Chapter Text
Saturday morning, Tom woke up feeling refreshed. There was none of the usual grogginess from waking after a late night. His mind was sharp and his body was responsive, not sluggish. Tom felt so well-rested, in fact, that he could not quite remember when he had gone to bed the night before. No dreams, no nightmares—only the deep-seated satisfaction of a comfortable eight hours spent utterly unconscious.
Sitting up, Tom swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached, blindly, for his wand on the side table as was his habit to do.
He grasped the loop of his wand holster, lifting it from the tabletop and strapping it to his arm. The holster was made from a dark grey dragonhide, a birthday gift from Orion Black.
A quick glance at his dormitory showed that it was entirely empty. Tom had a habit of rising late on Saturdays; the result of spending his Friday evening out past curfew. Being a Prefect had its benefits—Tom made use of his privileges by ransacking the Hogwarts library under the cover of darkness.
There were no wrongs being committed. Tom was permitted to be out after hours and had a pass for the Restricted Section. It was simply easier for him to go about his business when there was no one else around.
Today was an excellent example of that. Today would be a monumental day: the re-opening of the fabled Chamber of Secrets.
Tom stood and went about his morning routine. The Quidditch match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff was today. Everyone would be at the pitch and watching the game. It was the perfect opportunity for him to walk about unnoticed, and so he planned to take advantage.
After donning his robes, Tom ran a comb through his hair, smoothing the line of the part. Not a hair out of place. Everything that happened today would unfold according to plan. Pleased with this thought, Tom put his toiletries away and returned to his dorm.
Once there, he went to his wardrobe to fetch his cloak. The billow of the heavy fabric would hide his shape better and make him less identifiable to anyone who happened to spot him from a distance. Tom pulled his cloak on and fastened it securely. The weight of the material on his shoulders gave him a sense of great importance.
He had been planning this day for some time. Careful research, months of planning. After uncovering the location of the Chamber, it had taken every scrap of self-restraint he possessed to close the opening and leave it behind. His absence at the time would have been noted; he had to be patient, to wait for the right moment.
Today, as it was, would be that moment.
Tom straightened and eyed his reflection in the singular, full-length mirror that sat in the room. It belonged to Abraxas, who admittedly spent a great deal of time standing before it, preening, but when Abraxas was not around, Tom liked to make use of it.
Satisfied with what he saw in his reflection, Tom spun around and made to leave the room. The Common Room was also mostly deserted. Tom greeted the few people that were there and cited a study project, bidding them goodbye for the day.
He had hardly stepped foot into the corridor when he heard someone call his name.
"Tom!"
The voice was familiar; Tom glanced over. It was Harry Potter, dressed eternally in a style of Gryffindor robes that were about twenty years out of fashion.
“Hello, Harry,” he said politely. Tom made a habit of befriending everyone in the castle, people and ghosts alike. One never knew when someone could prove useful.
To those who did not know him, Harry was a shy ghost. He tended to drift around the Quidditch pitch during the day, meaning it was nearly impossible to spot him. In the evenings, however, Tom often caught the silent spectre wandering the hallways with a wistful expression. Tom had never thought to ask how Harry had died, but he supposed that it could not have been too tragic given Harry's relatively spotless appearance.
But the point persisted: Harry did not interact much with the staff or students of Hogwarts. Over the past five years, however, Harry had taken a liking to Tom Riddle. Sometimes Harry would come by the library to say hello and ask after Tom's studies. Tom didn't mind the interruptions—Harry was always considerate and hardly spoke to anyone. It was flattering for Tom to be selected as the favourite of the school's most reclusive ghost.
"How are your studies?" Harry asked brightly.
Normally, Tom would have welcomed this question. As it was, he had more important things to be doing today. "They're well, thank you. I have a seven-foot essay on the fourth and fifth Goblin wars to write for Professor Binns, due Monday morning." This was true, though Tom had already completed this essay four days ago. Hopefully the subject was off-putting enough that Harry would leave him be.
"Oh, that sounds fun!"
Was that... cheerfulness? Tom blinked as though doing so would miraculously make that statement more logical.
"Are you headed to the library now?" Harry asked. "Can I come with you?"
"There's a Quidditch match today," Tom said instead. "Ravenclaw versus Hufflepuff. Wouldn't you prefer to go watch?"
Harry liked Quidditch. He liked watching the matches. Tom had never attended a single one of them; he tended to rely on Harry to provide the details of the most important plays.
"I don't mind going with you," Harry said after a pause. Then he added haltingly, "I can help you with your essay?"
"Thank you for the offer, but I can complete the assignment myself." Tom was beginning to get annoyed. He took a careful step to the left and maneuvered himself around Harry. From there, he continued down the corridor while Harry floated at a steady pace beside him.
"Okay," Harry said quickly. "Then I can keep you company."
"I don't need company."
Harry wasn't normally this insistent. Tom flexed his jaw and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. Now he had to act like he was going to the library because Harry wouldn't leave him alone. This was derailing his morning.
Tom took the next left turn and walked towards the stairs. He had to figure out a way to get rid of his ghostly companion.
Harry followed, hovering anxiously. His eyes seemed to flicker in and out of focus behind his transparent glasses.
Tom wanted to be blunt, to be rude and hurtful so the ghost would leave him be. Only he had worked hard to maintain a pleasant relationship with Harry. If he was cruel now, Harry might not talk to him again. Although, Tom thought, he was the only person that Harry talked to. Perhaps the loneliness would drive Harry back to him, especially if Tom took care to be extra kind afterwards.
They reached the top of the stairs. Tom steeled himself and asked, "How did you die, Harry?"
The sudden question had the expected result: Harry flinched, looking uncomfortable. "Why do you ask, Tom?"
Tom paused as though to think it over. "You avoid everyone, people and ghosts alike. You only lurk in the castle late at night when there are no others around. I am the only person you spend any time with. Some of the students here are even unaware of your existence.
"Unlike other Hogwarts ghosts, your physical form does not show any inflicted damage. Whatever unfinished business you have here, you do not seem very eager to resolve it. So I ask, Harry: how did you die?"
Harry stared distantly at him. "I don't think I want to answer that."
"Then don't." Tom shrugged and began to walk anew.
Harry trailed behind, slower this time. "You never asked me that before."
"It only just occurred to me," Tom lied. "Ghosts never die peacefully, you know. Did you anger someone?"
"No."
"Cheat? Lie? Steal something?"
"No," Harry said, sounding upset.
"I wouldn't blame you if you had," Tom continued. "It would certainly explain why you hide away all the time."
"I didn't do anything, Tom."
"Curious." Tom hummed, a light sound in the back of his throat. "Where in the castle did you die?"
"I said I didn't want to answer."
"Your form shows little to no signs of decay, as I mentioned. So it must not have been too long before they found the body." Tom quickened his pace. "If I searched for your name in Hogwarts' student records, would I find the answer there? You told me you attended two decades ago; that certainly narrows it down."
"Why are you—" Harry started, desperation in his voice, then stopped. He was silent for so long that Tom had to check Harry was still with him. The ghost's mouth had fallen into a flat line, his brows furrowed together. "Yes," Harry said quietly, "you would probably find it if you looked, Tom."
"Nothing too public," Tom said clinically. "Two decades and hardly anyone speaks about you. Was it covered up somehow, I wonder? Dippet would have been Headmaster still. He's strict enough that I can't quite imagine what tragic event could have occurred under his watch."
Harry floated a few steps ahead and spun around so that he could look at Tom directly. "People see what they want to see," Harry said in a monotone. "You of all people know that."
Tom frowned. That was true enough, but he wasn't sure how it related to their current conversation. He thought on Harry's statement, trying to make sense of it.
People saw what they wanted to see. They saw what they expected to see. Harry's death was a tragedy, surely, but it was not one that people wished to linger on. That meant there was finger pointing involved.
Children didn't die in schools because the adults around them were competent. Children died in schools because there was incompetence.
That explained why Harry didn't tend to frequent the more popular areas of the castle. The staff and student body must have failed him somehow. "Did someone kill you?" Tom asked, now genuinely curious. "Or was it an accident?"
Harry turned away again. "Stop asking, Tom. I'm not saying."
They continued in the direction of the library. The Quidditch match must have started by now, Tom thought glumly. Here he was, stuck with an irritating, mysterious ghost. Perhaps it was time to exercise some bluntness.
"Harry," said Tom, interjecting a note of patience into his voice. "I understand that you do not have many friends in the castle, but I would prefer it if you left me to go to the library by myself. I don't want your company today." There, that was civil enough, wasn't it? There was nothing in that statement that was untrue.
Thankfully, Harry did not seem to be offended. "I thought so," Harry said, almost absently. "You were only saying those things to try and get me to leave."
Tom was annoyed at being caught wrongfooted, but his patience had taken a steep decline; he was no longer thinking as clearly as he usually would. "Yes, which begs the question: why are you still here?"
Harry smiled, wan. "You really do hate it when people don't perform to expectations."
Tom halted in place and turned to his right. Harry no longer seemed angry or upset. If anything, he appeared to be at peace with the turn the conversation had taken.
Tom had already wasted too much time on this. He grit his teeth. There was a simple solution for this problem, a fact taken directly out of his second-year Charms textbook. Tom drew his wand and cast the most powerful, non-verbal Lumos he could manage on such short notice.
The light served a double purpose. First of all, magical light would disturb the ectoplasm that Harry was formed of, preventing him from moving for a short period of time. Second of all, his wand light was powerful enough to blind Harry, who still wore glasses even if they were ghostly.
Harry made a strange noise of surprise and perhaps minor discomfort. Tom gave his wand a twist, using the motion he had practiced many times in the past, and separated the burst of light from the tip of his wand.
The orb hovered in place, allowing Tom to make his escape. The magic would fade after some time, but by then Tom would be far, far away—specifically, he would be in the girl's bathroom on the second floor.
Satisfied with the retribution he had delivered, Tom departed with confidence, lengthening his strides as he went. There was no way of knowing how long the Quidditch match would be; he had to make up for the time he had lost while pandering to Harry.
After all, what did one little ghost matter in the grand scheme of things? Tom was the heir of Salazar Slytherin. The Chamber of Secrets was his birthright. Who was Harry to try and stop him from achieving his goals, from achieving greatness?
There would be boundless treasures waiting from him in the chamber. Knowledge beyond his wildest imaginings, ancient magical items that contained untold power. All this and more, Tom could picture clearly in his mind's eye.
Emboldened by this fantasy, Tom hastened his pace further yet. The chamber was calling to him.
Saturday morning, Tom woke feeling uneasy. The vestiges of a nightmare were slipping away like a flickering film reel. He could not recall what had happened. It was uncommon for him to have nightmares; it was even rarer for him to have forgotten it entirely by morning.
Strangely, he also could not remember when he had gone to bed the night before. Perhaps he had stayed up too late. No matter. Today was an important day. There would be plenty of time to sleep later.
Sitting up, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his wand on the side table, as was his habit to do.
His wand was not there.
Tom stared at his bedside table. Every night without fail, he left his wand and holster there. It was habitual. Never in his life had this happened to him before.
A quick glance at his dormitory showed that it was entirely empty. This was not unusual; Tom had a habit of rising late on Saturdays. Had someone taken his wand while he had been sleeping? The mere idea of it was ridiculous. Tom had wards placed around his bed and his belongings. If his wards had been disturbed, he would have noticed. His magic would have alerted him to the intrusion.
His wand was his most treasured possession. It was a symbol of his heritage and his power. Tom polished his yew wand regularly and kept it secure in its dragonhide holster. Not once during his five-year ownership of it had it ever been misplaced.
Tom was uncomfortable. Without his wand, he felt exposed, bereft. He had planned to visit the Chamber of Secrets today, to at last claim the birthright which belonged to him, but this had derailed his plans significantly.
Quickly, then, his discomfort shifted to anger. Someone had done this. Someone had stolen his wand; that was the only explanation for its disappearance. Whoever had done this was going to pay, and pay dearly. Tom did not make a habit of punishing his enemies here at Hogwarts, not while he was under the watchful eyes of the professors, but today he would make an exception.
The first order of business was to prepare for the day. Tom stood up and started his usual morning routine. The Quidditch match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff was today. His dormmates would be at the pitch and watching the game. He would have to attend the game so he could interrogate them. One way or another, he would get his wand back.
It took most of the Quidditch match for Tom to piece together how the morning had gone while he was asleep. No one had seen anything. No one had stolen anything. There had been a period of at least twenty to thirty minutes after the last person had left the dorm room, leaving Tom alone, where someone could have come in to steal the wand.
So even after all that, Tom was no closer to determining who was at fault or where his wand had gone. For the time being, he had taken Avery's wand to aid him in his search. It was not a perfect fit, but it was unfortunately the most compatible one available to him.
It took several tracking spells for Tom to discern the general location of his wand. It took several hours for him to wander through the castle, searching for it. Tom's entire afternoon was swallowed up by what was rapidly becoming the world's most enraging treasure hunt.
Finally, after what felt like hundreds of turns and dozens of flights of stairs, Tom located his wand. This was a section of the castle that he had never been in before, let alone been aware of its existence.
Tom cast the tracking spell again to check he was in the correct spot. Avery's wand lit up, directing him towards a dusty, deserted corridor that was cluttered with spider webs. In the middle of this corridor was an old, battered broom closet.
With a solid grip on Avery's wand, Tom wrenched the handle of the cupboard open with his free hand.
Much to his confusion, inside of the broom closet was Harry Potter.
Harry was sitting on the floor of the closet, so much as ghosts could sit, and he had his arms wrapped around his knees. Tom's yew wand was there, too, on the floor by Harry's feet.
"Harry?" Tom asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Um." Harry was avoiding his gaze, instead looking at the far wall of the cramped cupboard space. "I'm afraid I don't have a good answer for that."
Tom picked up his wand—his holster was nowhere to be seen, he noted—and put Avery's away. His mind was trying and failing to come up with a reasonable explanation.
Harry slowly uncurled his limbs from their cramped position and stood up. His feet phased through the bottom of the broom closet, and it was only then that Tom noticed how weary Harry looked. Tom had never seen a ghost look tired before. Sad and depressed, yes, but Harry's face was worn with what could only be fatigue.
"Did you take my wand?" Tom asked slowly. Ghosts could move objects for short distances but this? This was entirely unheard of. Tom's wand had been transported from the Slytherin dungeons all the way up to... wherever the hell they were. They were at least seven floors above ground level.
Harry opened his mouth to reply. His legs were wobbling. Tom felt like he ought to be more concerned about that—could ghosts faint from exhaustion?—only he was utterly thrown by the revelation that his wand had been stolen by a ghost. Not only that, but a ghost he had considered himself to be on friendly terms with.
"I... did." Harry blinked sluggishly, swaying on the spot.
Tom narrowed his eyes. "Why did you do it?"
"I—" Harry licked his lips once, twice, which must have been a nervous habit carried over from his time amongst the living. "I did it to help you."
Someone must have cast the Confundus Charm on Harry. That would explain the strange behaviour and the lack of coherency. "Did you talk to anyone this morning?" Tom asked. "Any of the students? The professors?" Harry tended to not talk to anyone, but there was the slim chance that Harry might recall something notable.
Harry's eyes focused for a moment on Tom's face. "No," he said, and the response was lucid enough that Tom believed it.
"Then what—" Tom started, angry now that his original hypothesis had been disproven.
Harry let out a weak wheeze and tipped over. Tipped right over, and phased right into the floor, vanishing into the stone.
Tom stared at the spot where Harry had been standing. Floating. Whatever. None of this made any sense.
Slowly, his anger ran its course, burning to a slow, smouldering death in his chest. Tom breathed out and attempted to regain his focus. There would be time, later, to find out exactly why his wand had been stolen.
For now, there was an hour left before dinner. He would have preferred to do this during the Quidditch match, when less people would have been present in the castle, but the theft of his wand had provided him with a unique alibi. His dormmates would tell anyone who asked after him that he was off searching for it.
Tom mourned the loss of his holster as he tucked his wand into the pocket of his robes. It was one of the finer things he owned, and now it was Merlin-knew-where in the castle.
Another thing to ask Harry about, he noted with no small amount of irritation.
But again, it was a task for later. Tom cast one final glance to the empty broom cupboard. It was an odd hiding place to choose. Cramped and uncomfortable.
Tom shut the cupboard with a resounding 'thunk' that dislodged a good deal of dust from the top of it. It was no concern of his. He had a chamber to go and open.
Saturday morning, Tom woke up feeling uneasy. He could not remember going to bed the night before.
He thought that he may have dreamed something, though. There were flashes of light in his mind's eye, distorted scenes from an old film reel. The more he tried to remember, however, the more it slipped away from him.
That was fine. He had more important things to be doing.
Tom sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and reached for his wand on the side table.
Saturday morning, Tom woke up. He could not remember going to bed the night before, and he could not pinpoint why this made him feel uneasy.
Without thinking, he reached for his wand. The motion was familiar. What was not familiar was the way his stomach twisted with unexplained anxiety.
Tom ignored it.
Saturday morning, Tom woke up. Something felt very, very wrong.
Still, Tom sat up and reached for his wand.
Saturday morning, Tom woke up screaming. His lungs were aflame, seized by a wretched burning sensation that rapidly cascaded through the rest of his body, the flames licking through him, boiling his blood in his veins.
Though the pain subsided almost instantly, vanishing like the lingering effects of an awful nightmare, his mindless panic took long, agonizing minutes to fade.
Tom's breaths came hard and fast as he desperately tried to get a grip on himself. His entire body was trembling violently, his back sheathed in sweat, his heart pounding in his chest.
On instinct, he reached for his wand. His hand was shaking. Tom stared at it, willing it to go still. He'd not been this affected by a nightmare in years.
A glance around the dorm showed that it was empty. No one had witnessed his surreal moment of insanity.
Slowly, then, Tom went through the motions of his regular morning routine. He washed, dressed, and made his way downstairs. He was so unnerved by the morning's traumatic event that his greetings to those in the Slytherin common room were half-hearted at best.
Tom stepped out of the common room, ill at ease. Once in the corridor, he faltered. There was no one here, but he could not help but feel like there was. Or that there was supposed to be someone here.
Just outside the castle, the Quidditch game between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff was about to begin. Tom knew this, and he knew exactly what he had planned to do today because of that very Quidditch match.
Something as juvenile as a nightmare was not about to deter him from his ambitions. Tom pushed the tension from his shoulders and gave his arms a stretch. Today he would step foot in that sacred space in which his ancestor had made history. Today he would make history.