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by Morgan Steelgrave

Author's notes: The basic premise of the story is that Harry, using a Time-Turner, has gone back to the Hogwarts that Tom Riddle knew in an attempt to prevent him from becoming Lord Voldemort. Harry manages to enroll himself as a Fifth year Slytherin with Tom, who appears suspicious of Harry from the beginning. Somehow they form a friendship (despite Tom's investigations into Harry's past and current activities) that leads to something more complicated. But then, things between them have never been simple.

I should also point out that this is DEFINITELY starting to absorb bits of OotP. Read at your own discretion.

This tidbit takes place after Harry has settled into Hogwarts and begun attending classes, most of which are with Tom (you can imagine how irritated Harry is with this situation). The two of them have (un)fortunately been paired to work on a Divination project involving dream interpretation...and things just get confusing from that point on.

The boys met at the Astronomy tower, as ordered by Professor Siduri. Harry arrived last, and the sight of Tom lounging against the wall in good-natured wait for him was enough to set Harry's teeth on edge.

"Evening," said Tom. Harry merely grunted in reply, digging around in his book bag for the parchments from Divination. He dropped them unceremoniously on the stone floor, followed by the black leather diary. Tom cocked his head at the sight of the book. "Where did you get your diary?"

"Professor Malachi picked it up for me," Harry answered curtly. Tom looked thoughtful.

"It looks almost exactly like mine," he said, pulling out his own. He then took out a quill and wrote, "T. M. Riddle," on the first page in tight, elegant script. "There," he said with a self-satisfied smile, "now we won't get them mixed up."

Harry was staring at the diary and the shining, still-wet ink of Tom's name. Part of him was horrified that he had just witnessed the germ of his second-year ordeal, but part of him was fascinated that the entire thing had come from something as mundane as labeling a dream journal for Divination.

"Harry?" Tom prompted, breaking Harry from his reverie. "Do you want to go first?" He picked up Harry's list of questions, which Harry snatched from his hand in an attempt to clear his head and regain his composure.

"Right, then," he said. "I suppose we should fill out this rubbish. Name, Tom Marvolo Riddle..." With a look of intense concentration, Harry began filling in Tom's information. Tom watched him through slightly narrowed eyes.

"Birthday?" prompted Harry.

"I don't recall giving you my middle name," said Tom.

"Birthday?" repeated Harry. Tom sighed.

"Twelfth November, nineteen twenty-seven." He continued to observe Harry as the other boy quizzed him on his life thus far.

As for Harry, he berated himself mentally for the near mistake he had made in rattling off Tom's middle name like that. He vowed to ask every question as impassively as possible, even if he knew the answer. He regretted making that promise when he came to the next question. Clearing his throat, he said, "Parents?"

Tom's expression was unreadable. "Not applicable," he said, his voice flat. Harry swallowed, nodded, and wrote, "N/A," in the blank.

"Mine, too," he said softly after a moment. He wasn't sure why he even said it, but it caught Tom's attention.

"Really?" he asked, fine eyebrows raised only slightly in surprise.

"Really. I live with my aunt and uncle." He was about to describe the misery that was number four, Privet Drive, but Tom spoke first.

"You're lucky, then," he said with a grimace. He did not elaborate any further. Strangely enough, Harry learned more about Tom's childhood at the orphanage in those three words than he had from both Hagrid and Dumbledore.

"Maybe," he said, thinking of all the terrible things Dudley and his parents had put him through. The beatings he got from Dudley. The lectures from Uncle Vernon. The endless chores from Aunt Petunia.

"But she took you. She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet she still took you."

No one had taken Tom.

"Sometimes I forget it," he added quietly. Glancing down at the form, his eyes fell once again on the, "N/A." It looked so cold and clinical when written that way. Absolute. No part of those three characters suggested one might feel any sort of connection with the people to whom they referred; no memories, no legacies, no ghosts. Tongue sliding between his lips, Harry scratched out what he had written and replaced it with, "passed on."

Tom was watching him again, Harry could feel it. In an attempt to order his thoughts, he returned to the next question. "Have you ever had a recurring dream?"

"Yes," came the answer after a moment. Harry looked up, wordlessly encouraging Tom to continue. The form didn't ask for it yet, but some perverted part of Harry's brain wanted to know what a young Voldemort dreamed of, night after night.

As if he heard the question, Tom warned, "Don't laugh." Harry had to suppress a wry chuckle. The future Dark Lord was self-conscious about his dreams.

"'There can be no judgment of dreams,'" he cited. Tom scowled at him.

"Well, I have a few recurring dreams, actually," he began, watching Harry's reactions intently, "though there is one recurring thing. Person, rather."

And his name is Voldemort, thought Harry.

"You."

Harry blinked. "Sorry?" he said, certain he had heard Tom incorrectly.

"You. You're in them," repeated Tom matter-of-factly.

It wasn't that strange, Harry supposed. He dreamed about Voldemort, after all. Mortal enemies were bound to dream of one another. Arthur and Mordred, Hamlet and Claudius, Holmes and Moriarty...hell, even Dumbledore probably has dreams of Grindelwald, thought Harry, desperate for examples to shore up his uncertainty. His mind was racing so fast he was barely aware of Tom still speaking.

"You've been in them for quite some time. Since I first came to Hogwarts, really."

"That's before we ever met, Tom," said Harry, keeping his tone conversational.

"Yes, I know."

"Then how can you be certain it's me? It could be anyone, I might just-"

"I think I'd recognize someone I've been dreaming about for almost five years now," Tom cut across him. At Harry's appalled expression, he chuckled. "Oh, don't worry. They're not always what one would call pleasant."

Harry's face slid into unconscious indignation. "What are they, then?"

"There's quite a lot of death," said Tom. He smiled, somehow looking both smug and exhausted at the same time. "I doubt it's your thing."

Though Harry found Tom's smile infuriating, it was more important to learn all he could about the inner workings of Tom Riddle's mind. "Try me," said Harry.

Tom seemed encouraged by Harry's unusually even temper. "Right. I'll start with one I've been having fairly often lately. I can't say I ever actually see you in it, but I know you're there."

"How-?"

"Sometimes you can be more certain of something in a dream than you can of anything in reality." Tom continued over Harry's budding question without missing a beat, getting up to pace the tower. "Anyway, it takes place in a house. It's a nice house. Small, clean, and...secret. It's strange, but there's a definite feeling of secrecy about the house, like I shouldn't be there.

"But it's happy. Or it was, at least, until the dream really starts up. There's a couple, a man and a woman. The man looks a lot like you, Harry. Older, of course, but just like you. The woman has these exquisite green eyes," Tom paused, obviously aware of Harry watching him with a strikingly similar gaze. Breaking away, he leaned against the wall, looking out over the grounds. "She's quite pretty, but afraid. They both are, very brave, but very afraid."

"What happens?" Harry's voice was a raw whisper.

"Someone...or something...comes. Something dark. I can never remember exactly what happens, but I know that by the time I wake up, they're both dead." Harry stood suddenly on shaky legs, gathering his papers haphazardly into his arms. Tom turned to watch him. "Are you alright?"

"I think we should call it a night," Harry replied sharply.

"Was it something I said?" Tom bent down to help Harry with his parchments, which Harry angrily snatched from his long fingers.

"Let me ask you something," he said, grappling with the papers. "Do you enjoy it? The dream?"

Tom considered this for a moment, dark eyes cast downward. "When the dream first starts," he said slowly, "there's a house, and a family, and they're happy. It's a home. I never had that. But watching it all as it's destroyed...I can only imagine the nightmare it must have been for those who were there." His gaze flickered upward to meet Harry's.

"I'm sure," said Harry stiffly, avoiding Tom's eyes at all costs. He started down the stairs.

"'Night, Harry," called Tom softly, still crouched low on the stone floor. Harry paused only briefly before hurrying the rest of the way back to the dormitory.

He did not even bother to change into his pyjamas before throwing himself onto his bed in a huff. Despite his earlier fatigue, however, Harry found his eyelids refused to stay closed. He was too preoccupied with the dream Tom had described to him. The fact that Tom had been dreaming about him at all was strange enough, but that it had happened before Harry had arrived at Hogwarts-before Harry had even been born, really-was perplexing enough to keep Harry's mind working long after he lay down.

That, and Tom had dreamed about Harry's parents. Harry supposed it had merely evened things up between them; Harry certainly knew more about Tom than the other boy was aware. Still, it was troubling that Tom knew anything at all about Harry, even when he wasn't aware of the truth of what he knew.

Restless, Harry pulled the bedcurtains aside to observe the rest of the dormitory. All the students were fast asleep. A glance at Tom's bed showed the curtains pulled, without so much as the sound of breathing emanating from them. As quietly as he could manage, Harry retrieved his invisibility cloak from his trunk and tiptoed through the empty common room and out into the hall.

The corridors were cool and quiet, a welcome change from the stuffy air in the dormitory. Harry wandered aimlessly for a long while, contenting himself with observing the snoozing portraits that lined the walls. He recognized most of them from his midnight wanderings in his own time, though a few were noticeably absent. Harry supposed they had yet to be painted.

"Stand and fight," came a familiar, sleepy voice from a nearby wall. Harry followed it to Sir Cadogan's portrait. The plump little knight was asleep on his equally round horse, mumbling the occasional challenge between snores.

"Hey, Sir Cadogan," Harry whispered with a smile.

"Filthy cur," muttered Sir Cadogan without waking. For some reason, Harry found it comforting to speak to someone who existed unchanged in both this time and his own, even though the knight was giving no indication of waking any time soon. Harry merely chuckled and wandered further down the hall, his mind now occupied by memories of Ron and Hermione, who had been with him when they first met Sir Cadogan.

Harry's wandering had a purpose now; he passed the portrait of the Fat Lady, the Transfiguration classroom where Hermione had helped him cram countercurses for the Triwizard Tournament, and the third floor corridor on the right-hand side where they had encountered Fluffy. Nearly every hallway held the vestiges of one memory or another, some less than pleasant, most joyful. It was in that same third-floor hallway that the statue of the one-eyed, hump-backed witch could be found. Harry smiled, wondering if she yet guarded one of the secret tunnels that lead to Hogsmeade. Drawing his wand, he was about to tap the witch's hump when he heard someone coming down the hall. He ducked behind the statue, pulling the cloak tightly around him.

It seemed an eternity before the approaching person came close enough for Harry to see him. It was another student, and a very large one at that, shuffling along the corridor in pursuit of what looked like a family of puffskeins.

"'Old still!" he muttered, grabbing one and stuffing it into a pocket of his robes, at which he shook a warning finger. "Quit yer wrigglin', now, little fellers."

Harry smiled to himself. This had to be Hagrid. He followed him silently, biting his lip to keep from laughing at Hagrid's antic chasing of the puffskeins down the hall. They trekked upstairs, with Hagrid stopping occasionally to pluck some small creature or another from shadowy corners. Harry debated revealing himself to his future friend, but thought perhaps it would be better to wait until Hagrid was not so occupied by his harvesting of the Hogwarts household pests. Harry had to come to an abrupt stop then as Hagrid paused to scoop up a dormouse. Surveying the hall in which they stood, Harry realized they had wandered much further than he had thought. As Hagrid soothed the menagerie in his pocket, Harry examined the door to their right. It was in a storage room on one of the upper floors-Fred and George had directed him there once, on account of the wide assortment of strange magical knick-knacks that were a sure cure for boredom over the Christmas holiday. Its door stood slightly ajar, the cool, papery scent of old things wafting out through the crack.

Once Hagrid had shuffled off down the hall, Harry quietly pushed open the door of the storage room and stepped inside. Stacks of dusty furniture and books made it difficult to find a path, but Harry didn't mind. It was in places like this that Hogwarts still felt like the home he knew in his first few years there, before the world outside changed both the castle and the people inside it. There was no big picture here; it was a pocket of existence separate from everything else, much as Harry thought Hagrid's pocket must feel to the creatures now cradled there.

So Harry took his time as his fingers left lingering trails in the dust on the desks and discarded portraits. He lifted drapes to peer at the piles of things under them. There were larger things toward the back, bookshelves and skeletons of weird creatures hung on racks and covered with cloth like sleeping birds. Harry peeked at them all, hearing Lupin's voice recite, "grindylow," or, "kappa."

It was then that he came to the tall, covered thing in the very back corner. There was something familiar about this object, Harry felt. He tugged at the drape, revealing the thing from top to bottom. Harry's heart lurched as his eyes fell on the words engraved across the top of the gilt frame: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

He was standing to the side of the mirror, unable to see into it clearly. Harry wasn't sure he wanted to. Between reliving his parents' murder with Tom and wandering the castle with Hermione and Ron in mind, he had already made too many detours through his memory that night.

Yet the mirror called to him. If everything else in his world was too damned complicated to make heads or tails of, at least this part of him might be made plain. He wanted-no, needed-to understand this. Shrugging out of his invisibility cloak, Harry set his jaw and stepped resolutely in front of the mirror, fully expecting to see his parents and family smiling back at him once again.

His parents were indeed there, but not in the same group of people Harry had seen during his first encounter with the Mirror of Erised. There were hundreds of people, and they were certainly not his family.

Some he recognized immediately; his parents were two of these, of course. In front of them stood a cranky-looking old man and Cedric Diggory. Near Cedric stood a few vaguely familiar members of the Ministry of Magic, and at the very front stood none other than Sirius and Hermione.

Harry's breath caught in his throat. These were people he had seen hurt or killed by Voldemort. They were dead, or worse, and there they stood, smiling at him with determination and encouragement.

He wished they were really there with him. Making an effort to breathe and move, Harry stepped even closer to the mirror, until his breath fogged it and the images appeared dreamlike. Behind his parents were more people he recognized from brief glimpses of photographs, members of the Order of the Phoenix that Mad-Eye had pointed out to him. They stood among dozens of other people, most likely Muggle-borns or sympathizers that had met the business end of Voldemort's wand.

And there, in the very back, was a very familiar figure with dark hair and eyes that watched him with unnerving intensity. Harry squinted and raised a hand to the glass, fingers hovering just above its surface. The boy at the back of the crowd smiled, and there was something in that smile that Harry was afraid to name.

With one last glance at the crowd gathered in the mirror, Harry threw the cloth over it once again. Though the glass was covered now, the feeling of hope and encouragement he had felt in those smiles lingered. He could save these people, all of them, and he had a sudden suspicion that he knew how to do it.