Chapter Text
Harry has officially had better days. Actually, he’s had better years. Possibly better lives.
He’s knee-deep in snake skin and ankle-deep in slime, standing in a secret murder dungeon built by someone whose family tree was either a straight line or tumbleweeds. Ron’s behind him, attempting to keep Lockhart from concussing himself on fallen rocks, and ahead—well, somewhere ahead, Ginny’s been kidnapped by a monster that’s essentially a very angry, highly poisonous noodle.
Not exactly the Hogwarts experience advertised in the brochure.
“Are you sure about this?” Ron’s voice echoes, muffled and anxious. "I could try shifting the rocks, or maybe—”
“I’ve got this," Harry calls back, trying to sound confident. It comes out squeaky. "If I’m not back in an hour…”
The silence is thick enough to slice with Gryffindor’s sword.
Ron coughs. "Right. Good luck, mate."
Harry nods, mostly to himself, and shuffles onward. The tunnel narrows and twists, snake-skin rustling underfoot. His wand-hand trembles in a way he’s choosing to interpret as adrenaline, rather than sheer terror. Optimism is key, even when facing death-by-snake.
Ahead, the tunnel opens out slightly, and Harry stops short, staring. A massive stone door stands carved with two entwined serpents, their emerald eyes glinting with an unsettling lifelike quality. Salazar Slytherin had clearly gone all-in on brand consistency.
Brilliant.
He clears his throat. "Open," he hisses softly in Parseltongue.
The snakes writhe apart, stone grinding quietly as the door splits open. Harry steps through, pulse drumming in his ears, into the shadow-soaked cavern of the Chamber of Secrets.
Harry edges closer, shoes scuffing on damp stone. The statue—Salazar Slytherin, has to be—looms like a mountain in a robe. Somebody in Hogwarts history clearly thought “intimidating tyrant” was an acceptable interior-design vibe.
No Ginny. No basilisk either, thank Merlin, though the silence keeps promising otherwise. Harry’s wand hand trembles, so he swaps to a two-handed grip that feels marginally braver. He cranes round the base of the statue, hoping for a conveniently unconscious Weasley. Nothing but cold rock and the thick smell of centuries-old damp.
Think, he tells himself. He tilts his head back until his neck protests. High above, the stone lips hang open in a perpetual, rather snooty sneer.
“Well? ” Harry whispers in Parseltongue, because talking to statues is officially the least weird thing he’s done this year. No reaction—though the word bounces round the vault like a ghost of itself.
He steps back, squints. An idea itches at the corner of his mind: the basilisk must need a way in and out that isn’t just burst through the tonsils. Maybe there’s a hatch, a crack, some—
A pulse of green light ripples across the flagstones, faint as a moonlit pond. Harry freezes. The glow throbs again, a heartbeat under the floor, and suddenly every hair on his arms pricks upright.
Tunnel echoes vanish. The air tightens, heavy with ozone and old magic—tastes like copper on his tongue. Before he can shout for Ron the chamber shifts, the way dreams skid sideways when you notice they’re dreams. Stone stretches, pillars blur, and Harry’s falling without moving, yanked around like a cork down a whirlpool.
It stops as brutally as it began. Harry staggers, palms slapping the floor. His stomach lurches twice before realising the ride’s over. He drags in a breath…and blinks.
The chamber is still the chamber, but different. Brighter torches gutter in sconces that were definitely empty seconds ago. The snake carvings gleam, freshly cleaned. And the air—warm, almost pleasant, not the clammy chill he walked through.
“Ginny?” he calls, voice squeaky with surprise. Only his echo answers. New torches, same creepy acoustics.
Okay, he thinks, either I’ve gone mad, or someone redecorated very quickly.
His trainers squeak as he turns in a slow circle. The statue still looms.
Harry steps back, raising his wand. “ Lumos.”
The tip flares. He directs it into the cracks between flagstones, under the statue’s base, half-expecting to catch a flicker of movement. Nothing. Still, it feels better doing something. Holding the wand makes the silence feel less personal.
Breathe, Potter. Priorities: find Ginny, avoid monster, figure out why the Chamber suddenly looks like it’s had a spring-clean.
He takes three cautious steps and notices footprints—damp, fresh, leading away between the pillars. Not his; they’re longer, tidy, like someone walks here regularly. Someone who isn’t panicking.
“Great," he whispers. "Local resident. Possibly evil. Definitely stylish shoes."
The sensible part of him suggests retreat. The Gryffindor part—louder, and frankly reckless—insists that where there’s a resident, there may be answers.
Harry tightens his grip on his wand, squares his shoulders, and follows the footprints into the torch-lit hush, every echo sounding like a countdown.
*
Tom is having a perfectly tolerable evening of unsanctioned experimentation when the floor decides to blink.
He's in the Chamber—not for the aesthetic, obviously, which leans far too reptilian tomb for his tastes—but because Slughorn locks the potions stores now and he needs a place to work where no one asks questions like “why does that need to be glowing” or “is this still technically a frog.”
A copper cauldron simmers beside him, perched on an old lectern he dragged down here months ago. Beside it, a stack of carefully preserved scrolls: half Parseltongue, half creative guesswork. The translation of line twelve alone has taken three weeks and a near-death encounter with a powdered bezoar. Results: pending.
He straightens, stretches. The basilisk is asleep—she’s curled behind the statue, lulled by his last command. If she dreams, he hopes it’s of teeth. The Chamber itself is still, settled, sealed.
Until it isn't.
The ripple is almost imperceptible. The ground flexes. A soft lurch in the stomach, like the moment just before a sneeze or a portkey. Magic shudders—real magic, old magic, the kind buried in bones and stone and names too long to speak.
Tom goes still. Doesn’t breathe.
Then: a sound. Footsteps. Soft, echoing. Not the basilisk’s.
Someone has entered his Chamber.
His first thought is Slughorn—impossible. Then Dumbledore—worse. But no, the steps are too light. Uncertain.
Childlike.
Curious.
Tom moves without hurry, tucks the scrolls into a satchel, taps the cauldron once to extinguish the heat. The room settles into practiced silence. When he finally speaks, it’s in Parseltongue, smooth and low.
“Stay.”
The basilisk doesn’t stir. Good. It listens to him, most of the time. Especially when he doesn’t phrase things like requests.
Tom brushes dust from his robes. Adjusts his prefect badge out of reflex. His expression—carefully neutral. He’s not afraid. He just doesn’t like surprises. Especially not ones that shimmer through the stone like time cracking at the edges.
He hears the footsteps again. Closer now. Unfamiliar cadence. Wrong shoes.
He steps back into the shadows, behind a column carved with a snake devouring its own tail, and waits. Whatever this is—whoever—has just entered the most secret place in Hogwarts.
The footsteps reach the central aisle.
Small. Hesitant. Not staff.
Tom narrows his eyes, watches through the dim firelight. Whoever it is has a wand in a white-knuckled grip and the aura of someone deeply unqualified to be here. Their trainers—trainers, honestly—squelch faintly on the damp stone as they edge into view, wide-eyed and jittery like a first-year who took a wrong turn and ended up in the underworld.
Then the boy stops. Freezes.
And stares directly at him.
“Tom—Tom Riddle?” he breathes.
Tom blinks. Takes a half-step forward, slow and deliberate. The shadows peel off his shoulders like old velvet.
The boy looks… twelve? Eleven? Face too open, emotions flickering all over it like a wireless signal gone fuzzy. His glasses are crooked. His hair’s a disaster. His wand is pointed mostly at the floor but with the vague air of being ready to do something stupid at any moment.
Tom tilts his head, polite curiosity worn like a perfectly pressed collar.
He doesn’t let confusion show. Confusion is inelegant. Confusion invites questions. And Tom Riddle does not answer questions—he asks them.
Inside, he’s already cataloguing variables.
One: the boy knows his name. Two: the boy is standing in the Chamber of Secrets. His Chamber. Which was sealed. Which no one else alive should even know exists. Which he, notably, did not leave open like a draughty cellar door.
Three: the boy is entirely unfamiliar. Tom never forgets faces. This one doesn’t match any of the records he’s memorised. Not a first-year, not a second, not a visiting student on exchange. Certainly not someone with the clearance—or the cunning—to get past Salazar’s locks.
So.
Intruder, says one part of his mind.
Puzzle, says another, hungrier part.
“You know my name,” Tom says lightly, stepping further into the fire-glow, careful not to sound threatening. Yet. “But I don’t believe we’ve met.”
The boy jolts like a spell-struck pixie.
“Right—sorry—yes. I’m Harry. I read your diary.” The words tumble out in one breath. “Long story—but look, there’s a basilisk loose and my best friend’s sister is somewhere in here, possibly dead, and we really, really don’t have time for introductions.”
Tom’s brows lift—just slightly, just enough.
“A basilisk,” he repeats, like Harry’s announced a surprise pop quiz in the middle of a funeral. “How alarming.”
He takes a measured step forward, hands raised in careful nonchalance. “And a girl is missing, you say? Down here?”
Harry nods so fast his glasses nearly fall off. “Ginny Weasley. She’s—she’s eleven. Red hair. I think she followed the basilisk or maybe it took her, or—look, I don’t know exactly, I just know she was here and now she’s not and I need to find her before—”
“—before it’s too late,” Tom finishes, with just the right degree of solemnity. “Of course. And you came down here alone?”
“Well, Ron was with me, but there was a cave-in. Sort of. Lockhart tried to Obliviate us and it backfired, and now Ron’s stuck behind a wall of rocks, and I—I couldn’t just wait.”
Tom nods, all calm understanding, like he’s listening to the world’s most reasonable breakdown.
“I see. That’s very brave of you.” He means it. Stupid, certainly. Suicidal, probably. But brave. The boy can barely hold his wand steady and he’s still down here chasing monsters.
He softens his tone. “You’re safe now. At least for the moment. The basilisk hasn’t been disturbed since I arrived. I would have heard it.”
Harry’s eyes dart toward the statue. “Right, but if it’s asleep—”
“Then we’ll try not to wake it,” Tom says gently.
Harry breathes out, fast and shaky. The wand in his hand is still trembling slightly, but he hasn’t bolted yet. Good. Tom prefers conversations when his subjects aren’t running.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” he offers, voice low and reassuring, the same one he uses to coax confession out of fourth-years caught cheating.
Harry fidgets, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His trainers squeak faintly on the stone. “Um. What part of the beginning?”
Tom’s smile doesn’t waver. “The part where you got into a sealed, secret Chamber that only responds to Parseltongue.”
Harry blinks. “Oh. Right.”
He says it like Tom’s just asked where he left his quill.
“I—I spoke to it,” Harry mumbles. “The door. I mean. I asked it to open.”
Tom’s smile tightens by half a millimetre. “In Parseltongue?”
“Yes.” A beat. “I think so.”
“You think so.”
“Well, it’s not like I practise,” Harry snaps, a little defensive now. “It just happens. Snakes and stuff. I didn’t even know it was weird until this year.”
Tom files the words away—this year—and places them gently on the shelf marked “discrepancies that might explode later.” He’s building a collection.
But before he can press further, Harry cuts in, still frowning.
“Wait—sorry, but… how are you here?”
Tom blinks. “Pardon?”
“I mean—you’re supposed to be from fifty years ago.” Harry’s voice is low, careful now. “I saw you. In the diary. That was a memory. But this—this isn’t like that. You’re looking at me. Talking to me. You’re real.”
Tom stills.
It's not noticeable—he knows it isn't. The shift happens in the subtle tightening at the corners of his eyes, the faint, precise sharpening of his gaze.
Fifty years ago.
Lovely. The child’s sense of chronology is as subtle as a Bludger to the face.
Still.
Not yesterday. Not some vague point in the past. A precise, cold number. Half a century, spoken with certainty by a boy whose heartbeat is fluttering like a trapped bird in his chest.
He's not lying.
The truth settles between them, thick and tangible, sweeter than power and more intoxicating than magic itself:
The boy is from the future.
Tom feels it slide into place like the final tumbler in a lock. The pieces rearrange themselves, neat and inevitable. A child from tomorrow stands in front of him, breathing quickly, vulnerable as spun glass, full of things Tom doesn’t yet know.
Things he wants to know. Needs. Craves.
It’s not simple curiosity, now. It’s hunger—a sharp ache at the edge of his teeth, an empty space behind his ribs that demands filling. Secrets about himself. The world. Magic he hasn't even dreamed yet, power he hasn't tasted. A thousand future threads he can grasp in one simple conversation, one careless admission from this trembling, wide-eyed boy who trusts too easily and knows far too little.
All Tom has to do is reach out and take it.
He smiles, soft and slow. Trustworthy.
Wool’s orphanage taught him two things: always polish your shoes and never smile with your teeth—people start counting them.
“I’m very real,” he says quietly, stepping closer, letting his voice wrap around Harry like silk ribbons around a wrist. Gentle. Binding. “And it sounds like you have quite a lot to tell me.”
Harry hesitates, but the moment stretches just enough to reveal how fragile his doubts really are.
Tom extends a hand. Perfectly steady. Perfectly safe.
“Come. You can trust me.”
And when Harry takes a cautious step forward, still uncertain but unable to look away, Tom’s smile deepens imperceptibly.
He’s always been good at charming small animals.
But Harry doesn’t take his hand.
Good. Better, really. It means there’s still some flicker of instinct alive in him, even if it’s buried beneath Gryffindor bluster and that bleeding need to save everyone.
“We need to find Ginny,” he says, firm now. Less jittery. Clutching onto purpose like it’s the only solid thing in the room. “That’s why I came down here. She’s—she’s somewhere. I know it.”
Tom smiles again—warmer this time, like the sun through stained glass.
“Of course. Priorities.”
He gestures with his wand, a sharp, fluid flick. The charm is near-silent.
At once, the echo of their footfalls dampens, swallowed by the stone. Even the faint squelch of Harry’s ridiculous trainers goes muffled.
Harry glances down, impressed despite himself. “You cast a Silencing charm on the floor?”
Tom gives him a modest shrug. “Just enough to keep our presence... discreet.”
(It won’t wake. Not yet. She sleeps for him, still and obedient beneath the bones of the castle. But he lets Harry have his fear—it’ll keep him pliable. Motivated.)
They walk together, the hush stretching out around them like velvet. Torches gutter at regular intervals now, warm orange light flickering off the slick stone walls. When Tom first found the Chamber, it was half-choked with debris and mildew. He’d restored it himself—because filth is for caretakers and he is aiming higher.
Now, the place gleams.
The ceiling arches high above them, ribbed like the underside of a serpent—because apparently Salazar thought subtlety was for Hufflepuffs. The columns rise in matching pairs, dramatic as theatre curtains, as if the whole place might burst into song about blood purity at any moment.
The floor is dark stone, veined faintly with something pale that catches the torchlight—Tom has never identified it. Possibly bone. Possibly aesthetic.
On either side, alcoves open like gaping mouths—low, circular hollows in the wall, rimmed with more serpents, more runes. One has a shallow basin set into the floor. Another houses what looks like a narrow stone bench, scorched at one end.
Harry peers into one alcove, brow furrowed. “I still don’t get it,” he says, glancing back at Tom. “If this place was sealed, how did you wind up down here before me? Is there another entrance?”
Tom lets the question hang in the hush, weighing it against the throb of want under his ribs.
How much does he need to know?
The boy has already mostly swallowed one impossible fact—time turned liquid, spilled him fifty years upstream—and he’s still upright. Impressive, in its way. But information is leverage, and leverage is a currency Tom never spends without interest.
He schools his face into thoughtful concern, the good prefect expression Slughorn praises for “sobriety beyond your years, my boy.”
“A hidden entrance?” Tom repeats, as if considering. (No—keep that for an emergency. One secret at a time.)
He steps closer, voice pitched low, almost confessional. “The Chamber opens to Parseltongue alone. Like you, I can speak it.” He lets the admission breathe for a beat, watches Harry’s eyes widen—half kinship, half alarm. Good. “When the attacks began and the teachers failed to contain them, I felt… responsible.”
Responsible. Such a wholesome, vanilla word. It tastes sweet enough to hide the steel beneath.
“I’m a prefect,” he adds, fingertips brushing the badge at his lapel. “Protecting younger students is rather in the job description.”
Harry’s grip on his wand eases by a hair. Trust, incrementally earned.
“So you—what? Followed the trail and opened the door yourself?”
Tom gives a modest shrug. “Someone had to. I expected to find the culprit here. Or the basilisk. Ideally both, so I could stop them.”
All technically true—if you squint from a certain angle and ignore the bleeding edges. He did follow the trail, did open the door, is here to meet the beast. Motives are flexible things.
Harry absorbs this, worry lines knitting his forehead. “But you didn’t see anyone?”
“Not until you.” Tom smiles—gentle, reassuring. Inside, calculation ticks onward: He’ll wonder why I’m alone. Offer an excuse before he asks. “I was making a sweep of the outer tunnels when the magic… shifted. Then you appeared.”
Harry’s mouth opens—another question already forming—but Tom gestures down the aisle, forestalling it. “Come. If Miss Weasley is here, she may be further in. The Chamber has branches the legends never mention.”
He starts walking. Harry follows, sneakers whisper-quiet now under the dampened-sound charm. Shadows slide across carved serpents; torchlight paints their scales in molten green. The air tastes of stone and old enchantments—Tom’s domain, polished to a predatory gleam.
Behind his composed mask, the hunger stirs:
Keep him talking. Catalogue every slip. Learn the future one innocent breadcrumb at a time.
They pass another alcove, this one empty but for a pile of something long-decayed—rotten cloth—robes once, by the buttons. Harry doesn’t notice. His brow is still furrowed, not in fear now, but in thought.
“You didn’t tell anyone,” he says abruptly. “About the Chamber. About what you found. Not even Dumbledore.”
“Did you?”
Harry falters.
It’s a tiny hesitation—half a breath, a twitch of the mouth—but Tom watches it like a hawk watches the twitch of a vole in the grass. Watches it and files it away with all the other tells: the nervous way he grips his wand, the way his sentences come out rushed when he’s afraid, the subtle guilt in his shoulders.
“No,” Harry says at last. Quiet.
Tom lets the silence bloom for just long enough to make it uncomfortable, then softens. Tilts his head in understanding. The model prefect, again.
“I imagine,” he says gently, “you didn’t want anyone thinking you were the one behind it. Parseltongue. Finding the Chamber. All very… incriminating.”
Harry nods, quickly. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“Understandable.” Tom’s voice drops just slightly, almost conspiratorial. “You and I… we’re rare. Most people don’t understand what it means. What it feels like to speak that language. They see snakes and think ‘dark wizard.’ They see secrecy and assume guilt.”
He watches the words land. Watches Harry’s shoulders ease just enough for trust to trickle through the cracks.
“I only wanted to stop the attacks,” he continues. “Just like you. I couldn’t risk drawing attention to myself—not when I might be able to catch the culprit in the act.”
Harry breathes out. “Right. Yeah. That makes sense.”
Tom smiles again. All warmth and reassurance.
They press on through the gloom. The Chamber unfurls endlessly around them, shadow and firelight gliding off the scales of stone serpents. Harry’s steps quicken at every turn, searching, hoping—then slow again, the disappointment carving lines into his forehead. Tom watches carefully, measuring each twitch, each sigh, the anxious frustration knitting through Harry’s body like a tangle of threads.
He waits for the moment Harry’s breathing grows sharper, more brittle, his knuckles turning bone-white around the wand. When it comes, Tom pitches his voice softer, coaxing out the secrets he needs.
“Tell me again exactly what happened,” he murmurs gently. “The details might help us.”
Harry swallows, looking away. His jaw tightens. “I don’t know—I wasn’t with her when she went missing. Ron—her brother—said she’d been acting strange all year. Quiet, secretive. And there were these attacks—students getting Petrified. People said the Heir of Slytherin was behind it.”
“Did they?” Tom’s voice stays carefully neutral. He edges closer, sympathy radiating from every careful angle of his expression. “And Ginny—did anyone suspect her?”
Harry frowns, shaking his head. “No, nobody suspected Ginny. She’s—she’s just a first-year. She wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Tom nods thoughtfully. “Did she ever say anything strange to you? Mention anything unusual, perhaps?”
“No,” Harry says, frustration colouring his voice. “Nothing. She was just—sad, sometimes. Quiet. And then suddenly she was gone, and there was this message saying she’d been taken into the Chamber.”
Harry’s voice cracks slightly, strained now with guilt and desperation. He looks younger suddenly, painfully young, glasses crooked and hair askew, standing helpless in Salazar’s shadow. The boy’s heart is an open book, emotions scrawled plainly across his face, easy for Tom to read.
“Strange,” Tom murmurs, as if considering a difficult puzzle. “So she disappeared without warning. No signs, no clues?”
“None,” Harry whispers, voice shaking now. “I just—I promised Ron I’d find her, and—”
He trails off. The wand hand is trembling visibly, now.
Tom resists the urge to suggest breadcrumbs—though if the girl left any, he’d prefer gold. Weasleys are famously stingy.
Instead, he softens, pitching his voice lower still. Gentle. Kind. The perfect, trustworthy prefect. “You’re doing all you can, Harry. We’ll find her. But first we need to understand.”
He places a careful, reassuring hand on Harry’s shoulder—brief, warm, the touch of an ally.
Harry’s chin wobbles, but he drags in a breath, soldier-brave, and blurts the question gnawing at him:
“But … how are you here? You’re from—you said the Chamber was opened fifty years ago. That’s 1943. How can you be alive now?”
His voice cracks on “alive.” The echo dies against stone.
Tom keeps his hand on the boy’s shoulder a heartbeat longer—anchor, leash—before letting it slide away.
Inside, the hunger sparks again. He hasn’t put the numbers together yet. Good. The less certainty Harry has, the more he’ll cling to the certainty Tom offers.
Outwardly Tom simply nods, as if the question is perfectly reasonable and not, in fact, tectonic.
“Time,” he says, gentle as falling ash, “isn’t always as straight as professors tell us. The Chamber is old, as old as Hogwarts itself. Magic that ancient sometimes … folds.”
He watches the words settle, sees Harry’s brow furrow—trying to picture time folding like parchment.
“I’m real,” Tom continues, voice dipped in reassurance. “You’re real. The blood in our veins agrees on that much. How it’s happened we can worry about after Ginny is safe.”
“But if this is 1943,” Harry insists, voice small now, “then everything—everyone—is fifty years younger. My friends, my parents—”
The name never reaches air; Harry swallows it, eyes bright.
Tom softens his expression another shade, makes it almost sorrowful. “I know it’s frightening. But think: you found me. A Parselmouth, someone who knows the Chamber’s ways. You’re not alone.”
Harry’s breath catches. The trembling in his wand hand eases a fraction.
“Stay close,” Tom murmurs, stepping just inside Harry’s personal orbit, enough to become gravitational. “Let me guide you. Once Ginny’s safe we’ll unravel the rest—together.”
Harry nods, dutiful as a fledgling, and bends to study the floor for scuffs that might be Ginny-sized. Perfect. Head down. Guard down. Trustful.
Tom exhales softly through his nose, wand poised.
Now.
He hadn’t tried before—not properly. Too many variables. Legilimency can startle even the thickest mind, and this boy, jittery as a snidget, needed to be calm, needed to think Tom was safe. Gentle. Helpful.
Now, the moment breathes—ripe and still.
He raises his wand in a lazy circle, a flick dressed up like another Silencing charm. “Just in case,” he says lightly, “if we need to hear movement.”
Harry nods without looking.
Legilimens.
Time to rummage through the Gryffindor sock drawer.
Flash—
Flying, red and gold, a voice shouting Catch it, Harry!—
Another—hand-me-downs, ink-stained fingers, laughter—
And then—
Impact.
He hits it like a bird against glass. No transition, no slope. Just wall.
Of course there’s a wall. Fate never misses a chance to redecorate with brickwork and spite.
Not fear. Not resistance. Not even oblivion. Structure.
It rears up in the dark like obsidian carved into purpose—dense, twisting, wrong. Not born from the boy. No—this isn’t a child’s panic-barrier. It pulses low and foul, steeped in old magic, something half-feral curled behind the stone like it’s waiting for a knock.
It smells like death. Like dust and formaldehyde and blood trapped under fingernails. It feels—
Familiar.
The backlash throws him out hard, like a tongue spitting poison. Pain lances behind his eyes, sharp and sudden. He tastes iron.
Well, that’s new: concussion à la carte.
He lets the spell break and lowers his wand in one smooth motion, just shy of shaking.
Harry doesn’t notice—still scanning the floor, muttering something about shoe sizes.
Tom forces air through his teeth. Calm. Collected. Contained. He runs a hand through his hair, casual, like he’s thinking. Planning. Not reeling.
But inside—
What was that?
Who built a wall like that inside this boy’s head? Not the boy himself. Not with that posture, that helplessness, those clumsy little truths dropping from his mouth like sweets from a broken jar.
No, someone—something—has marked him. Caged him from within. And not gently.
He doesn’t guess. He doesn’t speculate. Guessing is for the desperate. Instead he files the sensation—the greasy, coiling wrongness of it—deep in his mind. He will learn the shape of it later. Will peel it back layer by layer until the architecture screams its name.
For now, he smooths the fury from his face, pastes on a soft crease between his brows. “Nothing,” he says, tone even. “The trail’s cold.”
Harry sighs. “Yeah. I figured.”
They move on, torchlight flickering over stone serpents.Tom walks in silence, already drafting the next approach—new angles, softer pressure.
Because that mind belongs to him now. And nothing keeps what’s his. Not forever.
Tom lets a handful of silent steps stretch the moment thin, then eases into conversation as though nothing at all has gone wrong inside his skull.
“So … parseltongue,” he says lightly, the way one might discuss weather or Quidditch scores. “How long have you been able to speak it?”
Harry blinks, glance flicking from floor to Tom. “Er—always, I think? I mean, I didn’t really notice until I was nearly eleven.”
Tom hums, encouraging. “Rare gift.”
Harry shrugs, uneasy. “Thought it was a wizard thing. Didn’t know it was weird everyone found out.”
“Understandable.” Tom adjusts his pace to match the boy’s shorter stride, posture relaxed, every inch the attentive elder student. Inside, gears spin. If he thought it normal, no mentor explained otherwise. Muggle-raised? Interesting.
“What was the first time?” he asks, as though sharing camp-fire anecdotes. “Speaking to a snake, I mean.”
Harry’s mouth quirks, half-grimace, half-memory. “A boa at the zoo. Day before my eleventh birthday. My cousin was banging on the glass, being a prat. I told the snake it must be miserable. Glass vanished. Cousin fell in. Snake slid out, said ‘Thanks, amigo,’ and slithered off.”
Tom lets a laugh slip—soft, perfectly pitched admiration. “Impressive. Accidental glass-vanishing and cross-species gratitude in one go.”
Harry rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, the Dursleys weren’t thrilled.”
Dursleys. Another surname. Definitely Muggle. Tom pockets the name, the zoo, the casual confirmation that Harry grew up outside wizarding supervision. A boy from the future, untrained, walking miracle magics by instinct.
He wonders how many other talents are slumbering behind that cursed wall.
“You assumed every wizard could do it,” Tom muses aloud, masking calculation as reflection. “No wonder the rumours shocked you.”
Harry offers a crooked, embarrassed smile. “Didn’t help when I set a python on the class during Dueling Club. People started calling me the Heir myself.”
Tom’s eyes glint—there’s a story worth dissecting later—but his tone stays mild. “Misunderstandings breed quickly. I know the feeling.”
Harry exhales, tension easing another notch. Good. Each confession pries the shell wider. Tom walks beside him, torch-shadows sliding over his prefect badge, voice smooth as venom diluted in honey.
“Still,” he says, letting warmth colour the words, “it means you and I have an advantage down here."
Tom’s smile is gentle, reassuring. Inside, the hunger coils tighter, licking the taste of new data from its teeth.
He lets his gaze drift to a carved serpent coiled around the nearest pillar, tracing its stone scales with something that looks like nostalgia. Then, as if the memory has surfaced unbidden, he begins—voice pitched softer, almost wistful:
“You know,” he says, “the first snake that ever spoke to me didn’t thank me. It laughed.”
Harry blinks. “Snakes can laugh?”
“Apparently.” Tom slides his fingers along the pillar’s cold flank, the gesture half absent, half deliberate. “There was a garden behind my orphanage—Wool’s. Mostly nettles, broken bottles, a sagging greenhouse no one bothered to repair. I was exploring one summer evening and found a grass snake trapped under a pane of shattered glass. Tiny thing—looked more like a shoelace than a monster.”
He pauses, lips curving in wry amusement. Let the boy picture the scene: lonely child, neglected garden, helpless animal. Sympathy is a solvent.
“I lifted the glass,” he continues, “and it hissed at me—quite impolite, really. But the hiss made sense. Words. It told me I was slow for a two-leg and that, frankly, it could have wriggled free without my help.”
Harry huffs a startled laugh. Tom files away the sound—genuine, unguarded.
“I answered back—didn’t know I was doing anything special. We talked a while: whether birds taste better than mice, whether the sun feels different through glass. When Matron called lights-out, I said goodbye.” He flicks a glance at Harry, lets a sliver of something like vulnerability peek through. “It told me to come again. Said I was… interesting.”
It is all true, strictly speaking. Omitted: that he returned the next day with a pocket-knife, cut the bully Dennis Bishop’s shoelaces, and set the snake loose at precisely the right moment to make Dennis weep in front of the girls’ dormitory. Details. Not tonight’s flavour.
Harry smiles—small, crooked, but warm. “Must’ve been nice. Having someone who understood.”
Tom nods, tilting his head just so, letting lantern-light catch the edge of a sincere expression he practises in mirrors. “It was. Snakes don’t gossip, you see. They don’t judge.”
He straightens, the moment of confession neatly folded away. “That was when I realised words can do more than fill silence—they can open doors no one else even sees.”
Harry’s eyes flick to the vast stretch of Chamber ahead, as if the pillars themselves might be listening.
Tom adds, gentle but deliberate: “You and I, Harry—we know how to open those doors. That matters.”
The boy’s shoulders square a little, like the thought gives him spine. Exactly the effect Tom intends. Every shared story is another stitch in the tether binding Harry’s trust to him.
They resume their slow sweep of the floor, muffled footfalls echoing under the vaulted ceiling. Tom’s mind hums behind the calm mask—mapping pressure points, rehearsing which kernel of history to offer next, which to keep buried under glass until it’s time to shatter it.
For now he is the confidant, the fellow Parselmouth who understands.
They finish the sweep in a slow spiral, torch-to-pillar, alcove-to-alcove, until they circle back to the massive statue’s feet. Nothing: no flash of red hair, no scuff of smaller shoes, no hiss of scales. Just stone and the steady drip of water far off in the dark.
Harry’s courage—brave but finite—has thinned to threads. His breathing hitches; every exhale sounds too close to a sob he refuses to let out. He scrubs a sleeve across his face, muttering something about dust.
Tom notes the tremor in those skinny shoulders, the way Harry’s knuckles have gone bloodless around his wand. Fear, exhaustion, guilt—ripe emotions, soft as overripe fruit, perfect for moulding.
He steps beside the boy, lets his voice settle into that low, velvety cadence again. “It isn’t your fault, you know.”
Harry startles. “What?”
“The Chamber,” Tom says, gentle as evening rain. “Ginny. Any of it. You’re twelve, Harry. You came down here alone because no one else could. That’s remarkable, not blameworthy.”
Harry’s mouth opens, shuts. A dozen arguments stall on his tongue; none find traction. The relief of being told it isn’t his fault is almost physically painful.
Tom conjures a canteen with a flick—icy water, condensation beading on the metal. He presses it into Harry’s hand. “Drink. You’re shaking.”
Harry obeys, throat working. Some colour creeps back into his face. The canteen vanishes once he’s done; Tom doesn’t need props cluttering the scene.
“Sometimes,” Tom says, voice dropping conspiratorially, “searching in circles dulls the senses. We try so hard to see what’s missing that we overlook what’s changed.” He gestures at the scrubbed-clean floor, the freshly lit torches. “We may need fresh eyes. A different vantage.”
Harry swallows. “You mean… leave?”
“For now.” Tom lets the idea bloom slowly, soothingly. “Regroup. Re-enter with purpose rather than panic. I promise the Chamber won’t lock either of us out.”
Harry steps toward the nearest column, pulls a bit of broken tile from the floor, and scratches a rough lightning-bolt into the base. “So I know if someone moves it,” he mutters, not looking at Tom.
The boy's gaze skitters to the towering statue, to the serpents coiled along the pillars. He hates the idea of retreat. It’s in every tense line of his frame. But he’s pale, shaking, and the wall behind his mind still throbs where Tom struck it—Tom feels the echo like a bruise inside himself.
He softens his tone one last notch. “You can’t help Ginny if you collapse, Harry.”
Harry hesitates, eyes still darting around the Chamber like Ginny might suddenly appear behind a pillar if he just looks hard enough. But then he shakes his head, quick and tight.
“We can’t leave,” he says. “The entrance collapsed. Ron and I—we were with Lockhart, and he tried to do this memory charm, but it backfired. The whole tunnel caved in. Ron’s stuck behind it. I came through alone.”
His voice wobbles at the end—just a little—but he steels himself fast, like fear is something he can beat back with sheer stubbornness.
Tom lifts an eyebrow, but only lightly. He’s careful not to look too impressed.
“A memory charm gone wrong?” he says, mouth curving. “I’m assuming Lockhart is the one who ended up worse off?”
Harry nods. “Wand exploded. Serves him right.”
Tom hums—serves him right is a promising moral stance—and then steps forward, placing a confident hand on Harry’s shoulder.
“That kind of collapse sounds dramatic,” he says, tone measured, “but remember—your collapse is fifty years in the future. Stone here hasn’t lived that moment yet.”
Harry blinks at the logic, shoulders tightening with a fresh kind of panic. “Right… right, of course.”
“It’s still a tunnel, not a cliff face,” Tom adds calmly. “If there’s rubble, a few Reductos will handle it. And if there isn’t—so much the better. Shall we confirm?”
He leads the way, wand raised.
Harry’s trainers squeak into rhythm beside him. Tom doesn’t smile; he allows the idea of a smile in the back of his mind.