed and he leaves.
VII. Harry takes a room at the Hog’s Head, but he doesn’t sleep for two days. He speaks to no one, opting to stay in his room and pace back and forth until the wooden floor shines and reflects his own image back to him.
He needs sleep, but he doesn’t dare, and if he eats, he’ll vomit.
Day three sees him running, lightning-paced, in the direction of his cottage.
He has to -
He has to.
VIII. “Tom...” he says in the calmest voice he can fake. “Tom Riddle.”
Tom’s face appears in the mirror, his features fixed, more stoic than before.
“Hello again, James. Or are you so important now am I not allowed to speak your name? You look a bit older than I remember you.”
Harry wills his hands not to shake. “I’m not James,” he says forcefully. “James is my father. Tell me how you know his name.”
Tom’s eyes grow wide for a slight second before his face relaxes. “Tell me how you know mine.”
It is now that Harry takes a good look at the image of Tom that he sees. This is not the sixteen-year-old schoolboy trapped in a diary, but a man in his early twenties -- his own age. This is the Tom Riddle who worked for Borgin and Burkes, who murdered Hepzibah Smith upon earning her trust. Harry also realizes that he is staring Tom directly in the eye. If he had planned on lying, it is much too late.
“You look like your father,” Tom says slowly. “You are more attractive, however - something about your eyes.”
IX. Harry starts the spell, but his arm gets tired from holding his wand so still for so long.
X. “You still haven’t told me your name. Not very polite of you, Son-of-James.”
Harry is sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the mirror with both hands and trying not to look into it. Occlumency is not his strongest gift, and he still isn’t sure what Mirror-Tom can and cannot do. It won’t matter for much longer, though, because Harry is going to destroy this Horcrux. Today.
As soon as he can convince Tom to tell him more about his father.
“My name is Harry,” he says coldly. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing in my father’s mirror. That seems ruder to me.”
Harry takes a quick, sideways glance at the mirror and sees Tom grin, almost as if he is approving of him. Harry feels nauseous.
“Indeed. We are both guilty, aren’t we?”
Harry thinks of every person that has died, every person that he had to kill because of the man in the mirror and replies softly, “You have no idea.”
XI. There are other ways of finding out what he needs to know. He can go to Grimmauld Place. In fact, Harry knows that he really should, because Hermione’s notes are there. And there is the library at Hogwarts, and it would take no effort on his part to get in through Honeyduke’s cellar. He imagines that the ghosts and portraits might even be helpful, and he isn’t afraid of ghosts. (Although portraits still make him uncomfortable.)
He doesn’t need to use the mirror. It isn’t necessary to talk to Tom.
Only, it’s more like him, isn’t it? It is dangerous to do it this way, which makes it comfortable. It appeals to Harry’s recklessness - (the last thing Sirius ever gave him… it was his father’s.)
“Tom Riddle,” Harry says in a determined voice.
The ghostly face appears again, smiling in a way that Harry has seen once before in a Pensieve. Tom seems pleased, perhaps vindicated, as he had when Dumbledore first told him he was a wizard. Of course, the more often Harry sees Tom, the more Tom looks comfortable with him. Then again, nothing about Tom Riddle is reliable, except his pride in himself.
Harry doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he might gain Tom’s trust, but perhaps… if he can hold his interest…
“I can talk to snakes,” Harry offers.
Tom nods.
XII. There are no other mirrors in the cottage. It has never bothered Harry before - he’s never been one to stare at his own image too long. Even in the mirror of Erised, it was his parents that he wanted to see.
“Am I really as fit as my dad?” he asks casually. He needs to get Tom talking, and he knows Tom likes having his opinion treated as fact. He feels his cheeks flush when Tom laughs back at him.
“You don’t really need me to tell you that, Harry, but that is an interesting way that you’ve phrased the question. You already know that you look like your father, but I have already told you that I find you much more appealing. You feel the need to hear it again, don’t you?”
“I never knew him,” Harry curtly replies. “Every man compares himself to his father. I’d imagine you can relate.”
Tom scowls, and his image quickly fades.
XIII. Harry wakes in a bed that is not his. He recognizes that he is in a room at the Hog’s Head, but he doesn’t know the dark-haired wizard sleeping next to him, or how either of them got there. He blushes at the realization that they are both naked.
He is contemplating the best way to extricate himself from this position when the eyes of the man next to him flutter open, revealing a hazy blue.
“’Lo again,” the man says, his voice hoarse in its waking strain.
“Er - hi…?” Harry replies, for lack of other words. At least he’s nice-looking, he thinks.
The other man sighs and winks at him.
“You did have a pint or two last night, didn’t you?”
Harry can’t reply, but simply watches as the other wizard rolls out of bed and looks around for his clothes. Very nice looking, Harry’s thoughts agree with themselves and he shakes his head, because the attractiveness of this complete stranger is not the most important dwelling point of the moment.
“Andrew Kirke,” the man tells him, not unkindly. “We used to play Quidditch together at school, or don’t you remember that, either?”
Harry doesn’t remember, not really. Hogwarts’ Quidditch is a million years beneath the war. But he’s grateful to have found someone who actually might have known him before war swallowed every friend he’d ever had.
Someone who isn’t Tom Riddle.
“Of course I remember,” Harry easily lies. “I’m just not very good with names anymore. Took too many curses during the war.”
XIV. The mirror rests on his bedside, not forgotten entirely, but quiet. Harry thinks maybe he should hide it away, so that Andrew won’t ask questions about it when he visits. But Andrew never asks much at all. They have a drink or two, maybe, and then sex that Andrew always proclaims to be “fantastic” before falling asleep, never bothering to ask if that’s what Harry wants. It isn’t.
What Harry wants is for Tom Riddle to appear in the mirror again, only so he can get his answers, just to get the key to a puzzle that becomes more and more insignificant by the day. When he thinks about it, he doesn’t really need to know. Nothing Tom could tell him would make the slightest bit of difference in his life, even if Tom actually were to tell him the truth. Harry calls to him after the second week, but Tom is still refusing to answer.
On the other hand, Andrew Kirke is beginning to talk a lot more when he visits. Andrew’s voice is monotonous and scratchy. Grating. Andrew tells him repeatedly how attractive he finds him, but Harry can’t help but wish Andrew would just be quiet, or else learn to speak more smoothly.
XV. Days. Nights.
Sometimes they are easy enough to distinguish. Other times, not as much.
Harry finds himself waking next to Andrew more often than he should. On some occasions, he drinks and the firewhiskey clouds his mind. Most times, however, he has no excuse for not remembering. There is a dark place in his head that tells him that he needs to try harder - at everything. At remembering. At being.
He sleeps at odd hours. Early mornings. Mid-afternoons.
Transfigured food has no taste at all, now, but food hardly matters.
The mirror remains painfully silent.
XVI. Harry dreams of a darkened Quidditch pitch. The stands are populated by stone statues of his friends, mouths opened in soundless screams. He flies on a dilapidated broom, a worthless matchstick that shouldn’t be able to leave the ground, but still he rides it and makes lazy circles around the pitch. He knows not to land, but he wants to land anyway, because flying has become easy and dull, and he has no where else to go.
Tom Riddle is standing on the grass in the centre of the pitch, tossing a broken-winged Snitch into the air. The snitch can’t fly, but it tries and manages to hover for a second before falling back into Tom’s hand. Harry swoops down next to him and grasps at the Snitch as it hovers, but it falls fast into Tom’s hand and Harry grasps that instead.
“I don’t believe in anything,” Tom says to him. Harry tries to unclasp his hand and fly away, but the broom is too weak and Tom’s grip is too strong.
“Let go of me!” Harry shouts, but Tom wears a deadly smile as he shakes his head.
The broken Snitch struggles between their hands until its magic finally dies.
XVII. “What the bloody hell have you done?” Harry shouts, his hand clutched tightly around Andrew’s neck, pinning him to the wall. Andrew is a larger man than he, and could most likely break free using physical force, but Harry is well aware that nothing about his physical self is holding him there. There is fear in Andrew’s eyes and sweat on his brow. And regret. Written all over him.
“Didn’t - do - anything,” Andrew chokes, Harry’s hand still pressed against his throat. “Wanted - check my - hair… only - mirror - you have…”
Harry releases Andrew and picks the mirror up from where Andrew dropped it. Nothing broken, nothing cracked or chipped, only the ghost of a fingerprint on the silver handle.
He breathes.
“I really didn’t mean anything by it, Harry,” Andrew says fearfully. He slides along the wall, inching his way toward the door. “I was only looking - I didn’t know it was special.”
“It was my father’s,” Harry mumbles. He runs his thumb mindlessly around the edge of the mirror’s frame; he watches as Andrew moves slowly away from him, still shaken but very aware that Harry’s cottage is not the safest place for him at the moment. “Go on, then,” Harry spits. “Leave.”
Andrew doesn’t bother concealing his run, but sprints out the door and down the walk, Apparating as soon as his feet land outside of Harry’s wards.
Harry takes the mirror back to his bedroom and closes the door, sealing the room magically before falling onto his bed and into a fitful sleep.
XVIII. “It was Rowena Ravenclaw’s,” says Tom, whispering in Parseltongue from the mirror’s surface.
Harry wakes to find the mirror in his hand, with Tom’s face so near the glass he seems corporeal. He’s closer, Harry thinks. He’s closer, and Harry is comfortable with that. And he’s relieved to hear Parseltongue because it is smooth and easy. It fits his ears and his mind and his soul, because that language is a part of himself that he’s never had to share with anyone, or give to anyone. Except maybe Tom.
And Tom is all that’s left.
“A work of art,” Tom continues softly. “It was one of a pair, although this was the only one I was able to find. How it came to be in your father’s possession, I do not know. He and the other boy talked to one another quite often, never knowing I was here, listening. They never did say anything useful or interesting - they talked only of the mundane subjects of schoolboys. Nothing more. It occurred to me after several months of their pointless droning that neither of them was powerful enough to use this object properly, so I stopped listening to them altogether. I decided I should wait until they grew older. And then suddenly, your father stopped using the mirror, although I’m unable to tell you why.”
Harry sighs and stares at the ceiling above him.
“You killed him,” he replies, emotionless. “Eventually, you killed them both. Between you and me, we’ve killed them all.”
“Does that bother you?” Tom asks.
Harry drops the mirror onto the bed and rises to dress. “It did,” he answers without looking. “It does, or at least it should. Everyone’s dead anyway. I don’t think it matters now who did it.”
“Not everyone is dead,” Tom says in English. “You are not dead. That man you’ve been with is not dead. There must be others. Or do they not matter to you, like they do not matter to me?”
Harry looks back at the mirror. Tom’s image is so close that the glass is glowing, whispery blue and silver. Harry picks it up. The handle is unusually warm in his hand.
The mirror is all but alive, but Harry knows it is not too late. He has a wand. He has skill. He has the knowledge he was seeking. He must destroy this Horcrux now. There’s nothing else for it.
“Why did you ever start talking to me?” Harry asks in spite of himself.
“Because,” Tom replies silkily, “you called me.”
“I wasn’t calling you. I was calling for-“
“Anyone?” Tom interrupts. “You wanted someone to see you, didn’t you, Harry? Someone you knew. Someone who knew you, as well. Ask yourself a question, and don’t try lying about it - you’ll know the truth regardless of whatever you attempt to tell yourself. Ask yourself why you have chosen to lock yourself away with me, begging for my company, sending away your rather fetching young lover by threat of force, only for the hope of being alone with me!”
“I only wanted to know what you knew about my father! I -- auughh!!!!”
His scar burns as it has not burned in years. He grabs at his forehead as he stumbles backwards, knocking over a chair and falling with his back hard against his writing desk. Tears wet his stinging eyes and he screams again.
“It was never about your father, Harry,” Tom’s voice slides to his mind. “It was always about me.”
Harry tries, but he cannot recall a time when the truth of any matter has not set his life on end. Why he should swallow it so easily now remains beyond him. Unless it isn’t the truth, and with Tom Riddle, lies are to be expected. Tom is a master at untruth.
“As am I,” Harry admits aloud.
A moment passes. Harry glances out his window and notes without interest that spring is blossoming in the world around him. He picks up the mirror and sees his reflection looking back at him. His hair is the same, but his eyes are different now. Hardened, perhaps, less like his mother’s and more like his own. His scar is where it has always been, as red as it has always been, but appears redder because his skin rarely sees the sun and is paler now.
He spins the mirror slowly, like he used to before he discovered its nature. Instead of watching the cold dance of silver and light, he anticipates change. Wants change. Honestly craves fire.
The mirror heats up and begins to glow, whirling around in his palm without the guidance of his fingers. There is a humming, buzzing sound, and the luminescent image of Tom Riddle erupts from the centre of the mirror, standing full and tall on the floor in front of Harry, smiling.
I’ve done it, Harry thinks, remembering Ginny Weasley’s body expiring on the cold stone floor in the Chamber. I’ll die, and I’ve done it to myself.
But he doesn’t feel sick or weak, or even tired. And not frightened at all.
“You want me here,” Tom says. His voice is quietly triumphant. A beam of sunlight flows from the window through his body, causing his chest to glow white and further obscuring his face. “You could not leave me alone, and here I am. Nearly. Courtesy requires that I thank you, but I don’t know that I will just now. I’m not flesh. Not yet.”
“Why aren’t I dying?” Harry asks. Every hair on his body should be standing on end. He should be finding his wand.
They don’t.
He doesn’t.
“What makes you think you aren’t dead already?”
Harry pinches his own skin and Tom laughs at him.
“How many people have you killed in your lifetime, Harry? How many have you helped to die? Tell me - tell yourself -- how whole can your soul possibly be by now?”
XIX. There is a flask in his kitchen containing a potion that Harry doesn’t remember making. He has never been strong with potions. His only successes in the discipline stemmed from a direct result of cheating. The liquid swirls within the flask, clear and mushroom-grey. Whatever he has done, he knows he has done it correctly.
“What do you want?” asks Andrew, reservedly. He stands tall, framed within Harry’s front door like a portrait. “Why did you ask me to come here?”
Harry slowly turns to him, smiles without planning, and says words he does not think beforehand:
“I just wanted to apologise.”
Andrew relaxes his face and steps toward Harry’s kitchen.
“It’s a mess in here,” Harry says, motioning Andrew away. “I’m just finishing up my dishes. Why don’t you wait for me in my bedroom? I’ll just be a moment.” And as Andrew obeys, Harry calls to him again. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
XX. Andrew looks as if he is sleeping. His body lies prone on Harry’s bed, with his skin rapidly cooling as his breaths come more slowly.
The hand resting on Harry’s shoulder grows warmer, nearing the heat of life as Andrew drifts toward death. Tom whispers a remark in Parseltongue, at which Harry nods.
“He does look like you, sort of, Harry answers. His hair, maybe. Not his eyes, though.”
“His eyes were like your father’s,” Tom says. His fingers grip Harry’s shoulder more tightly as Andrew stops breathing.
Harry feels. Something.
A bit of transfiguration and Andrew’s body is no longer relevant, but the bed does not remain empty.
“Consider yourself privileged,” Tom hisses to Harry as he takes him. “I know how filthy you are.
“Both of my parents could do magic,” Harry darkly replies. “My blood is purer than yours.”
XXI. The dream begins as always. Stone statues. Worthless broom.
Tom tosses and catches the broken-winged Snitch, taunting Harry. Teasing him. Calling him down to him.
“Let go of it!” Harry shouts. “That was my father’s!”
The charm on the broom stops working, as Harry knew it would, and he falls, tumbling toward the earth, not bothering to scream.
XXII. Harry wakes alone in his bed. Tom sits across the room and casually turns the mirror’s handle between his fingers.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Tom says, commenting, not asking.
Harry reels from the icy punch of reality.
“Just a mirror. Such a simple thing,” Tom continues, ignoring Harry’s panicked breaths. “Glass. Metal. The most minor of any magic, and yet look what it can do.”
Tom spins it, and the mirror’s surface catches the streaming light of morning and reflects it into Harry’s eyes, blinding him.
Harry winces.
“Why isn’t it broken?” Harry asks. “It’s used up, isn’t it?”
Tom smiles slightly, bowing just a bit.
“It was only a mirror, Harry,” he replies, still spinning the mirror while capturing Harry’s stare. “It was always only a mirror.”
Harry backs himself against the wall as Tom rises elegantly from his chair and strides toward him.
“You only saw yourself, Harry,” he continues. “I was always… here.”
With a long, pale finger, he defiantly touches Harry’s scar.
Harry does not wince, nor does he move, but he can only stammer, “W-w-why - h-h-h-how?”
A possessive kiss, and Harry knows everything.
“I’ve always owned you,” Tom whispers. “I have plans for you. These fools who are left need a leader, and you do make a beautiful puppet.”
The darkest of Harry’s courage rises to the front of his throat.
“I won’t follow you,” Harry groans uselessly. “You can’t make me.”
“Can’t I?” Tom replies. He wraps Harry’s hair between his fingers and pulls. “You’ve kept a piece of my broken soul for almost your entire life, dear Harry. Tell me, who do you think is keeping yours?”
O the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful night shall break.
-William Blake, Cradle Song
Author/Artist:
Giftee: dmitchell1985
Characters/Pairing: Harry/Tom
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4835
Author/Artist's Notes: Thank you 1. mods and giftee for this fun assignment, and 2. my nameless (for now) beta for her hard work. *ear tug*
Summary: Post-war, pyrrhic victory. While living in reclusion, Harry discovers an undestroyed Horcrux.
I. It’s your mirror, Harry! You have to destroy it - it’s the last one!
The stern urgency in Hermione’s voice still echoes in Harry’s mind. It wasn’t a desperate cry, although it was the last warning she ever spoke. She had remained true to herself, true to their cause, even in her dying words.
Harry spins the mirror between his fingers by its handle, watching light bounce and reflect from the silver and glass. I couldn’t, he thinks, internally chiding himself for the failure of his resolve. It was the last thing Sirius ever gave me… and it was my father’s.
“Hermione?” he says to the mirror. It says nothing in return.
He carefully wraps the mirror in its silk cloth and lays it back on the bedside. He goes to the only window in his bedroom and rests his elbows on the sill, props his chin in his hands, and watches the snow fall lightly onto the stone statues in his garden. He feels cold, like snow and stone or glass and silver. Something inside of him says that he deserves it. The cold belongs to him. (It was the last thing Sirius ever gave him… and it was his father’s.)
Hermione is dead. Ron is dead. Ginny is dead. He had lived, again. Voldemort is dead, but that hardly seems to matter with a victory so Pyrrhic. The irony is that Voldemort died easily. Hermione had been wrong - there was no missing Horcrux. He had destroyed them all. Voldemort fell with a quick green flash and a thud. Her last words were wasted - something Hermione would have hated.
II. Harry hates eating transfigured food. It feels spongy in the mouth, and it leaves an aftertaste of whatever material from which he transfigures it. Still, he isn’t ready to go out yet - not for food, not for company. He knows there are Muggle cities full of crowds in which to lose himself. There is London. There is Paris. New York. Tokyo. He could go to Moscow. He could go to Rome.
But the Muggle world has been no kinder to Harry than the wizarding world. Muggles have robbed him of his past, while wizards have robbed him of his future. Still, he can’t leave - not completely, not when there are so few of them left. And he feels like he owes the memories of the ones who died. He has to stay among wizards, even if it means reclusion in this Hogsmeade cottage, even if it means he eats transfigured food for weeks on end, food that never quite fills him and always leaves him longing for something more.
He eats his transfigured soup, (onion, with the aftertaste of a lichen-covered rock), and wonders if anyone is about in the village today. They don’t say much to him when he does go out - only polite words, obligatory words. He gets looks, of course. He reckons that not too much has changed.
III. He never stops trying the mirror - a different name every day. Sirius? Professor Dumbledore? Ron?
How could Hermione have ever thought this mirror held any additional magic? The only thing Harry ever sees in it is his own reflection. He feels stupid for even trying. There is no one out there holding the other mirror, and most of these names he calls - well, he knows they are dead. He saw them die. What does he expect to happen?
But he can’t resist picking it up at least once each day. Once it is in his hands, he has to spin it. Once he spins it, he sees the dance of the light and glass and metal, and the shadows it casts make him feel less alone. Then, he can’t help himself. He has to call to someone. Anyone.
M-m-mal- er… Draco?
Nothing.
IV. He goes out for a little while today. Not very far into the village, just past a few cottages and a shop or two, and then he turns around to walk home. He sees a few people: a witch wearing a tired look on her face and a howling baby on her hip, a wizard using his magic to mend a cart, a teenaged boy flying low on a broom. They each say “Hello,” and wave without really looking at him. People have always been wary of him at best, or else eager to be involved with him in some way, for their own benefit. Now, there’s not much left for anyone to lose or gain from associating with Harry Potter, and he has even less to offer.
His reflection offers better companionship than this. Still, when he gets home and calls aloud, “Severus Snape” toward the silvered glass, he knows he must be desperate for un-company. Yes, he is definitely running low on names.
(And for what it’s worth, Snape doesn’t answer, either.)
V. Zacharias Smith?
Daphne Greengrass?
Kingsley Shacklebolt?
“This is getting ridiculous,” he says, raising his arm, preparing himself to fling the mirror against the stone cottage wall. He can’t do it, though. He is attached to this mirror now, and he doesn’t know why other than (…it was his father’s) that he must be going slightly mad.
He forces himself to go to the village today - all the way in to the village, right up to the doors of the Hog’s Head. It is open, although someone who is definitely not a Dumbledore is behind the bar. There are two patrons, nondescript wizards, about whom there is nothing special. He sits at the bar and drinks a bit of mead. He listens to talk about weather and how few appealing witches there are in the village. He nods when he should, says agreeable things, feels older than he is.
The barman refuses to take his money. (And that really was the last thing Sirius ever gave him, right? Money, a dodgy place in London, and a house-elf.)
He runs home to his mirror, barely thinking.
Kreacher?
“Kreacher!”
The silence goes nowhere.
VI. A fire crackles in the hearth, flooding the room in orange and red and deep black shadow. Harry still feels cold inside, but the heat that cavorts around him makes him smile. He loves having a fireplace, even if the Floo Network no longer exists. He never liked traveling by Floo, anyway.
He remembers how disoriented he felt the first time he used the Floo, when he fell into Borgin and Burkes covered in soot. He thinks of Knockturn Alley, of Diagon Alley, of his early days as a wizard, delighting in the likes of Florean Fortescue’s, cringing at the sight of hags selling fingernails. The awful food and the stale smell at The Leaky Cauldron float to the front of his mind, and he can almost hear the laughter and the grumbling of the patrons and staff.
Overwhelmed by impulse and sense-memory, he finds his mirror and hastily removes the protective silk. He giggles when he says the name “Tom…” and has to stop, because “the Barman” isn’t a proper surname. This must be his low point, he assumes, and starts to put the mirror away with a shake of his head.
“Yes?” says the smoothest voice Harry has ever heard.
The reflection in the mirror isn’t his.
Harry stands as still as he could ever hope. He. Does. Not. Move.
But he should move, and he knows this. Right now, this is the hour-minute-second when he must put down this mirror, grab his wand, and start the hours-long spell, the only thing other than a Basilisk fang that can destroy a Horcrux.
Because he’s holding one. A Horcrux. (Just like Hermione had said.)
The face of Tom Riddle peers up at him from the glass, his eyebrows slightly raised. Inquisitive. Superior.
Familiar.
“It’s James, isn’t it?” Tom asks, a slight smile on his lips, moving slowly in shades of grey beneath the glass.
Harry drops the mirror on his bed and he leaves.
VII. Harry takes a room at the Hog’s Head, but he doesn’t sleep for two days. He speaks to no one, opting to stay in his room and pace back and forth until the wooden floor shines and reflects his own image back to him.
He needs sleep, but he doesn’t dare, and if he eats, he’ll vomit.
Day three sees him running, lightning-paced, in the direction of his cottage.
He has to -
He has to.
VIII. “Tom...” he says in the calmest voice he can fake. “Tom Riddle.”
Tom’s face appears in the mirror, his features fixed, more stoic than before.
“Hello again, James. Or are you so important now am I not allowed to speak your name? You look a bit older than I remember you.”
Harry wills his hands not to shake. “I’m not James,” he says forcefully. “James is my father. Tell me how you know his name.”
Tom’s eyes grow wide for a slight second before his face relaxes. “Tell me how you know mine.”
It is now that Harry takes a good look at the image of Tom that he sees. This is not the sixteen-year-old schoolboy trapped in a diary, but a man in his early twenties -- his own age. This is the Tom Riddle who worked for Borgin and Burkes, who murdered Hepzibah Smith upon earning her trust. Harry also realizes that he is staring Tom directly in the eye. If he had planned on lying, it is much too late.
“You look like your father,” Tom says slowly. “You are more attractive, however - something about your eyes.”
IX. Harry starts the spell, but his arm gets tired from holding his wand so still for so long.
X. “You still haven’t told me your name. Not very polite of you, Son-of-James.”
Harry is sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the mirror with both hands and trying not to look into it. Occlumency is not his strongest gift, and he still isn’t sure what Mirror-Tom can and cannot do. It won’t matter for much longer, though, because Harry is going to destroy this Horcrux. Today.
As soon as he can convince Tom to tell him more about his father.
“My name is Harry,” he says coldly. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing in my father’s mirror. That seems ruder to me.”
Harry takes a quick, sideways glance at the mirror and sees Tom grin, almost as if he is approving of him. Harry feels nauseous.
“Indeed. We are both guilty, aren’t we?”
Harry thinks of every person that has died, every person that he had to kill because of the man in the mirror and replies softly, “You have no idea.”
XI. There are other ways of finding out what he needs to know. He can go to Grimmauld Place. In fact, Harry knows that he really should, because Hermione’s notes are there. And there is the library at Hogwarts, and it would take no effort on his part to get in through Honeyduke’s cellar. He imagines that the ghosts and portraits might even be helpful, and he isn’t afraid of ghosts. (Although portraits still make him uncomfortable.)
He doesn’t need to use the mirror. It isn’t necessary to talk to Tom.
Only, it’s more like him, isn’t it? It is dangerous to do it this way, which makes it comfortable. It appeals to Harry’s recklessness - (the last thing Sirius ever gave him… it was his father’s.)
“Tom Riddle,” Harry says in a determined voice.
The ghostly face appears again, smiling in a way that Harry has seen once before in a Pensieve. Tom seems pleased, perhaps vindicated, as he had when Dumbledore first told him he was a wizard. Of course, the more often Harry sees Tom, the more Tom looks comfortable with him. Then again, nothing about Tom Riddle is reliable, except his pride in himself.
Harry doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he might gain Tom’s trust, but perhaps… if he can hold his interest…
“I can talk to snakes,” Harry offers.
Tom nods.
XII. There are no other mirrors in the cottage. It has never bothered Harry before - he’s never been one to stare at his own image too long. Even in the mirror of Erised, it was his parents that he wanted to see.
“Am I really as fit as my dad?” he asks casually. He needs to get Tom talking, and he knows Tom likes having his opinion treated as fact. He feels his cheeks flush when Tom laughs back at him.
“You don’t really need me to tell you that, Harry, but that is an interesting way that you’ve phrased the question. You already know that you look like your father, but I have already told you that I find you much more appealing. You feel the need to hear it again, don’t you?”
“I never knew him,” Harry curtly replies. “Every man compares himself to his father. I’d imagine you can relate.”
Tom scowls, and his image quickly fades.
XIII. Harry wakes in a bed that is not his. He recognizes that he is in a room at the Hog’s Head, but he doesn’t know the dark-haired wizard sleeping next to him, or how either of them got there. He blushes at the realization that they are both naked.
He is contemplating the best way to extricate himself from this position when the eyes of the man next to him flutter open, revealing a hazy blue.
“’Lo again,” the man says, his voice hoarse in its waking strain.
“Er - hi…?” Harry replies, for lack of other words. At least he’s nice-looking, he thinks.
The other man sighs and winks at him.
“You did have a pint or two last night, didn’t you?”
Harry can’t reply, but simply watches as the other wizard rolls out of bed and looks around for his clothes. Very nice looking, Harry’s thoughts agree with themselves and he shakes his head, because the attractiveness of this complete stranger is not the most important dwelling point of the moment.
“Andrew Kirke,” the man tells him, not unkindly. “We used to play Quidditch together at school, or don’t you remember that, either?”
Harry doesn’t remember, not really. Hogwarts’ Quidditch is a million years beneath the war. But he’s grateful to have found someone who actually might have known him before war swallowed every friend he’d ever had.
Someone who isn’t Tom Riddle.
“Of course I remember,” Harry easily lies. “I’m just not very good with names anymore. Took too many curses during the war.”
XIV. The mirror rests on his bedside, not forgotten entirely, but quiet. Harry thinks maybe he should hide it away, so that Andrew won’t ask questions about it when he visits. But Andrew never asks much at all. They have a drink or two, maybe, and then sex that Andrew always proclaims to be “fantastic” before falling asleep, never bothering to ask if that’s what Harry wants. It isn’t.
What Harry wants is for Tom Riddle to appear in the mirror again, only so he can get his answers, just to get the key to a puzzle that becomes more and more insignificant by the day. When he thinks about it, he doesn’t really need to know. Nothing Tom could tell him would make the slightest bit of difference in his life, even if Tom actually were to tell him the truth. Harry calls to him after the second week, but Tom is still refusing to answer.
On the other hand, Andrew Kirke is beginning to talk a lot more when he visits. Andrew’s voice is monotonous and scratchy. Grating. Andrew tells him repeatedly how attractive he finds him, but Harry can’t help but wish Andrew would just be quiet, or else learn to speak more smoothly.
XV. Days. Nights.
Sometimes they are easy enough to distinguish. Other times, not as much.
Harry finds himself waking next to Andrew more often than he should. On some occasions, he drinks and the firewhiskey clouds his mind. Most times, however, he has no excuse for not remembering. There is a dark place in his head that tells him that he needs to try harder - at everything. At remembering. At being.
He sleeps at odd hours. Early mornings. Mid-afternoons.
Transfigured food has no taste at all, now, but food hardly matters.
The mirror remains painfully silent.
XVI. Harry dreams of a darkened Quidditch pitch. The stands are populated by stone statues of his friends, mouths opened in soundless screams. He flies on a dilapidated broom, a worthless matchstick that shouldn’t be able to leave the ground, but still he rides it and makes lazy circles around the pitch. He knows not to land, but he wants to land anyway, because flying has become easy and dull, and he has no where else to go.
Tom Riddle is standing on the grass in the centre of the pitch, tossing a broken-winged Snitch into the air. The snitch can’t fly, but it tries and manages to hover for a second before falling back into Tom’s hand. Harry swoops down next to him and grasps at the Snitch as it hovers, but it falls fast into Tom’s hand and Harry grasps that instead.
“I don’t believe in anything,” Tom says to him. Harry tries to unclasp his hand and fly away, but the broom is too weak and Tom’s grip is too strong.
“Let go of me!” Harry shouts, but Tom wears a deadly smile as he shakes his head.
The broken Snitch struggles between their hands until its magic finally dies.
XVII. “What the bloody hell have you done?” Harry shouts, his hand clutched tightly around Andrew’s neck, pinning him to the wall. Andrew is a larger man than he, and could most likely break free using physical force, but Harry is well aware that nothing about his physical self is holding him there. There is fear in Andrew’s eyes and sweat on his brow. And regret. Written all over him.
“Didn’t - do - anything,” Andrew chokes, Harry’s hand still pressed against his throat. “Wanted - check my - hair… only - mirror - you have…”
Harry releases Andrew and picks the mirror up from where Andrew dropped it. Nothing broken, nothing cracked or chipped, only the ghost of a fingerprint on the silver handle.
He breathes.
“I really didn’t mean anything by it, Harry,” Andrew says fearfully. He slides along the wall, inching his way toward the door. “I was only looking - I didn’t know it was special.”
“It was my father’s,” Harry mumbles. He runs his thumb mindlessly around the edge of the mirror’s frame; he watches as Andrew moves slowly away from him, still shaken but very aware that Harry’s cottage is not the safest place for him at the moment. “Go on, then,” Harry spits. “Leave.”
Andrew doesn’t bother concealing his run, but sprints out the door and down the walk, Apparating as soon as his feet land outside of Harry’s wards.
Harry takes the mirror back to his bedroom and closes the door, sealing the room magically before falling onto his bed and into a fitful sleep.
XVIII. “It was Rowena Ravenclaw’s,” says Tom, whispering in Parseltongue from the mirror’s surface.
Harry wakes to find the mirror in his hand, with Tom’s face so near the glass he seems corporeal. He’s closer, Harry thinks. He’s closer, and Harry is comfortable with that. And he’s relieved to hear Parseltongue because it is smooth and easy. It fits his ears and his mind and his soul, because that language is a part of himself that he’s never had to share with anyone, or give to anyone. Except maybe Tom.
And Tom is all that’s left.
“A work of art,” Tom continues softly. “It was one of a pair, although this was the only one I was able to find. How it came to be in your father’s possession, I do not know. He and the other boy talked to one another quite often, never knowing I was here, listening. They never did say anything useful or interesting - they talked only of the mundane subjects of schoolboys. Nothing more. It occurred to me after several months of their pointless droning that neither of them was powerful enough to use this object properly, so I stopped listening to them altogether. I decided I should wait until they grew older. And then suddenly, your father stopped using the mirror, although I’m unable to tell you why.”
Harry sighs and stares at the ceiling above him.
“You killed him,” he replies, emotionless. “Eventually, you killed them both. Between you and me, we’ve killed them all.”
“Does that bother you?” Tom asks.
Harry drops the mirror onto the bed and rises to dress. “It did,” he answers without looking. “It does, or at least it should. Everyone’s dead anyway. I don’t think it matters now who did it.”
“Not everyone is dead,” Tom says in English. “You are not dead. That man you’ve been with is not dead. There must be others. Or do they not matter to you, like they do not matter to me?”
Harry looks back at the mirror. Tom’s image is so close that the glass is glowing, whispery blue and silver. Harry picks it up. The handle is unusually warm in his hand.
The mirror is all but alive, but Harry knows it is not too late. He has a wand. He has skill. He has the knowledge he was seeking. He must destroy this Horcrux now. There’s nothing else for it.
“Why did you ever start talking to me?” Harry asks in spite of himself.
“Because,” Tom replies silkily, “you called me.”
“I wasn’t calling you. I was calling for-“
“Anyone?” Tom interrupts. “You wanted someone to see you, didn’t you, Harry? Someone you knew. Someone who knew you, as well. Ask yourself a question, and don’t try lying about it - you’ll know the truth regardless of whatever you attempt to tell yourself. Ask yourself why you have chosen to lock yourself away with me, begging for my company, sending away your rather fetching young lover by threat of force, only for the hope of being alone with me!”
“I only wanted to know what you knew about my father! I -- auughh!!!!”
His scar burns as it has not burned in years. He grabs at his forehead as he stumbles backwards, knocking over a chair and falling with his back hard against his writing desk. Tears wet his stinging eyes and he screams again.
“It was never about your father, Harry,” Tom’s voice slides to his mind. “It was always about me.”
Harry tries, but he cannot recall a time when the truth of any matter has not set his life on end. Why he should swallow it so easily now remains beyond him. Unless it isn’t the truth, and with Tom Riddle, lies are to be expected. Tom is a master at untruth.
“As am I,” Harry admits aloud.
A moment passes. Harry glances out his window and notes without interest that spring is blossoming in the world around him. He picks up the mirror and sees his reflection looking back at him. His hair is the same, but his eyes are different now. Hardened, perhaps, less like his mother’s and more like his own. His scar is where it has always been, as red as it has always been, but appears redder because his skin rarely sees the sun and is paler now.
He spins the mirror slowly, like he used to before he discovered its nature. Instead of watching the cold dance of silver and light, he anticipates change. Wants change. Honestly craves fire.
The mirror heats up and begins to glow, whirling around in his palm without the guidance of his fingers. There is a humming, buzzing sound, and the luminescent image of Tom Riddle erupts from the centre of the mirror, standing full and tall on the floor in front of Harry, smiling.
I’ve done it, Harry thinks, remembering Ginny Weasley’s body expiring on the cold stone floor in the Chamber. I’ll die, and I’ve done it to myself.
But he doesn’t feel sick or weak, or even tired. And not frightened at all.
“You want me here,” Tom says. His voice is quietly triumphant. A beam of sunlight flows from the window through his body, causing his chest to glow white and further obscuring his face. “You could not leave me alone, and here I am. Nearly. Courtesy requires that I thank you, but I don’t know that I will just now. I’m not flesh. Not yet.”
“Why aren’t I dying?” Harry asks. Every hair on his body should be standing on end. He should be finding his wand.
They don’t.
He doesn’t.
“What makes you think you aren’t dead already?”
Harry pinches his own skin and Tom laughs at him.
“How many people have you killed in your lifetime, Harry? How many have you helped to die? Tell me - tell yourself -- how whole can your soul possibly be by now?”
XIX. There is a flask in his kitchen containing a potion that Harry doesn’t remember making. He has never been strong with potions. His only successes in the discipline stemmed from a direct result of cheating. The liquid swirls within the flask, clear and mushroom-grey. Whatever he has done, he knows he has done it correctly.
“What do you want?” asks Andrew, reservedly. He stands tall, framed within Harry’s front door like a portrait. “Why did you ask me to come here?”
Harry slowly turns to him, smiles without planning, and says words he does not think beforehand:
“I just wanted to apologise.”
Andrew relaxes his face and steps toward Harry’s kitchen.
“It’s a mess in here,” Harry says, motioning Andrew away. “I’m just finishing up my dishes. Why don’t you wait for me in my bedroom? I’ll just be a moment.” And as Andrew obeys, Harry calls to him again. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
XX. Andrew looks as if he is sleeping. His body lies prone on Harry’s bed, with his skin rapidly cooling as his breaths come more slowly.
The hand resting on Harry’s shoulder grows warmer, nearing the heat of life as Andrew drifts toward death. Tom whispers a remark in Parseltongue, at which Harry nods.
“He does look like you, sort of, Harry answers. His hair, maybe. Not his eyes, though.”
“His eyes were like your father’s,” Tom says. His fingers grip Harry’s shoulder more tightly as Andrew stops breathing.
Harry feels. Something.
A bit of transfiguration and Andrew’s body is no longer relevant, but the bed does not remain empty.
“Consider yourself privileged,” Tom hisses to Harry as he takes him. “I know how filthy you are.
“Both of my parents could do magic,” Harry darkly replies. “My blood is purer than yours.”
XXI. The dream begins as always. Stone statues. Worthless broom.
Tom tosses and catches the broken-winged Snitch, taunting Harry. Teasing him. Calling him down to him.
“Let go of it!” Harry shouts. “That was my father’s!”
The charm on the broom stops working, as Harry knew it would, and he falls, tumbling toward the earth, not bothering to scream.
XXII. Harry wakes alone in his bed. Tom sits across the room and casually turns the mirror’s handle between his fingers.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Tom says, commenting, not asking.
Harry reels from the icy punch of reality.
“Just a mirror. Such a simple thing,” Tom continues, ignoring Harry’s panicked breaths. “Glass. Metal. The most minor of any magic, and yet look what it can do.”
Tom spins it, and the mirror’s surface catches the streaming light of morning and reflects it into Harry’s eyes, blinding him.
Harry winces.
“Why isn’t it broken?” Harry asks. “It’s used up, isn’t it?”
Tom smiles slightly, bowing just a bit.
“It was only a mirror, Harry,” he replies, still spinning the mirror while capturing Harry’s stare. “It was always only a mirror.”
Harry backs himself against the wall as Tom rises elegantly from his chair and strides toward him.
“You only saw yourself, Harry,” he continues. “I was always… here.”
With a long, pale finger, he defiantly touches Harry’s scar.
Harry does not wince, nor does he move, but he can only stammer, “W-w-why - h-h-h-how?”
A possessive kiss, and Harry knows everything.
“I’ve always owned you,” Tom whispers. “I have plans for you. These fools who are left need a leader, and you do make a beautiful puppet.”
The darkest of Harry’s courage rises to the front of his throat.
“I won’t follow you,” Harry groans uselessly. “You can’t make me.”
“Can’t I?” Tom replies. He wraps Harry’s hair between his fingers and pulls. “You’ve kept a piece of my broken soul for almost your entire life, dear Harry. Tell me, who do you think is keeping yours?”
O the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful night shall break.
-William Blake, Cradle Song