Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Odysseus Bound	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 5731 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Two—The Sunlord

Tom Riddle…

Harry knew he spent at least a minute staring, with his hand raised at his side as if he could snatch Riddle’s wand away from him or defend himself with an empty palm, and not responding to the question. On the other hand, maybe that helped convince this man, this stranger with an enemy’s face, that Harry wasn’t whoever he’d feared Harry was. Riddle stared back, his mouth setting more and more firmly in something that looked like a mixture of a sneer and a frown.

            “The eyes are the same color,” he said, as if talking to himself. “The hair…the same. But the scar couldn’t be faked.” He shook his head, and then he seemed to have decided that he’d given Harry long enough to declare himself. “What’s your name?” His voice deepened, and his wand swung around to point directly at Harry’s heart.

            Harry swallowed. He could try a fake name, but he knew nothing about what had just happened here—it had to have just happened, some of the rubble around them was still smoking—and he thought Riddle would know if he lied. Harry didn’t want to lie to someone who could destroy him the first time he stepped into a new world.

            “Harry Potter.”

            He meant to go on, to explain something about Dumbledore and the train and the way he’d been brought here, but Riddle vaulted the broken stones that lay in between them in one go and had his wand pressed up against Harry’s throat. Harry coughed and choked, as a gentle hint to Riddle to move his wand away. Riddle took no notice. He leaned harder, in fact, and hissed into Harry’s face, in a damp way that made Harry sure he could still talk to serpents here, no matter if he was a Light wizard.

            “You dare to use his name?” Riddle whispered. “I should destroy you for that presumption, and I would, except your magic doesn’t feel like his and the scar on your forehead is different and I want to hear what you’re going to say before I kill you.” His wand reached up and moved the fringe back from Harry’s forehead so he could see the scar again. Harry found himself bracing for the pain automatically, but nothing happened. Riddle carried on frowning at the scar. “That’s a curse scar, I know it is, but they don’t usually leave a defined shape.”

            He glanced back at Harry again, seeming to remember that he was more than his forehead and a curious scar, and his face grew sharp and tight. “Now,” he whispered, using his wand under Harry’s chin to force him to look more at the sky than Riddle’s expression. “Tell me why you’re using the name and the appearance of the Dark Lord.”

*

            The Dark Lord?

            Harry felt as though Riddle had already killed him, and his body just hadn’t decided he was dead yet. His throat choked off his breath and his world reeled and there was a heavy pain in his chest that surely, surely, would blossom into a heart attack any minute. Then he could die after all and go be with his parents and Remus and Sirius the way he already should have. Maybe he would even get to see Tonks and Fred, too.

            Dumbledore’s voice rolled through his head again, explaining. The magic will not stretch to accommodate you. It can only allow you even into another dimension if the Harry Potter in that place never existed, or died, or is so fundamentally different that you would be adding a new person to the world, not a replica of one that exists.

            Harry reckoned he hadn’t paid enough attention to that last part. He had thought that Harry Potter here must be dead, or unfamiliar, and that Riddle was angry because he thought Harry was trying to take over the body of a friend he’d had, a Harry he’d known, who’d died.

            But fundamentally different…

            Yeah, Harry supposed he really was fucking fundamentally different here if he’d ended up as the Dark Lord and Tom Riddle was a Light wizard.

*

            Riddle called his attention back by rapping his wand against Harry’s Adam’s apple. Harry choked again and glared at him. Riddle returned the glare with interest, but already he had eased a step back and stood with his head cocked like a vulture who wanted to listen to Harry’s heart beating instead of just pecking his eyes out.

            “The name was truly a surprise to you,” Riddle murmured. “Or the information, perhaps, since you know the name well enough to use it. Hmmm. I am never mistaken on that front.” No bragging in that tone, either, Harry noted grudgingly. Well, maybe Riddle really had earned the right to say that he never was. “Explain to me who you are.”

            “My name is Harry Potter,” Harry said, deciding that he might as well clear that up right away. Fuck if he was going to take an alias that Tom Riddle gave him. “But I come from another version of this world. One where you went mad a long time ago and became the next Dark Lord. You took the name Lord Voldemort—”

            He stopped, because Riddle had made a gesture so abrupt and hard that it was shut up or get a wand in the teeth. Riddle leaned backwards from him as though Harry carried a contamination, and Harry grimaced but stood still. It was bloody hard, though, being glared at by someone like this.

            “How did you know that name?” Riddle whispered.

            “Did you not just listen to me?” Harry demanded. “In my world, a sixteen-year-old version of you told me, when I was trying to rescue my friend Ginny Weasley from a basilisk and he was a piece of soul imprisoned in a diary. Anyway. You came after me when I was a baby and tried to cast the Killing Curse at me because I was prophesied to defeat you, but my mother’s love protected me and so the scar just left this curse instead. I finally defeated you by going and letting you—I mean, Lord Voldemort—cast the Killing Curse at me again, but Dumbledore said that changed me too much and I’d passed through the Gates of Death, so my only option is to find another world that has a space open for me. The first place I came was here.”

            Riddle was silent, staring at him. Harry lifted his chin. He couldn’t help it if his story sounded slightly ridiculous. He had done all he could to avoid this, including trying to die. It was Dumbledore’s mistake that had made it necessary for him to come here.

            “I don’t understand this,” Riddle whispered. “You’re not him, that much seems obvious, and yet you speak things you cannot know, but he might. However, the story you tell would also explain how you can know those things.”

            “Yes, it does.” Harry raised his hand and pushed at his yew wand, missing his holly one at the moment more than he could say. He wondered how in the world he was supposed to get along here without a wand, and why Dumbledore hadn’t sounded concerned about it. Then again, he was beginning to wonder how real the Dumbledore he had met was, and whether it was possible that he was just a projection of Harry’s thoughts. “Look, can you tell me what you’re going to do, kill me or imprison me? It’s getting wearisome to wonder.”

            Riddle closed his eyes as if listening to something. Maybe he was. Harry stood there, looking around at the rubble, and remembered another thing Dumbledore had said (always assuming one could trust anything Dumbledore had said at this point). He would always appear at the location of Platform 9¾, no matter what world he arrived in.

            But here…

            “Did they attack and destroy King’s Cross?” he whispered, forgetting for the moment that he didn’t really know who “they” were. He had only Riddle’s word, and the evidence from his own world that Riddle lied a lot. “What happened?”

            Riddle opened his eyes and gave Harry a thin smile that made him want to step backwards. But Riddle’s thin hand was on his arm—thin but strong, Harry noticed—and he said, “An attack. We are at war. Dumbledore, my mentor and the first leader of the Light Resistance, died a few months ago. He would not use the tactics that would have strangled the war in its cradle.” Riddle grinned. “That’s all right. I can.”

            Harry stared at him, a little dazed. “I can’t believe you’re a Light wizard.”

            Riddle cocked his head. “Really? But a powerful Light wizard offered to train me, once he saw I also had power, and Light magic is more powerful than Dark.”

            “Bollocks,” Harry said, before he could stop himself.

            Riddle offered him another grin. “You will be a pleasure to train. The way I should have trained the boy whose name and face you bear.” His face turned so grim that Harry flinched. “Instead of leaving it up to someone else.”

            Harry shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, as should be obvious by now,” he said. “Do you really want to continue this conversation here? Or could we go somewhere else where I could eat and get warm and hear more about the strangeness of how I wound up a Dark Lord?”

            Riddle looked at him for a moment with no expression at all. Harry stared back. It was true that he wouldn’t be able to stop Riddle if he chose to curse Harry, but at the moment, that was hardly relevant. He was cold, and this world already seemed like it would be no home for him even if he could technically live here.

            “You’re very different,” Riddle said softly. “I look forward to hearing how different.”

            He held out his arm. Harry had only a second to figure out what he wanted, and by then, Riddle had grabbed him—he seemed more handsy than Lord Voldemort had, but just as impatient—and they vanished.

*

            They appeared in the middle of a courtyard covered by a light fall of snow. Harry frowned and looked in a circle. He had assumed without thinking about it that any world he arrived in would be in the beginning of May, the same as the one he’d left, but maybe not.

            His breath caught when he saw what loomed above them.

            It was clearly Hogwarts, but a Hogwarts made over and ready for war. The towers were surrounded, on their tops, by looming battlements of dark stone. The walls themselves were hung with what Harry thought at first were ivy vines, but then realized were wards, green and sometimes gold, snapping back and forth as though they were hunting for life in the cracks of the stones. A huge moat flowed around the castle, dark and slimy water Harry thought had probably been diverted from the lake. As he watched, something came to life in the water, lifting a dark green snout that didn’t look like a squid’s. Riddle hissed at it in Parseltongue.

            Harry tried to ignore it—he had hoped that particular gift would fade after the Horcrux was out of him—but it seemed he was doomed to understand snakes no matter what. “Do not eat him,” Riddle was saying, “He is a guest.”

            “I notice you don’t say friend,” Harry muttered, and didn’t try to anticipate whether it would come out in Parseltongue or in English.

            Riddle stared hard at him, then twisted his lips in what was likely meant to be a grin but didn’t do a good job of it. “Remarkable,” he said, drawing Harry towards the moat with a hard hold. “You really are different from him.”

            “And you’re not trying to murder me or torture me,” Harry retorted. “It’s an improvement.”

            Riddle nodded with the same smile, and waited for a moment. Then the snake, or whatever it was, rose from the water, its back arched so that it led across the moat like the curve of a bridge. Harry looked at the slimy skin, grey-green with either water or moss, and swallowed slowly.

            “Not so many words now?” Riddle asked, and turned to face the snake. “Hold on tight to me. I do not want you slipping.”

            It was the other way around, Harry soon discovered. He was walking beside Riddle, forcibly, because Riddle held onto his wrist, and simply manipulated Harry around the points where the bridge narrowed, and tugged him back up straight again when Harry’s feet started to slip. By the time they descended onto the other side, Harry thought that he wouldn’t like to try to find his way over the bridge by himself, but with someone next to him, it hadn’t been that bad.

            “And here you are, a place that I’m sure is familiar to you no matter what your incarnation,” Riddle said, shoving Harry ahead of him.

            Harry caught his balance and stared curiously around the entrance hall. It was a much smaller place than it was in the Hogwarts he remembered, the walls closer in and a tunnel leading further into the school. Harry could just see down the tunnel to where it turned, presumably in the direction of the Great Hall. There was more of the same dark stone that enclosed the Towers, and more of the vine-like wards crawling up and down.

            “I like what you’ve done with the place,” Harry said over his shoulder to Riddle. He had to maintain that sense of distance and humor, or he would go out of his mind.

            “Of course you do,” Riddle said, in an absolutely bland voice, and shoved Harry ahead of him with a hand in the middle of his back. “Let’s show you to your new quarters.”

            Harry bit back a ton of questions, including who else lived in the castle and why they had quarters available to give him if people wanted to live in the heart of this safe place, as seemed likely. Riddle was striding quickly now, but had released his arm. Harry thought Riddle probably just assumed he would follow, and bristled.

            On the other hand, what else did he have to do right now? He couldn’t Apparate without a wand. He followed.

            The tunnel narrowed further, and just when Harry had started holding his breath and thinking about his cupboard, it plunged into a dark hole in the floor. Riddle swung himself down onto the rungs of a ladder that apparently descended. Harry watched the hole sweep past Riddle’s shoulders, barely broader than they were, and felt a little sick.

            “No way,” he whispered.

            Riddle sighed at him and called Lumos to his wand, extending it down. “I assure you that I’m not leading you into a pit of snakes, Harry,” he said. “Not that it would matter if I did, since you would presumably talk them round.” He looked at Harry with coldly curious eyes. “You will simply have to tell me how you came by that gift.”

            Harry gritted his teeth, reminded himself again about the lack of a wand, and swept the shapeless cloak he wore back from his shoulders so he could climb down the ladder. The metal of the rungs seemed to stick and cling to his fingers, and he had no idea whatsoever about what lay at the bottom. Maybe the replacement for the Great Hall. Maybe a kind of strategy room.

            Maybe a dungeon.

            Well, Hogwarts had had plenty of dungeons and to spare, he knew that, and Merlin knew someone like Riddle would feel at home in them.

            Harry rolled his eyes at his own fears, and gritted his teeth, and continued to climb.

            The ladder unrolled beneath his feet until he began to wonder if he had dreamed the train and Dumbledore and the journey to this world. Maybe even his world, too. Maybe he’d dreamed of everything but the climbing. Then he would wonder what—

            The floor jarred his feet unpleasantly, but Harry swung to the side and hopped off the ladder. Once again they were in a tunnel, but this one at least had a roof and widened walls and light at the end. Against the light, Harry could make out the angular form of Riddle, striding along as though he had an important meeting to get to. Maybe he did, for all Harry knew. He knew Dumbledore was dead in this world, but who might still be alive?

            He swallowed and quickened his steps to follow Riddle. He wanted to see his friends again, if they existed here. Perhaps he would get to see other Weasleys, too. Hell, even the sight of Snape and Malfoy would be welcome at this point.

            Anyone who wasn’t Tom Bloody Riddle.

            They came out in what had to be the replacement for the Great Hall. Instead of an enchanted ceiling showing the weather, it had one that showed piles of rubble, smoking houses, the bones of villages, and other castles standing tall and strong against the glow of curses, scenes that shifted slowly in and out, one fading and another replacing it. The tables in the room were gathered in a circle beneath the center of the ceiling, and around them was an outer ring of chairs. Plain wood and stone, Harry saw as he looked. He blinked, a little surprised at the lack of luxury. He had assumed that this Tom Riddle would at least insist on having satin cushions and marble walls.

            Maybe that’s for his private quarters, Harry thought, and caught his breath and hurried faster when he saw a small number of men and women sitting at one of the curved tables. Two of them had red hair, and another had a wooden leg and chipped nose that made him look like Mad-Eye Moody.

            He jerked to a stop when everybody but Riddle and Moody whirled to their feet and aimed their wands at him, though. Several of them were clearly on the verge of casting curses. Harry rubbed his palms on his trousers. Dark Lord, here. Right.

            “He isn’t who he looks like,” said Riddle carelessly, striding past the people on their feet and falling into a seat beside the Moody lookalike. Harry watched him as he picked up a wooden goblet waiting for him and cast some kind of charm on it that made steaming liquid fill it. From the way his dark grey eyes darted back and forth from Harry to the others, Harry could only come to one conclusion. He’s enjoying this.

            But then, Tom Riddle had always been a bastard. That was the only commonality Harry had found so far between this world and his own.

            Oddly enough, that steadied him. He nodded to the others, lifted his hands in front of him, and said, “My name is Harry Potter, but I’m from a different world. I can show you something that should prove I’m different, if you’ll let me move my hands without blowing them off.”

            A tall woman standing off to the side snorted. “Well, he’s not him,” she said, and tucked her wand away. “The Dark Lord doesn’t have any sense of humor at all. What?” she added, looking at Harry and fluffing her hair. “Do I have something on my nose?”

            Harry became aware he was staring, and looked back at the others. But this Hermione was taller than the one he had left behind, and spoke with even more of a confident, crisp snap in her voice, and stood with the bearing of a soldier. He hoped she had had a chance to make a difference when fighting this other version of himself.

            “I don’t trust him,” said a Weasley with a collar of linked stones around his neck that flashed different colors in the light as he shifted. It took Harry even longer to realize it was Percy, but a Percy with harder, more suspicious eyes and a wand that looked as though it had a golden glow shining through the wood. “Anyone could come up with a disguise, and anyone could come up with a sense of humor.”

            “But who would have the daring to imitate the Dark Lord?” Hermione waved her hand and sat back down. “Use your common sense, Percival.”

            Harry held back his snicker, and met the eyes of the nearest Weasley, who looked like Charlie, if Charlie never smiled. “You were going to show us something?” Charlie asked, exquisitely polite.

            Harry nodded and pushed his fringe back. Several people leaned in close to get a look at the lightning bolt scar. Harry held his breath and reminded himself that he had invited this. His hands didn’t tremble where he held them down at his side, and that was all he could really ask for.

            “A curse scar.” Bill in this universe didn’t have the earring or the werewolf-claw scars from Greyback that Harry had last seen him with. He did have a silver left hand, which flashed brighter than Percy’s jewels as he sat heavily down and stared at Harry. “Did he tell you where he came from, Sunlord?”

            Harry found himself looking around for Dumbledore automatically, but it was Riddle who answered, leaning down the table. “Yes. Another world. I found him in the rubble of the Platform, and it’s true that he appeared out of thin air and I saw a shadow like a train behind him, and felt the rumble of powerful magic. What he says—certain details that he was privy to and I’ve never told anyone—confirms for me that he’s telling the truth. There would be no reason for him to find out those details and then not use them against me. This one can't use them.” He took another sip from the goblet, never removing his eyes from Harry.

            “What are those details?” The Weasley Harry had kept his eyes away from the longest moved forwards now. Harry swallowed as he looked at Ron’s face, but a Ron he didn’t know, who watched him with cold eyes and kept his hand on his wand as though he expected Harry to draw one and attack any second. His nose had been broken before, and his freckles were more frequent and like dots of blood. Harry wondered how long he’d been fighting in this war. Maybe this Ron and Hermione were older than him, but he didn’t think so.

            “Ones that concern me and the path I might have taken, and are of no concern to anyone else,” Riddle said pleasantly, and swallowed what was apparently left in the goblet, because he pushed it away. A house-elf appeared and took it, vanishing without the pop that they usually had in Harry’s world. A second later, it appeared with a replacement goblet.

            “You need to tell us if we’re going to trust him!” Ron turned around and stared at Riddle.

            Riddle looked back, his eyebrows rising so fast that Harry winced a little, for Ron’s sake. “No,” he said, his voice lowering and deepening. “I don’t.”

            Ron wavered for a second, then turned away and collapsed at the table, burying his head in his arms. Hermione laid one hand on his shoulder, lightly, and turned and looked at Harry. “Why don’t you tell us what you can?”

            Harry gulped and nodded, and took the one empty chair, next to Riddle. He’d thought maybe Riddle wouldn’t go on looking at him now that he had to turn to the side and do it, but of course he turned around at once, with a lazy smile on his face that suggested there was nothing he liked better. Harry found himself avoiding those dark grey eyes as he looked at Hermione’s face. “As long as you tell me what you can.”

            Hermione gave him a fragile smile. “First, do you know everyone at this table? I’m curious about how different our worlds actually are.”

            Harry looked around. He nodded at Mad-Eye Moody, who was still watching him with close, critical eyes, but hadn’t started up. Maybe he could see right away, with his magical eye, that Harry wasn’t who he looked like. Harry also hoped that Moody could see he was no threat without a wand.

            The woman on the other side of him took more squinting, but eventually Harry realized she was Andromeda Black. She had her hand tightly locked with the battle-hardened man beside her, who had to be her husband, Ted Tonks. His face looked different here, more tired and with a lot of scar tissue gathered by his eyes.

            The man beyond him, Harry frankly stared at. He looked so much like Sirius that Harry had almost opened his mouth to yell his godfather’s name, but no, Harry saw when he looked, this one was much younger. His black hair and strong jawline and grey eyes all shouted Black, though. Harry took a deep breath, wondering if Regulus had survived in this world, where there had been no Voldemort to betray.

            Before Harry could say anything, the man rolled his eyes and held up one hand. “Yes, I know that you’re probably about to call me by one of my cousins’ names,” he said. “Because people in this world do it, too. They can’t believe I gave up the family I was born to.”

            Harry blinked, hard, and slumped back in his chair. The voice was familiar, even though the features weren’t… “Malfoy?” he whispered weakly.

            Malfoy gave him a smile hard enough to cut. “Black,” he said. “Draco Black.”

            “How?” Harry asked, and then winced a little when Malfoy—did Harry have to call him Draco?—pulled back and his face slammed shut as though a door had fallen into place. But surely it was natural to ask a question? They knew and most seemed to accept that he was from a different world, after all.

            “Tell him, Mr. Black.”

            That was Riddle, his voice as cold and heavy as Nagini. Draco glanced once over at Riddle, and ended up closing his eyes and nodding. He turned back to Harry, who sat with his hands clasped tightly in his lap. He wished he could make the question unsaid. On the one hand, he did want to know what had happened to make Malfoy so different from the one he knew. On the other hand, no one should have to obey Tom Riddle.

            Unless he’s really saved their lives and been guiding them all this time, the way Dumbledore would have.

            And that was another story Harry wanted to hear, probably more than he wanted to hear anyone else’s at this table.

            “My father decided that peace and power weren’t enough for him,” Draco said, his eyes distant and shaded. “Neither was money. He wanted to play a part in ending Muggles’ lives and have an excuse for killing them, and for that, he needed a Dark Lord. So he played a part in corrupting Harry Potter—maybe I should say the one born to this world, in view of who you are—and turning him to the Dark. It was a disgusting process, and one beneath a Malfoy. So I struck back the only way I could, and took away what he valued most in the world, his heir and the continuation of his family line. I took on my mother’s family name and family blood. Any children born to me now will have Mother’s parents as their blood grandparents. In effect, I became my mother’s brother.”

            Harry blinked a lot before he finally nodded in acceptance. He knew from the way Riddle watched him with mocking eyes that he wasn’t very convincing, but he reckoned he didn’t have to be. Harry didn’t have to understand everything. He had asked for Malfoy’s story, and had it, in condensed form.

            And given that he didn’t act the same or look the same, maybe it would be no great hardship, after all, to call Malfoy Draco.

            Harry let his gaze continue around the table. There was Fleur, who examined him in silence. She seemed much less cheerful than she did in his world. But then again, there was no sign that she and Bill really cared about each other, and her face was lined and care-worn as much as anyone else at the table.

            He caught his breath at the sight of the next person in line. “Neville,” he whispered. He didn’t get up and go over to him, but his legs twitched with the impulse to do so. He felt more than saw Riddle smirk beside him.

            Neville, taller than he was in Harry’s world and with muscles that bulged along his arms, smiled tentatively at him. “Did we know each other?” he asked. “We didn’t all that well, here. I was in Gryffindor and he was in Slytherin, and there was no way that we could spend much time together.”

            Harry nodded. “In my world, there was a prophecy that a certain child would defeat the Dark Lord.” He took care to keep his eyes away from Riddle, not knowing how much the man would like him to announce about that so soon. “There were two candidates for the child, though. I was one, and you were the other.”

            Neville’s eyes widened so far that they made him look comical, and Harry had to admit that he smiled again. That was more like the Neville Harry knew. “Wow,” Neville breathed. “You were both born at the end of July? So were we. The prophecy had something to do with that?”

            Harry nodded and started to say something else, but Riddle cut in, maybe bored, maybe prudent, because Harry might have told them too much about fighting the Dark Lord in his own world. “We must discuss the current nature of the war. This Harry’s arrival, I believe, could give us a powerful advantage.”

            Half the table winced. Harry thought he knew why. Even though Riddle wasn’t referring to the Harry of this universe, using his name so casually was like Dumbledore calling Voldemort “Tom.” It just didn’t happen unless someone was supremely confident in their own power.

            Harry turned to face Riddle. Riddle raised one eyebrow at him. Harry took a deep breath. He would have to become more comfortable with him if he was going to join his war, Harry thought, and especially if this world was going to become his home.

            “Why?” Harry asked. “I’m just a random person who was involved in a totally different prophecy and killed a totally different Dark Lord. I don’t even have a wand.”

            Riddle sat up. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, eyes piercing, as if he suspected that Harry had hidden his wand in a pocket and was playing a silly trick on them. “Of course you have a wand. I would sense your untamed magic blazing out of your core if you did not, and I do not.”

            “Well, maybe you’re wrong, sometimes,” Harry snapped back. He could feel some of the Weasleys edging their chairs away from him. Draco remained immobile, and so did Andromeda and her husband, who hadn’t spoken yet. Moody looked bored, Neville nervous. “I didn’t bring a wand when I—died, and then I’d passed through the Gates of Death and couldn’t go back for it. So I don’t have any ability to access my magic.”

            Riddle settled back and gave him a thin smile. “Have you tried Summoning your wand?”

            “From another universe?” Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m not that powerful. I was never that powerful,” he added. The last thing he needed was for people here to start believing crazy things about him the way people in his own world did.

            His throat almost closed as he thought about that, though. At the moment, he’d have happily hugged Rita Skeeter. Home.

            “Summon it,” Riddle repeated.

            Harry glanced around the table to see if anyone else thought Riddle was mental, but the only one who wore anything other than a neutral or blank expression was Hermione. She gave him a little nod, and Harry nodded back, although he doubted the Harry of this universe had been best friends with this Hermione.

            Harry held out his hands out in front of him, cleared his throat, and said, “Accio wand.”

            There was silence, long enough that Harry started to open his eyes and smile at Riddle. But then there was a whistle of wind like air parting around something in flight, and a heavy weight smacked into Harry’s hands.

            He knew at once that it wasn’t right, it couldn’t be. Holly wood and phoenix feather had never weighed this much. He looked down—

            He was holding the Elder Wand.

            “No,” Harry said loudly, and dropped the Elder Wand on the tabletop. It rolled down until it collided with Riddle’s goblet, and clicked to a stop.

            The next moment, there came the sound of something soft and crumbly falling apart. Riddle silently picked up his goblet and showed Harry the base of it. The wood had gone rotten.

            Harry shook his head. His throat was as dry as those ashes, as that rot. He put his hands over his eyes and held them there, trembling.

            There were ways that he could be the Master of the Elder Wand. He could see it, could see the way that the wand had traced out its path, from Dumbledore’s hand, to Draco Malfoy’s, to his when he took Malfoy’s wand. Voldemort wielding it would have been no trouble at all. And perhaps, if the wand really was one of the Deathly Hallows and as powerful as that fairy story talked about, then it could have the magic to follow him between worlds.

            That didn’t mean he wanted it. And the twinkle in Dumbledore’s eyes when he promised that Harry not having a wand wouldn’t be a problem just made Harry want to slaughter him all the more. If Dumbledore had been in front of him right now, still alive and breathing, Harry would have killed him before Snape could.

            A hand clapped him on the shoulder, and Harry started. As he was lifting his head, Riddle said, “I believe that our guest has had a hard and traumatic time, and that he needs to rest in order to get his power back in order. And if he is to be of any use to us in our war, then I need time to explain the circumstances to him and let him choose his side.”

            Moody scoffed and said something that sounded like, “As if you would let him choose any other side.”

            “Oh, everyone has a free choice,” Riddle said softly. “Which one did I offer you, Alastor, and which one did you make?”

            There was silence after that, and then everyone shuffled away from the table. Harry looked up in time to see Draco turning to look back at Harry, his face sharp and thoughtful, and Hermione waving to him. Ron looked as if he might have done the same thing, but in the end, his hand dropped back to his side. They took other tunnels that led away into the mass of stone Hogwarts seemed to have become, presumably going to their rooms.

            “Come.” Riddle stood and extended a hand. Harry looked at it dully until Riddle snapped his fingers, and Harry realized that Riddle expected Harry to rise and follow him. Harry sighed and stood. Riddle gripped his shoulder for one second, then turned his back.

            “Remember to bring your wand,” Riddle added over his shoulder. “I recognize it, you know, although in this world it was buried with Albus.”

            Harry rubbed his hand over his mouth and snatched the Elder Wand as quickly as he could, sticking it into his pocket. His hand was only in contact with it for a few seconds, and even those seconds felt as though they spread a thin layer of grime over his palm and fingers.

            “Then you do believe that I came from another world?” he managed to ask Riddle, who didn’t stop and didn’t slow down, just continued walking. They had entered a tunnel that ran in a different direction from all the others, and the roof was rising. Harry was grateful for that. He would have hated to look like a coward by, well, cowering. “That I didn’t just steal the Elder Wand from Dumbledore’s grave or something?”

            “Albus summoned the Elder Wand like that,” Riddle said over his shoulder. His voice was calm, but the force of his eyes was like a blow. Harry winced back from it. “I know that it responds to none but its true master. And how could you have gained mastery of it once he died, undefeated? But it could exist in another world.”

            Harry nodded, and kept quiet. If Riddle actually believed him and was willing to give him a place here, it was a good idea not to question him.

            Even if I do remember who he was in my world.

            Riddle opened a door at the end of the corridor by nothing more than passing his hand across it, as though it were a Gringotts vault. But the door swung inwards instead of vanishing, and Harry had to catch his breath when he saw what lay beyond. He wouldn’t have thought that such comfort and luxury could still exist in the besieged fortress that Hogwarts had become.

            There were dark blue walls here, and a series of tapestries hung on them, muffling the stone and wood with brilliant colors. On the floor was a single long rug that Riddle walked down. Harry stepped onto it, and sighed as a Warming Charm rose from the cloth and into his toes. The cloth was the gentlest thing he’d ever walked on, but not slippery, like silk. Harry reckoned that Riddle wanted to be able to turn around and strike at a moment’s notice, if he had to.

            The room seemed to be one huge round one, with only two doors on the far side, standing open. Harry saw the gleam of white tile from beyond one that seemed to announce a bathroom, and a corner of a bed through the other. This central room had a table like the one in the modified hall they’d left behind, bookshelves along one quadrant of the circular walls, a smaller table for eating, one curve with all the clutter and bustle of a Potions lab, and two or three comfortable chairs in front of the fireplace, which took up most of the wall that swept towards the door. Colors gleamed everywhere, green and blue and black, making Harry feel as though he was underwater.

            “Now,” Riddle said, sitting down in the larger of the two chairs before the fire and fixing Harry with an unblinking look, “you’d like to take a shower. Go in and do that. You’ll find towels waiting. There are a few clothes that the elves will Transfigure and bring to you.”

            “How do you know I want a shower?” Harry snapped back, trying to draw himself up. The Elder Wand burned in his pocket. It probably wanted to leap out and skewer Riddle through the heart or something, if that story about it was true. At the moment, Harry was close to granting it the opportunity. “Why should I take one?”

            “It’s not you that wants a shower,” Riddle said. “It’s me that wants you to have a one, because you smell like ash and blood.”

            Harry flushed and muttered something. He didn’t even know what it was. Riddle just kept watching him, as distant and aloof as a hawk, and Harry finally walked across to the bathroom and stepped into it.

            There was white tile everywhere, except for the wall inside the tub itself, which was decorated with a mosaic of sea creatures, glittering green turtles and blue water snakes rising to a crystalline surface. Harry slung his clothes off, ignoring the ashes that did indeed tumble to the floor with them. Did Riddle like the sea? Hell, did Voldemort?

            Not that I’ll ever know the answer to that question, since I’m not going home, Harry told himself, and stepped into the tub.

            The water began to pour down at once from a showerhead Harry hadn’t noticed, thick and warm, while a glass door coalesced into being on the edge of the tub to keep the water from spilling on the floor. Harry shut his eyes and ducked his head, trying, as best he could, to let the warmth rub away his tension and his anger as well as the smell.

            Here he was, stuck in another world where apparently he was the Dark Lord, at the mercy of the man who back home was his worst enemy, and with only the man’s own Order of the Phoenix to believe and support him.

            Harry didn’t like it. But he supposed that he would have to accept it the way he’d accepted being a Parselmouth and a Tri-Wizard Champion and the enemy of the Ministry in his fifth year. He’d got through those by pushing forwards. He would do the same here.

            At least the water ran long enough to fill the shower with a good cloud of steam, and when Harry stepped out of it, the large towel wrapped around him and made him sigh as it rubbed his hair. Harry took hold of the end and did it himself, because the towel was being a bit too vigorous, maybe assuming his hair would never get clean otherwise. But by the time he dressed himself in the—of course—green shirt and trousers with silver accents that had appeared on the hooks on the wall for him, he did at least feel more relaxed.

            That lasted until he opened the bathroom door and his elbow brushed the Elder Wand, sticking out of the pocket of his trousers where he hadn’t put it. Harry shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and continued walking out anyway.

            “You do do a lot of sighing.”

            Harry opened his eyes and turned towards the fireplace. Tom Riddle waited there, his arms cocked up so that his elbows projected into the air and his hands rested on the cloth behind him. His face was shadowed by the position he sat in, and Harry found it hard to see much more than the way his face was angled towards Harry.

            Harry walked over and took a seat in the chair in front of Riddle, the way he knew he was meant to. The rising tide of anger nearly overwhelmed his rational thought.

            But he had made lots of decisions in anger in his fifth year, and almost none of them had turned out to be the right ones. He clasped his hands in front of him and asked, “Are you going to tell me what turned out differently here?”

            “It’s hard to do that,” Riddle said, sounding as old and immovable as the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, “until you tell me the way you think things should have turned out.”

            Harry bit his lip until he could feel blood under his teeth. He knew he could tell Riddle his side of the story and Riddle could keep his own secret, not talking about any of the things that Harry wanted to hear. He could do it, the bastard. He might.

            But Harry had to take the risk. There was no way that he would learn what he needed to know otherwise, and Riddle was probably the best-disposed to him out of all of them. Moody seemed to distrust him, Hermione might or might not know what he needed to know, these Weasleys weren’t his friends, and Neville and Draco and Andromeda and Mr. Tonks were unknown quantities.

            So Harry took a deep breath, and began talking.

            He told the silently listening Riddle about the attack Voldemort had made on his parents, and how he’d become the final Horcrux. He skipped over the Dursleys, because he thought things were either the same here or the Dursleys wouldn’t have contributed to changing them.

            But he talked about how he hadn’t known he was a wizard, how he made friends with Ron and was Sorted into Gryffindor, how they made friends with Hermione and stepped Quirrell and were convinced that Snape was the real villain all the time. Riddle never moved. Harry still couldn’t see his eyes well, and thought he might have gone to sleep.

            But when he finished up the tale of how he’d rescued the Philosopher’s Stone, Riddle stirred and asked a question. “Why did Dumbledore hide it in the school?”

            Harry shrugged. “He thought it would be safer there than in Gringotts. There was a raid on Gringotts not long after Hagrid took the Stone. I know now that was Quirrell, with you—sorry—Voldemort on the back of his head, going after it.”

            Riddle said nothing for a bit, then motioned him to go on, with a flutter of his fingers. Harry looked at the fire as he talked about second year, the Chamber of Secrets, the basilisk, finding out he was a Parselmouth.

            “That came from the Horcrux that you carried inside you?”

            The question, in the middle of the story this time instead of at the end, made Harry look up and blink. “That’s what Dumbledore said,” he said cautiously.

            “But I would be able to tell if you had a piece of another’s soul in you.” Riddle didn’t explain that, and Harry, rolling his eyes, decided that he would just have to accept that Riddle had some sort of defenses on the school that would detect it. “You don’t have it now.”

            Harry shrugged. “No. I can tell you more about getting it out of me and getting rid of it if you want, but I thought I would tell that in its proper place.”

            Riddle leaned forwards, his eyes emerging out of the shadows. Harry could see the intense greyness of them now, brighter than Malfoy’s, brighter than a few of the silver ornaments that Harry had noticed on the fireplace mantle. “But the piece is gone now,” Riddle whispered, “however it happened. Why is it that you can still speak Parseltongue?”

            Harry tried to speak, and found that he had no saliva left. He settled for shaking his head, unnerved. There was no reason that he should still have that ability, but he didn’t know the answer.

            Riddle continued to look at him for a second, then leaned back into his shadowed nook. “Go on,” he said, in a voice that rang portentously.

            Harry swallowed, and did so. The story of the fight with the basilisk and the shade of Tom Riddle made Riddle stir, but he said nothing, although Harry saw him nodding. Probably remembering that was how I knew about Voldemort, Harry thought.

            The man in front of him must have had the same dreams and the same temptations as the Tom Riddle in Harry’s world at one time, even if he had just kept them as fantasies and never done anything with them.

            Harry remembered that as he began talking about the story of his third year and Sirius’s escape and Harry’s eventual discovery of his innocence. Riddle might be one of the few allies he had here; maybe he was even telling the truth about Harry being the Dark Lord, and Harry would have to fight with Riddle’s “Light Resistance” to make any difference or have any place here.

            But Riddle still wasn’t a nice person. And Harry got none of the sense of tormented conflict from him that he had from Snape, when he watched the man’s memories before he marched into the Forbidden Forest. Riddle made the decisions he did and didn’t regret them. They had just been different decisions here.

            Riddle listened the whole way through without interruptions. Harry was just getting ready to tell the story of his fourth year and how his visions had started linking him to Voldemort more and more when Riddle whispered, “I see now. I see some of the way that things could have changed. You saved Black with this time travel and your Patronus?”

            Harry had to swallow back his grief. “Yes. Although—although he died anyway a few years ago.”

            Riddle just nodded. “Black died in the Dark Lord’s third year,” he said, and Harry had to admit it made his head spin when he realized Riddle was talking about him. Well, some version of Harry himself, anyway. He had to be very different for Harry to fit into this world in the first place, Dumbledore had said. “He seemed to be stalking the Dark Lord at first, and then he tried to kill him. There is no doubt of that. But we cannot know for certain why, as the Dark Lord killed him when he tried. I can only surmise that Black knew his best friend’s son had become Dark, and he thought him better dead than corrupted.”

            Harry had no answer for that. There was just an enormous stone of sadness sitting in his chest. It doesn’t seem that Sirius has a good life in any world, he thought dismally.

            Riddle gestured for him to go on, and Harry shut his eyes and continued.

            This time, the whole story of the Tournament, Voldemort’s resurrection, and most of Harry’s fifth year passed before Harry heard Riddle clear his throat. He opened his eyes, and saw Riddle leaning forwards with his hands clasped on the sides of his chair.

            “Albus did not tell you the nature of the prophecy until you were almost sixteen?” Riddle asked.

            Harry nodded. “He said,” he muttered, when he realized Riddle was waiting for something more than that, “that he loved me, and wanted to give me a childhood. He thought about telling me earlier, but he couldn’t bring himself to.”

            Riddle’s eyes closed, and he sat there so wearily that Harry didn’t dare question him. “Albus did not make those mistakes,” Riddle whispered. “Not here. No, I was the one who made them.”

            Harry stared at him. Had the Harry Potter of this world been under a prophecy as well? But which one, when there was no Dark Lord to destroy until he became one?

            Riddle made the pushing gesture again, and Harry continued. Much of sixth year he could skip over, he thought, except for the tales of Horcruxes and how they had led to Dumbledore’s death and what Harry thought was the revelation of Snape’s true allegiance. When he talked about that, a small, bitter smile lifted the corners of Riddle’s lips.

            “Would it surprise you to know,” he whispered, “that our own Dark Lord probably would not have managed to kill Albus if not for the help of Severus Snape?”

            “Well,” Harry said, squirming in his chair, “he was different—different than I thought, at least. I learned that a—a day ago.” It was incredible to realize that, at least in the time frame that he’d felt like had passed, he’d learned the truth about Snape less than twenty-four hours ago.

            “He was different here,” Riddle said. “Tell me the end.”

            Harry found that he didn’t have as much to say about the last year as he had thought. There were the Horcruxes, of course, and the way they had destroyed the locket Horcrux, and the truth about Snape, and the Deathly Hallows. Harry had decided it was okay to mention that since Riddle had known what the Elder Wand was, anyway.

            Riddle’s face didn’t change as Harry described the Resurrection Stone and the Invisibility Cloak and the way he had walked into the Forest to confront Voldemort after learning he was the last Horcrux. Then he leaned back and half-shook his head. “So many things were different,” he said. “But I can see now, after what you told me of the memories that you witnessed, that the crucial thing which changed was Albus’s decision about me.”

            Harry frowned at him. “He didn’t treat you warily?”

            Riddle half-laughed. “I think he wanted to. It’s true that I did grow up in a Muggle orphanage, and I did take pleasure in my power over others. That was something he wanted to change about me, and never did succeed in changing.” The look in his eyes made Harry want to rub his arms, but he kept still with an effort. “But he had the sense to realize that I was the most powerful student he had ever seen at Hogwarts, and that I could turn easily to the Dark if I didn’t have proper guidance. Albus became my mentor. He showed me that the Light is more powerful than the Dark, and I followed him, becoming his student, then his Champion, then a professor in his school, and then his successor.”

            Harry blinked. “What’s a Champion?”

            “Someone who fights for an associate’s honor,” Riddle said. “Don’t worry, I’ll explain more later.” Harry opened his mouth to argue, but Riddle was plowing on. “I recognized, because I was more Slytherin than Albus and Head of that House when the time came, that another young half-blood needed my guidance. I was able to train him, in time, to come to the same realization I had, about the Light, and that one could serve one’s own self-interest and make oneself powerful without serving the Dark.” Riddle grimaced. “Or so I thought.”

            “Look, that’s the third time you’ve said something about that,” Harry said. “But I just don’t understand. Voldemort in my world thought the Dark was more powerful. You can torture people with Dark curses. What can you do with Light magic?”

            Riddle smiled at Harry, almost tenderly. “I will need to have the training of you, too,” he said. “Perhaps life would have been more pleasant around me if I had had it from the beginning.” Harry started to open his mouth, because he’d thought that the student Riddle referred to instructing was the Harry who had turned into a Dark Lord, but Riddle overrode him again. “Think about this. What is light?”

            Harry turned the question around in his mind for a second, then shrugged. “What comes from the sun and the moon and the stars.”

            Riddle nodded. “And when one understands the elemental forces of magic, then one can draw more power from the natural world through light than through darkness. Darkness is what comes to the world because of light, in cast shadows and in places where the light is not. It is not a force in and of itself. It is essentially a negative, not even an opposite.” He flashed Harry what Harry thought was his notion of a smile. “My power increases every time the sun rises each morning. When I learned that I could bind myself to the sunlight and accomplish such a feat, then I became a Light wizard. It is true that my power only augments a tiny bit every day. But a wizard lives long. Imagine how strong I will be when I reach my hundredth birthday.” His eyes blazed almost red.

            “But light isn’t—I mean, I never thought Light magic was literal light,” Harry said, feeling dazed.

            Riddle waved his hand. “That’s because most people think that Light magic is the opposite of Dark magic, and nothing more. Just spells that don’t hurt people, or spells that perform helpful magic, or rituals that have neutral purposes. That’s granting darkness power instead of light, saying that it is the positive force. But Light magic is the magic of perception, of change, of transmutation. Because what is light but what allows us to see? And what is light but fire, that changes, that purifies, that scars, that transforms? I have many more fields open to me, many more kinds of spells that I can cast, than if I were to restrict myself to Dark Arts.”

            Harry blinked a little, dazed. He could see why Bill had called Riddle the Sunlord. Potentially, Riddle was stronger than Voldemort had been.

            But he remembered something, and shook his head. “Dark magic must be powerful if this Dark Lord who replaced me can scare you all.”

            “I never said that Dark magic was not strong,” Riddle said. “Simply that Light magic is stronger.” He sighed. “Yes. When Harry Potter turned Dark, he brought innate strength of will and a magical core to some training and instruction in how Light magic worked. And he warped and twisted that Light magic, making the Dark a force in its own right, performing the opposite of the spells he had learned, in order to gain the most power.”

            “Where did he learn them?” Harry found himself whispering.

            Riddle stared at him. “From his own mentor, another in the chain of power that led from Dumbledore to me,” he said. “Someone who recognized his power, and set out to lead him down the right path—supposedly.” He shook his head. “I should have realized how strong Potter was, and trained him myself, with the right application of pain, instead of feeling relieved that someone else had taken over the task. Or I should have burned out the magical core of the one who taught him when he was my pupil.”

            “Who was it?” Harry said, and his voice was still a whisper.

            “The most powerful half-blood of his generation, whom I recognized, and taught, but not well enough,” Riddle said. “Who in the end let his own hatred of Potter’s parents and his attraction to Dark Arts and causing pain overcome even his draw to power. Severus Snape.”

*

            BAFan: Thanks!

            heartstar: Well, I can’t promise regular updates, but I hope you liked this chapter.

            moodysavage: Thank you!

            rabias: Well, this is the start of the explanation, although not all of it.

            Angelica Faerie: Afraid that I can’t promise regular updates, since the chapters are so long. (This one is actually shorter than I originally intended, but it was getting so that I dreaded working on it. Shorter chapters make up for more frequent updates, too). But I am really looking forward to writing several of the AUs.

            ladylilymae: Thank you!
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