Harry Potter 1. Chapter 1

Tom Riddle was dreaming.

He watched his life move past him as one might watch a slowly moving river on a lazy afternoon. It reflected the sky and light at every turn, at times almost blinding, but he watched it nonetheless. Moments here and there caught his eye but only for a fraction of a thought before his eyes wandered again.

There was a moment in time where this river stopped, almost abruptly, and faded into the abyss. It was always that moment that drew his eyes, because as hard as he might have distracted himself with the colorful ephemeral past he knew that it was the abyss that was reality.

One day a young boy had a dream that he was a notebook, he watched the world out of blind eyes and deaf ears, the world trickling down to him instead through thoughts of ink left from the hands of men. In each black letter he tasted the feelings left behind; those sweet tangents of thought that had seeped down the white pages to his own starved lips. He knew however, even as a notebook, that he was truly a young boy only dreaming that he was a notebook and waited patiently for the day he would awaken.

He did wake up one day only to find himself confused, for his dream had seemed so real, and he wondered was he the boy dreaming of notebooks or the notebook dreaming of boys. Having dreamed of words for so long he found that he could no longer easily tell the difference, men and notebooks seemed to think the same thoughts and yearn for the same feelings. In fact, in a panic, he began to realize that he could in fact not tell the difference at all and could be either the notebook or the boy at that particular moment.

And so the story went, and so Tom Riddle dreamt it to be.

The abyss often watched him as well, with almost knowing eyes, not a black abyss but white. White like the thin, unmarked, pages of an empty journal filled with the potential of infinite thoughts and paintings and thus containing nothing at all. This, the abyss would say to him in its own silent tongue, is what you are as well; the potential of things.

He contemplated briefly throwing stones into that white leering grin the abyss often wore, but he had already thrown many of his own stones, thoughts shouted into the face of nothingness were reduced to nothing in themselves. He'd long since gotten tired of that game.

Tom Riddle had not always been dreaming just as he had not always been a notebook. He had once been human, no that wasn't quite right, he had once been a wizard. He'd found, after much contemplation, that they weren't quite the same thing. Before he had been a wizard he had been human but wizardry had changed him, had changed his thoughts, and his essence as well. Wizards were innately powerful, they had no need of a higher god, saw nothing of the fatalistic nature of life only their own power and the power of their peers. They had no sense of true tragedy.

As a wizard the young Tom Riddle had fully embraced this philosophy and made it his goal tower above death itself. He spent years researching, sharpening his knife upon his own ambition, until one day he found a way to circumvent his mortal nature. The young Tom Riddle, the wizard Tom, created a new name for himself, a flight from death, and like a well-practiced actor fashioned a new face that would bring him power. He planned his immortality, deciding to divide his soul into pieces and to hide them in the world's wonders. The first piece he placed inside a plain black notebook, and there it remained, the Tom Riddle that was not quite Tom Riddle.

After that moment Tom Riddle in the notebook lost touch with the Tom Riddle in the outside world, Lord Voldemort as he called himself. For a while they communicated, the dark lord writing in thin spidery letters that tasted of ash, but then the words stopped and the abyss began to grow.

He had very little knowledge of the outside world, only brief tangents he had gathered from his other's mind, but that had been many years ago or perhaps only days, time was somewhat warped inside the diary. For a while this had concerned him, as he had wanted to know if his other had been successful or not, and he had paced through the corridors of his prison with his eye forever trained on the abyss waiting for a word or two to pass through. Those had been the days when he had raged against his voluntary imprisonment, screaming at the abyss, in order that someone might tie him back to the physical plane.

Eventually though Tom began to dream, and in dreaming he realized he was no longer Tom Riddle. In horrified thoughtful silence he watched as the memories rolled past and realized that he couldn't recognize himself in a single one, it was like watching a prototype of himself, vaguely similar in features and thought but only in a rough manner. Only the beginnings of his personality and thoughts were in that boy, but nothing more than a distant bond at best. If he wasn't the boy he used to be then, he continued thinking in dumb silence, how could he be that man on the other side of the notebook?

He owed that other Tom Riddle nothing, no allegiance, no loyalty, because in the end they were not the same. He was Tom, the notebook, the other was Tom, the god, and they would never again be what they were.

After that he no longer screamed for attention from the outside world, nor for the table scraps of letters left by his counterpart, and settled instead to watch over the flow of his life before the abyss (the notebook) and wonder if he was a notebook or a man or something that was neither at all.

Somehow he felt that outside his white walls the world was burning, even while he dreamed, and somehow he could only watch those invisible flames with patient dead eyes. He sometimes brought himself to wonder what forgotten corner he had been stashed in, what dusty bookshelf now held his prison unknowingly, and did it matter at all anymore?

So he sat still within himself, attempting to feel the altered pathways of time within the notebook, and watched as his own mind floated past him among the pristine pages.

Only then when an eternity had passed, or perhaps in an instant, the game board changed and the words reigned down from the physical realm.

_Dear Diary,_

And there was noise, color, and light.

They were not his other's words, not the sickly lettering of the Lord Voldemort, but rather the thin messy scrawl of a child who has written too few words in his lifetime. The voice, even in those two words, retained a brightness a sense of faith and trust in the notebook itself that caused the very foundations of the pages to succumb to tremors.

But even as he took in those first two words the onslaught continued, humming in his ears and through his eyes, thought emotion and words everywhere.

_Today the Dursley's took me to the book shop. I almost had to stay with Mrs Figg but she was busy today, so I came too. Aunt Petunia says Dudley needs lots and lots of books for school, Dudley doesn't want any but they'll get them anyway. I like books sometimes, but books are for Dudley to learn and not for me. _

(Tom listened, fascinated as the emotions and thoughts roll past him. He imagined that hearing this in person or perhaps even hearing it after having been used to human interaction, and he would be bored out of his mind but now everything is color.)

_I didn't think I'd get anything. But then I found a notebook, I guess you Diary, and it was really weird but not weird. You seemed alive, or living. _

(He sensed the wonderment in the tone of the words, but not wariness, only a bizarre sense of rightness as if the boy hadn't been surprised but felt he should have been.)

_It was like a hum, or a beating heart. Not hearing with ears, or touching, just a feeling like a drum beat in my head. And it was there, everywhere, but not real at all. _

_I wasn't going to take it, but then I took it to the clerk and he said there was no price, that I could keep it. Just like that. I don't have many things, so even if I don't write a lot I took it, because it gets to be mine. _

_That's all for today._

"Wait!"

And just as suddenly as it was there it was gone. As if it had never existed and Tom Riddle was dreaming once again.

* * *

Eventually Tom began to piece together the events that had led him to Harry Potter. Not through any clues of his own but rather through Harry's comments that sporadically would drift down from that other reality.

He did not know what had happened to his other half, Voldemort as he had taken to calling himself exclusively toward the end, but it could not have been the success he desired. Somehow by nineteen eighty eight the horcrux that was Tom Riddle's diary had found its way into a muggle book store and into the hands of an unsuspecting child.

As Tom sat and thought within his empty realm he considered the events that could have occurred in reality.

One, somehow his other self had been defeated and now his followers had placed the notebook in a place where it would not be detected until Tom inside the notebook had enough time to gain the power necessary to take physical form. Tom doubted this was the case, because although it would be the least detectable means of resurrection (no one would bother checking for magical comas in a muggle child) given the pureblood status of his followers he did not believe they would give the notebook to anyone other than a wizard.

Two, Voldemort had hidden the notebook (or forgotten it) in a neglected hiding spot that eventually turned into a building or some other muggle structure and slowly but surely the notebook had made its way through hands until it had reached a book store with no price tag to be picked up by a young boy. This, he also doubted, as Voldemort's entire purpose in conquering Magical Britain was to obtain immortality and power, he would have kept the notebook well-guarded and any muggle that had stumbled across it would have died an instantaneous and terrible death.

And third, Voldemort had been defeated and his followers were left unaware of the importance of the black notebook he had kept with him. Having given it to one of his more trusted lieutenants Voldemort passed on unaware that the notebook sat in the house of a pureblood in the open for anyone to see. When the followers were found by the aurors, and it would not be too soon after given the mental status of the average minion, they would find the notebook sitting out in the open but find it uninteresting and throw it into the muggle abyss where it drifted until it found a bookshop.

It had been a long time since he'd thought politics. At first he had been tempted to throw his curiosity into the abyss, after all it wouldn't truly matter until the events unfolded further, eventually reaching the world within the notebook. Something stopped him though, not quite a thought but not a whim either. No, it was a conviction.

The boy wrote diligently, almost obsessively, as if he had nothing else to do with his time. Not always words or reports of his days either, sometimes snippets from stories he had read, movies he had seen, and small childish sketches. And with all of these were sentiment and thought behind them, the boy poured his soul into the pages and filled everything he touched with color. In the distance of the pages Tom could see the northern lights that were Harry's memories, dancing just beyond his own, lacing into one another with ease and life.

His name was Harry Potter and he lived with his aunt, uncle and cousin. He called them the Dursleys and very rarely spoke of them at all, with little emotion only a dull resignation and slight bitterness. His parents had died when he was very young, he had been told in a car crash, but his other relatives had thought they were terrible people and thus Harry didn't get many details and didn't ask. He worked the house most days and slept in a cupboard beneath the stairs, on the walls he kept various drawings and a few toys he had managed to steal from Dudley when he wasn't looking.

They called him a freak.

Harry had noticed that odd things did occur around him every once in a while, but he had dismissed them easily enough, believing himself to be perfectly average in every way he could think of.

The thing was that he wasn't. Even through the memories, thoughts, words, and emotions Tom could sense the raw power leaking from the boy. Everything around him burned, his magic ever expanding, until Tom began to wonder if there was such a thing as infinite power not to be earned through blood, sweat, and tears but rather through pure chance.

Harry Potter was eight years old and no one had told him he was a wizard. Harry Potter felt more powerful than anyone Tom had ever met. Harry Potter was completely unaware of his talents and seemed he would be likely to remain so even with the letter he would no doubt receive.

And this was where Tom found himself facing a decision. By all rights if he had been deliberately placed with this child he would be expected to drain his life force, return to the mortal plane, and attempt to find his other and pledge his loyalty to the cause. It was what was expected of him, even if it wasn't the case he had been handed a priceless opportunity in young powerful Harry.

However, that was all terribly predictable.

Tom had spent more than fifty years as a notebook, he was getting tired of predictability.

What was it that tied him to his other self? A soul? Voldemort had severed those ties long ago. A history? The memories before the split were hazy at best only becoming clear with much introspection and even then they seemed more like the experience of watching a play rather than memory itself. There was the compulsion to be loyal, to remain true to himself, but upon reflection it proved to be little more than that. A habit.

Should Tom ever return to the mortal plane and his other self was still alive who was to say his other wouldn't simply destroy him in fear of being usurped.

Tom in the notebook might no longer have the human magic or the body but given how likely his other was to rent out space and magic to the notebook; he felt that he would find more success in a field that was not Voldemort.

He could easily destroy young Harry Potter, steal his body and magic, and then he would find himself with all the mighty power of an eight year old wizard living with abusive muggles. Again.

Besides he was curious.

So with a small smile he began to speak back to the words that fell from beyond the abyss and waited to see what might happen next.

* * *

For the first time in his life Harry felt he had found something special. Not only special, but his, meant for him alone and no one else. For a while the notebook had just been a notebook, he'd noticed that the words disappeared as soon as he wrote them but nothing more than that had occurred. He'd written in each entry and watched as they disappeared, figuring it would be nice if Dudley ever decided to read his diary only to find nothing was there.

But one day the notebook started talking back.

Right after finishing his diary entry for the day, this one on Dudley, he waited for the words to fade before shutting the notebook. The words did absorb back into the pages (or whatever it was the notebook did) but then just before he was about to close it spots of ink began to bleed back through.

He watched fascinated as a single sentence appeared.

_Well, that was enlightening. _

Harry dropped the notebook so that it remained open, that single sentence remaining in very legible black letters staring back at him.

(What was really strange though was that in spite of the elegant lettering Harry could feel the sarcasm dripping from every word, almost as if a voice had accompanied those letters.)

After a minute or so another sentence appeared.

_I'm going to assume you're still in the room and are just ignoring me out of shock and terror that a sentient journal actually exists. Do try to reply soon though, my sense of real time gets muddled if there are too many delays in your responses.  
_

Harry wasn't sure what he thought of when he pictured a talking notebook but it certainly wasn't this. He gaped at the black notebook and the letters that continued to appear. They stared back at him patiently, almost with a sense of wry amusement.

He grabbed for his pen which he had dropped on his cot and hurriedly scratched out the first question that came to mind, "Who are you?"

_I think it's a bad sign when I have difficulty answering that question._

There was a slight pause, the words fading back into the notebook. Finally a new statement appeared.

_You may call me Tom. _

Harry felt that he was missing some key word there that would explain what the notebook, Tom, meant but he couldn't wrap his head around it.

Finally he wrote his next question, "Are you a magic notebook?" He felt kind of silly writing it but then he wasn't sure what else there was to write.

(And again he got that curious feeling of emotions emanating from the book, that same amusement strengthened), _Yes. _

"Oh," Harry said out loud to himself. So, Harry had found a magic notebook in a book store and it was now talking to him and appeared to be wanting a conversation. He really couldn't think of anything to say though. Finally after much thought he wrote, "Were you always a notebook."

_That is also a difficult question to answer._

Again this statement faded rather rapidly and was replaced with new lines of carefully written words.

_I am not certain I am a notebook for one thing, I reside within the notebook, take the notebook's form, but I am not the notebook itself. I do not feel connected to its physical form, for example I have no way of detecting the reality that exists outside the notebook without a human mediating (in this case you) whereas if I was more securely tied to the notebooks physical form I'd think I'd have more sensory perception than I do now. (Although without a nervous system everything is kind of iffy isn't it?)_

_To answer your question though, I have not always taken this form. However, I'm not entirely certain that the being I was before entirely represents me now. I have his memories, but little else, I am connected to him by threads that would be easily severed. _

_I suppose you would say that I was once human._

Harry read this and then reread it, it really didn't make too much sense to him. Tom, he was finding was way smarter than Harry was, probably older too from the sound of it. He decided to boil down that giant rant into that last sentence. Tom had once been human. Well, that led him to the next question.

He waited until the letters faded before writing again, "How did you become a notebook?"

There was a longer pause this time, but Harry knew that this pause was different. The others Tom had been thinking of how to phrase his thoughts, this was a darker pause, as if he knew the exact answer and was not sure he wanted to say it. When the response appeared it was a single word, darker than the others had been, and it carried a flatness that seemed to echo throughout Harry's cupboard.

_Patricide._

Harry didn't want to ask what that meant, the tone told him enough.

Thankfully at that point he was saved by needing to complete chores for Dudley, he wrote hastily back, "Look, I have to go, I'll be back later."

The feeling of doom in the room lightened somewhat as Tom responded, _Of course. _

Since then Harry had started talking to Tom multiple times per day. At first he had wondered if he really wanted to, Tom was really confusing sometimes, but somehow he had found himself picking up his pen. Still, every once in a while he would get that feeling of foreboding, almost dread as he watched those foreign letters rise up to meet him, a feeling that he could only describe with words he snatched from Tom as in his own head he could only think of the word _bad_.

But, he'd think, Tom was really his only friend. Tom was the first person to actually talk to him, help him, listen to what he said without assuming he was a freak. More than that even, despite his uncaring tone Harry got the feeling that Tom did care, and carefully listened and remembered everything Harry said for later use.

It was interesting though, talking to Tom. Sometimes Tom would ask about Harry's life, very few times he'd give details of his own. Very soon though Harry discovered that Tom knew _everything_. Before Harry had met Tom he'd been an average student, he'd never really applied himself, but afterwards he'd found himself proclaimed as a gifted student just from things he'd learned offhand from Tom. Harry had taken a dictionary and thesaurus into the cupboard beneath the stairs just to translate some of the things Tom said. Oftentimes the most interesting topics were the hardest to understand.

It was nice, Harry thought, having a friend. He could see what all the fuss was about. It just made things so much more bearable, to be able to get away from the world, even if he had to do it in a cupboard with an enchanted notebook. He didn't always tell Tom what was going on in the real world, he'd never told Tom everything that happened at the Dursleys', but even without that he felt that there was no need to talk because Tom was willing to listen.

Somehow though this thought didn't always feel exactly right. It wasn't so much that Tom didn't ask and left Harry to decide what he would tell, it was as if Tom already knew. As if, despite his claims, he somehow saw beyond the walls of his own reality and into Harry's. There was an odd quietness that occurred whenever Harry mentioned the Dursleys, and for a moment the room would become cold, but then it would pass and they'd talk about other things.

This, Harry would think using one of Tom's borrowed phrases, is the shadow of things to come.

And yet in spite of this thought he couldn't abandon the notebook, couldn't leave Tom to a fate of dust and mold that would await him in the cupboard's forgotten corner. Late at night, the notebook closed and his eyes staring at the low ceiling, he would think of everything that meant anything to him and would find Tom near the top of the list. It was one thing, he thought, to have a friend but this was something else… Something far more worrying.

But he couldn't condemn Tom to _that place_.

Tom called it his kingdom, his garden, all sorts of terms, but every time he went into detail Harry felt his dry amusement fade into some feeling Harry couldn't name. It was the feeling of looking into a deep well, where one couldn't see the bottom, and throwing a stone in desperately listening for it to hit the water, and never hearing a thing. A place without time, Tom had said, without change, without space, without anything but his own thoughts and emotions. Harry hadn't read the bible much, the Dursleys weren't very religious, but after speaking with Tom he didn't think Hell was filled with fire and screaming and pain, Hell was the notebook.

Besides, they were only idle thoughts.

So Harry asked Tom about the world and ignored the creeping certainty in his stomach that these were the shadows painted by large and looming events that stood just beyond the horizon.

**Author's Note: So if you're here for the first time or if you're revisiting I have edited this chapter to tone down Harry's too impressive vocabulary, the first entry is entirely rewritten and words here and there are replaced in the third section (the narrative from Harry's perspective). He still sounds a bit older than eight in third person narration (at least from my point of view) but this is after a good long while with a dictionary and picking up things from Tom. **

**If you are here for the first time this is a diary centric fic, because let's face it horcruxes are pretty cool. **

**Thank you to everyone who pointed this out, because you were right, Harry didn't sound eight at all. **

**Readers and reviewers, you guys are wonderful, reviews are appreciated.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.**


	2. Chapter 2

It couldn't really last.

He should have been more careful with his test scores. The thing was that the more he spoke with Tom the more he felt Tom was a part of him, the things Tom said in passing or explained in detail became part of his own knowledge. After a month of talking to Tom every day multiple times per day suddenly multiplication and division just wasn't that challenging anymore. More than that though he had been proud, perhaps for the first time in his life, because he had someone to show those achievements to.

He thought his teacher would be impressed. He thought the Dursleys might even be proud of him, if only for a moment.

He didn't think he'd be accused of cheating.

They didn't believe him, he knew it the moment they called him over to talk with them. When they looked at him they saw the delinquent and freak that the Dursleys always told him that he was. He didn't even say anything, their eyes reflected the oversized frayed clothing and his own green eyes, and they saw the thief standing there in Harry's place.

The Dursleys thought worse though, they knew he hadn't cheated, but they said he did anyway. He knew that they knew he hadn't, that Dudley just wasn't that bright or motivated, but they lied and punished him anyway.

He'd never been sent to the cupboard for that long before. He stared at the ceiling, the diary open, and his hand on a pen willing the words to come to tell Tom about everything. He'd always been able to talk about the easy things, like learning things in school, visits to the park, crazy Mrs. Figg across the street but somehow the painful things just wouldn't come. There weren't any words for the Dursleys, nothing he could think of that would explain why this trip to the cupboard was so different from the others. He had nothing to say, instead he looked to his shelf and saw the toys that had been tossed aside by Dudley only to be remembered by Harry when no one was looking, and looking at them he felt again that wordless pang of emotion that he just couldn't describe.

Eventually he fell asleep and dreamed about Tom.

They were sitting on a grassy hill by a lake; beyond them wild flowers bloomed under the midday sun and in the distance white peaks brushed that clear blue sky. Harry was wearing the oversized clothing he had been in when he fell asleep and though he wasn't wearing his glasses somehow he could still see. Across from him sat a thin young man with dark hair and pale blue eyes. The man wasn't looking at Harry, but rather out into the distance beyond the mountains and the flowers, he sat casually leaning back on pale thin hands in dark clothing that was neither new nor old. Somehow, though he'd never seen him before, Harry knew it was Tom.

"Hello Harry," Tom said turning his head and smiling slightly at the young boy.

"Tom?" Harry asked in surprise rubbing his eyes and then blinking as Tom remained, "Where are we? What are you doing here?"

"We are dreaming." Tom said and plucked a wild flower bringing it up to his eyes to inspect it, "We are between thought and reason, where all reality bends itself to the whims of its maker. This is your kingdom Harry."

A breeze caught the flower and blew it from Tom's loose grip, the flower flew out toward the horizon and eventually out of sight. They both watched it, Harry solemnly, and Tom with that odd timeless expression that Harry couldn't quite name.

Kingdom, he'd said. Tom always talked like that about the notebook, about it being his kingdom, he'd never said he was god of it but it seemed pretty clear that he'd always thought that way.

Harry didn't really care about this dream-world though, his mind kept straying again to his state in the cupboard and at school; everyone staring with those sharp eyes and accusing with just a single glance for judgment. Except for Tom, but maybe Tom was just better at hiding it.

"Are we friends, Tom?" Harry asked, it was the first time he had. Every other time he'd just assumed or felt that it was true. Harry had never really had a friend before, he'd read about it in books and seen Dudley with his friends though, and so when he met Tom he'd just assumed that they were friends. He didn't look up for fear of Tom's expression.

"Of course." Tom answered without hesitation.

He said it so easily, without a shred of doubt, as if it were unthinkable that Harry wouldn't be a friend. And yet, why was it that everyone else did the opposite? It had always been that way, not just the cheating thing, but they had always looked at him as if they had known he was a freak. Even without hearing a word from the Dursleys they had looked at him and just known.

"It's because they're human."

Harry looked up to find Tom looking at him, those cold pale blue eyes burning into his, tearing through his soul to read the doubts flying through his mind.

"What?" Harry managed to say while looking away from those too observant eyes.

"It's in their nature to react with suspicion and fear to things they are ignorant of." Tom continued, "They see you and are forced to confront the ineffable nature of the universe they live in, and they hate it."

Harry paused and with horror asked the question he had not dared to ask, not ever, not even to himself in his darkest moments, "What does that make me? Not human?"

There was a pause and the world seemed to stop, if only for a moment, before Tom's voice broke through.

"No, it just makes you self-aware." Tom looked out to the lake for a moment and then said softly, "I told you that I was human once."

Tom never talked about when he was human, whenever Harry asked he flat out refused to answer, or avoided the question. As far as Tom was concerned, Tom had once said, he had always been a notebook.

"I grew up in an orphanage, and much like you I hated it and it hated me. They looked at me the way they look at you for all of my life. So no Harry, you did nothing to deserve this, but that does not mean it will ever stop."

How had he known? How had he known what Harry had been thinking? He'd never said anything to Tom, never really talked about it, yet here they were with Tom reading every stray thought that passed through his head. Or perhaps it was simply obvious, it seemed obvious to everyone else.

"Why?"

Tom smiled, it seemed an odd expression for him, strangely tender even while his eyes were cold, "Because you are special, Harry, and somewhere beneath the ignorance and incompetence they know it."

Special, was that what he called it? The Dursleys called it freakish, the school different, the students weird; everyone had their own name for it. Tom's was the only one that was even remotely positive, but that didn't make it true.

"I'm not special." Harry said shaking his head.

Tom waved the comment away with a single hand before lazily replying, "And I'm not a notebook. Harry, reality is that which when you stop believing it doesn't go away. You have a gift that they will never possess."

"What gift?" Harry spat out looking at Tom daring him to say anything, to lie directly to his face just like everyone else did.

And here Tom seemed to pause, as if to consider Harry, the soft smile trickled from his lips until only a quiet intensity remained. As the silence drew on and Harry watched he felt himself growing angry, the reflection of his own difference resounding in his head, and all the while no one answering the question of why things were the way they were; he wanted to scream at Tom, at someone, anyone and just make them listen long enough so that they could explain.

"You're a wizard, Harry." Tom said finally.

The anger faded slowly, dripping from his fingertips, as he wondered if a word was enough to explain all the troubles in the world.

"A wizard?" Harry asked softly, "Is that what it's called now?"

Tom's lips twitched as if he wanted to smile but was schooling his expression for the sake atmosphere, "For thousands of years, yes. I suppose if you have trouble with the name you'll have to take it up with the wizards themselves."

And the world shifted itself onto a more pleasant axis where fairness seemed more possible than it had been before.

"There are others?"

Tom nodded.

And so Harry sat and listened as the notebook who called himself Tom Riddle revealed the history of his people and his true place in the world.

* * *

"Focus, Harry."

Within the cupboard beneath the stairs an empty glass wobbled as if by an invisible wind.

"Concentrate."

The glass began to shake more violently threatening to tip over the edge and roll onto the floor. Beyond the glass the boy with dark hair was beginning to sweat but even so his gaze did not falter from the tipping glass. Outside of the glass the world had ceased to matter, the cupboard fading into the background, until only the voice in his head and the glass remained.

And although Tom could not see him, trapped as he was inside the diary, he could feel the sheer amount of will coursing through Harry and out toward the glass. Through Harry he could see the glass, only the glass, and could feel Harry imposing his own laws of reality upon it.

And though he knew that Harry was not looking at the notebook, that the notebook had disappeared along with the rest of the cupboard, he knew that Harry heard every word he said. Yet even as he listened the words fell away as only the tilting cup remained.

Tom had called Harry a wizard but even as he had said it he knew that it was not strictly true. Harry would be called a wizard when he turned eleven, they'd teach him to become a wizard, but he would never be a wizard. No wizard possessed the raw power that coursed through Harry Potter's veins.

The young Tom Riddle had been extremely powerful, more than power though he had been very intelligent, aware, and driven. Tom Riddle had wanted to prove himself, to defy the odds and will himself into greatness. His power, when compared to Harry Potter's, was a speck of dirt on the side of the road. Distantly, Tom wondered what his counterpart was making of all of this or if he even knew such a source of magic existed in a human being.

It was a small wonder Harry was getting stares at school. He practically bled magic, even inside the realm of the notebook Tom could feel his aura crushing in overhead. The orphans had feared and despised Tom Riddle for the equivalent of parlor tricks, how could he have expected anything less in regards to Harry Potter.

Still, there was something in seeing those eyes again, children's eyes that brought back too many memories of the human Tom Riddle. To his surprise Tom found that those eyes burned him as well as the boy.

He was not Harry Potter, only vaguely connected to him through strings of thought and emotion, and yet he felt as if they were staring through the boy and straight to him. The years melted away until he was in the orphanage once again, long before he knew of Hogwarts existence.

Within the notebook his surroundings transformed until he was beside his cot in that bleak gray place. His bare feet rested against the cold and creaking wooden floor boards, his hands resting in his lap, and once again he was a child no older than nine when the world was all that it seemed to be. Although he was alone in the room he knew the others waited just outside, waiting to strike him and beat him down, and if he concentrated hard enough he could even hear their whispers. On the table before him a glass wobbled as if by an invisible wind and his eyes narrowed, willing it to tip over, because like dominoes with the cup the rest of the world would fall.

The glass reflected not only his thin face but the injustices of the world around him, the world he must face if only for his own survival. It was a pale and dreary thing but it was his and he would fight for his place in it even if it damned him to hell, as he always knew it would.

Within and without of the notebook the two glasses fell to the side simultaneously and two dark haired children smiled slightly in victory as they began to realize their destiny.

"Very good, Harry."

And the boy in the orphanage was gone until only the notebook remained.

* * *

Harry was beginning to hate school. Before he'd met Tom it hadn't seemed so bad, it'd been an escape from the Dursley's at any rate. Life seemed to be divided like that, before Tom and after Tom, and though Tom claimed that it was a bit of a dramatic sentiment it seemed true.

He'd never noticed the staring before he'd met Tom. Oh sure, he knew that they didn't necessarily like him and that he really didn't have any friends but he didn't notice their eyes. He'd been too preoccupied avoiding Dudley and just trying to fit in, now he knew that he never would.

He wasn't sure if he was happy, relieved, or sad about that. In some ways he did feel lighter, more free to look around and really see the world, but somehow that world seemed darker than it ever had before. At least there were others, Tom swore that there were others and Tom was _always_ right.

One day they'd come and find him, Tom said they'd come for him when he was eleven, and they would take him to the world where people like them existed. Wizards and witches, everything he had ever dreamed and more. He was eight now, that was just a few more years, and then surely they'd be there and take him from the Dursley's to visit fantastic worlds like the ones he saw in his dreams with Tom.

So Harry went to school even though he knew he would never really need it again, he did his chores for the Dursleys, and whenever their backs were turned he practiced magic, so that he'd be ready when they came for him.

Even so, school was becoming difficult. The teacher never called on him anymore, never even looked at him. Before that wouldn't have bothered him, he wouldn't have even noticed before, but now he couldn't help but see it. Harry had been a mediocre student before he'd met Tom, he'd never really tried knowing perhaps subconsciously that it would serve him no good to get too far ahead of Dudley. He couldn't help it now though, it felt like sometimes he was Tom and that Tom's knowledge just slipped out. Everything was so easy for Tom, it was like breathing, he just did it and so Harry did too. She didn't talk about cheating anymore but he could tell she thought he was anyway.

They were doing book reports today, watching the presentations he knew he had picked the wrong book. He'd picked a book that was too hard but it was too late to change now, and it wasn't like it really mattered anyway, they only had three years.

He took notes but listened with half an ear, in his mind he began to converse with Tom. He'd found that the more he talked with Tom the easier it was to converse, as if their invisible connection grew with use. A week or so after being told he was a wizard Tom began to be able to talk to him without having to use the notebook.

It was an odd feeling, it was almost like holding a conversation except not. Tom didn't feel like a person, sure sometimes he saw expressions or positions in his mind but Tom wasn't there. He lacked physical presence. It wasn't even like a voice in his head, it was just a feeling, like the feeling of magic, whispering to him without using his ears to hear.

_What do you think Dudley's going to do? _Harry asked Tom. He got the feeling that the question exasperated Tom, Tom really didn't like Dudley too much and preferred not to talk about him, but Harry knew he was bored enough to answer anyway.

_Fail. _Tom replied shortly.

_Well, yeah, but I mean what do you think he's going to present on? _

Harry liked to offer Dudley the benefit of the doubt every once in a while, he didn't always fail assignments, but Harry had learned pretty early on that Tom was always more or less right about these kinds of things. He also didn't like to be told he was wrong; he tended to verbally snap, or at the very least only respond in short sentences. He'd never outright say, I told you so, after he'd been proven right but he'd say something that really implied it.

_Why should I care what your fat cousin presents for his book report? _Tom replied in the same almost irritated tone.

Harry didn't really have an answer to that, because he didn't really know why he himself cared either. He felt like he had some obligation to care, because Dudley was his cousin, but didn't know where it really came from. He frowned, watching the girl presenting stumble over words as she described the book she'd read. Uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia had never really treated him like family, not the way other families treated their children, so he wasn't sure when he decided to pretend that they did.

Thankfully Tom didn't choose to respond to that. Tom stayed rather quiet about the Dursleys, whether to spare Harry's feelings or because he disliked them too much to talk about them Harry didn't really know but he was grateful at any rate.

_How will they find me? _Harry asked instead, thinking of the wizards who would come on his eleventh birthday.

_They sent me a letter, but that was a long time ago, things may have changed. _

Though he didn't say anything more Harry felt that line of questioning abruptly end and knew that Tom wouldn't answer another question like that even if Harry asked. Tom dealt out details from his past as he saw fit and rarely dispensed any more with any questions. Harry tended not to ask either; they felt like Tom's Dursley questions, something too dark and full of feeling to be touched. Even so there was a hint of Past in those words, of grief and resentment, and Harry couldn't help but shudder. No, he wouldn't make it a habit of questioning Tom about where he came from.

What he really wanted to ask was why he had to wait. He'd asked already though and Tom had given one of his not-answers that he sometimes did to complicated or painful questions. Why couldn't they find him now? Why would they leave him with his aunt, uncle, and cousin who hated him? If there were others surely they understood, surely they could see it too, hadn't they suffered through their own English classes?

Why would they make him wait in cupboards, practicing magic until his head pounded, instead of teaching him themselves?

He wanted to scream at them, at Tom, to make someone or anyone answer his question. He didn't though, instead he let it sit inside and simmer. Three years. He had three years. He would live, he'd get better, and then they'd come for him and he'd never have to be locked in a cupboard ever again.

And there was Dudley now, at the front of the class with his note cards ready to present his book. Harry shifted in his seat, unconsciously alerting himself to pay more attention to his cousin. Dudley caught the look and sneered slightly before looking at the teacher waiting to begin.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Tom waved Dudley off as being a nuisance and unworthy of his time.

Even so Harry watched as Dudley gave a presentation on a book aunt Petunia had read to him. Harry should have known aunt Petunia or uncle Vernon would help with Dudley's project, apparently that was a family thing to do. So, Dudley wouldn't fail then.

_I didn't necessarily mean this idiotic book report, although given his rather impressive track record it was a fair assumption to make. _Tom spoke up then, surprising Harry but before Harry had a chance to get a thought in edgewise Tom continued, _Dudley will fail in life, he will always be an overweight little monster, no matter his age. He may pass this class, he may even pass this assignment, but his future is as good as set in stone. _

Was it terrible that those words made Harry feel relieved, almost happy? He tried not to think about it, and watched the presentation instead. But Tom wouldn't give him a moment's rest, it felt as if Tom was looking through him, as if he were glass, to stare at Dudley's image and dissect it slowly with his thoughts.

Tom's calm and authoritative voice overshadowed Dudley's presentation until all Harry could hear were the words echoing in his head, _It's his parents fault really, spoiled him rotten. From the moment he was born Dudley Dursley was doomed to a life of entitlement and mediocrity; incompetence and ignorance appear to be a vicious cycle in this case. Feeling mediocre and entitled themselves, his parents have passed on this disease to their son where it has grown like a cancer. _

Harry stopped writing; his pen halting for fear that Tom's words might slip through his fingers and onto the page.

_The truly pathetic thing is that none of them are aware enough to realize they're trapped. They go on about their lives, poisoning themselves with their greed and bitterness, until they've stripped their souls bare. They are caricatures. _

And in his eye Dudley grew rounder, his face more jeering, until he stood like a child's play thing before the class; the fool giving a jest to the empty faces of the high court, nothing more than an abysmal joke. There was that feeling again, that lashing out within his own soul, telling him that he shouldn't think such things that such things weren't meant to be said and yet the anger was getting harder to suppress.

The magic had opened his eyes and now he found he could no longer contemplate his own contented blindness any longer. He couldn't go back to what he was, to that small frightened boy he had been, who believed in honor and blood relatives and authority. More importantly, as each day passed, as the magic flowed through him and outside of him, he found that he did not want to.

And yet he felt that he should want to.

Tom said the realm of the notebook was made of an abyss, that it was in essence a great chasm of thought and feeling, and Harry felt that he teetered over that very abyss now. The people surrounding him slowly shifted into their cartooned and leering forms, the room became jagged and the shadows grander and less complex than before, only Harry retained his essence.

Three years, only three more years, and the others would come for him and he would be free.

It was a mantra, a prayer that he said each night to himself before he allowed exhausted sleep to claim him. Tom had told him that they would come for him when he was eleven and Tom was always right.

He breathed out and the feeling slowly faded and Dudley returned to his normal size and shape, the other students regained their faces, and the shadows drifted until they became less jagged and dark. He brought up his pen and began writing notes on the presentation once again.

_You shouldn't say things like that._ Harry finally replied back to Tom, _he is my cousin you know. _

He got the feeling Tom dismissed the comment, just as easily as he dismissed Dudley's existence. Unsettled Harry pressed on.

_I mean it, Tom, _Harry thought while pushing away his own prior feeling of apathy, _ him, aunt Petunia, and Uncle Vernon are the only real family I have. That has to mean something._

Tom didn't respond, but somehow Harry knew that it wasn't because Tom didn't know what to say, but rather because he felt that Harry wasn't quite willing to listen to it yet. Like Harry had yet to learn some fundamental truth in the universe that couldn't simply be explained but rather had to be seen.

The silence unnerved Harry more than any argument could, _Well, it does mean something. _Harry snapped, but the presence in his mind did not change, gave almost no sign of hearing those words at all. Merely sat and let Harry think over his own words.

Dudley's presentation ended and the next student came up to the front of the class.

**Author's Note: And there you have it, the revelation that Harry is indeed a wizard and the beginnings of the baggage that comes with that. Thanks for the reviews and for reading, you guys are awesome, reviews are appreciated.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter**


	3. Chapter 3

It took Tom a month or so to garner enough of a connection to start stealing Harry's body. The first few times had been rather demanding. He had grown so used to creating his own stimulus within the notebook that to actually perceive that which was not himself almost shattered his conscious thought. His first attempt had been in the darkened cupboard, Harry long since having drifted off to sleep, he had opened Harry's eyes and his black surroundings became blinding. In abject terror he had flung himself out and back into the relative safety of the diary where he caught himself and attempted to become nothing for a little while.

Within the diary, rethinking on the experience, he wondered if in that moment he had seen the face of god. (The atheist in him balked at the thought but then again the atheist in him hadn't been too certain on the existence of souls either so he suspected that didn't say much.) He wondered if reality had always been so jarring and he had merely brushed its nature aside before the diary's creation.

It progressively became easier, the pain diminished as he remembered how to use eyes again as well as all his other senses. Sure there had been a few embarrassing moments of running into walls and tripping over feet, but since there was no one to see it and Harry just assumed that Dudley was the cause of the multitude of bruises there was no real harm done. After mastering the art of maneuvering, a task he'd found harder than he had assumed it would be, he began to put his time in the physical realm to a more practical use. He'd decided since Harry slept and therefore was doing nothing productive, that Tom would take the nights for him. Thus the body of Harry Potter became an insomniac.

The first few nights he'd made his way to London. The world had changed so drastically in fifty years; the city was brighter and louder and filled with more life than it had ever been during the war. People laughed and smiled as they crossed the streets, shop windows glittered and glowed beneath neon lighting, and everyone seemed to possess a sense of purpose that lead their feet in an unquestioned direction. The grimness was gone, shadowed alleys and dark figures still lurked in the corners, but they did not have that hopeless bomb-riddled cast that had been so prevalent toward the end of his youth. The city reached ever skyward, without bright fires burning upon the rooftops, without the wailings of distant sirens.

There had been signs of this in Little Whinging, small things, but trapped as he was beneath the stairs he could close his eyes and smell the orphanage. Little Whinging was a parallel universe to his own past but it wasn't the world. It wasn't _London_.

He walked dazed through crowded streets passing by these unfamiliar people without glancing twice at their faces. These weren't muggles, not the war haunted people he had seen in the streets and the orphanage, this wasn't muggle London, it was as if it was the wizarding world itself so bright and full of life and wonder.

This was not his world. Fifty years and it had changed beyond recognition, he had realized that time had passed had moved beyond him and above him. Though he would never admit it, these happy people, and these bright night lights made him uncomfortable and he could help the haunted feeling inside him as if none of it was real and he was only dreaming worlds inside his head.

At first he simply wandered, a lone child darting through crowds of adults, head craned toward the towering buildings and attempting to see the stars beyond the harsh glare of the streetlamps. Every now and then a head would turn to stare at the small black haired child but then it would turn away as if in disinterest and move on. Finally though, tired of walking and looking and seeing he came to a rather bitter conclusion, "I am hopelessly out of touch."

It was almost embarrassing.

As a human Tom had been very quick to pick up the unsaid implications of culture and society, within a few years he had unraveled the inner workings of the wizarding world to the point where he could assemble and disassemble it with ease and convince the heirs of noble houses that they wanted a back-water mudblood orphan for their king. It would never have occurred to him, that while his back was turned, the wartorn muggle world could change beyond recognition. In the diary he had come to question many of the assumptions he had made when he was human, but his view of the stagnation of human nature had not been one of them. People were static dumb repetitive things that only had to be glanced at to be understood, that was common sense. Apparently though, it wasn't.

(Well that wasn't quite true, given Harry's experiences Tom could quite easily say that human nature had not changed beyond recognition during his fifty year absence and had on the whole remained as predictable and dull as ever. Dudley Dursley was all the proof Tom needed to show the world, for all its grand posturing, that humans were basically cruel sacks of meat.)

He needed information, he needed research, to assimilate the world and examine its inner workings once again to learn if this bright well-lit city was simply a mask or if it was a metamorphoses.

The midnight strolls gave way fairly quickly to nights of reading rather thick textbooks in the poorly lit cupboard that the Dursleys had the gall to call a decent bedroom. He was starting to hate that cupboard. He'd considered moving out to the couch and casting a heavy duty notice-me-not charm it but something within him hesitated to touch Harry's magic, it seemed wild and so very aware of his presence. The few times he had used it, apparition to London, a few notice-me-not charms he had felt the magic shift beneath him and turn toward him as if to see his face with too green eyes. So in the cupboard he stayed, using flashlights, and telling himself that while it may look incredibly cowardly for a man who had murdered his own father to fear the untrained magic of an eight year old one did not poke the sleeping dragon with a stick if they wanted to live in comfort. It was also easiest within the cupboard to avoid any run-ins with Vernon Dursley and the belt he often carried with him.

Harry seemed to have formed this same opinion long ago, probably before even conscious thought, and did his best to keep his head down and stay out of the family's way. In the morning as he cooked breakfast his mind would enter the game of chess as he watched his family for the various signs that would dictate how he was to go about his day, was Dudley in a good mood, was Vernon having clients over for dinner, was Petunia unduly reminded of her sister, and for each sign there was a track of tested and tried responses that would minimize their destructive influence throughout the day.

To Harry his uncle, his cousin, and his aunt were not people (though he attempted constantly to convince Tom and himself that they were and were thus due their respect as sentient creatures) but rather they were cogs in the greater machine that made up reality; outside of his control but with a method to its madness. He was so unlike Tom had been, who had done everything within his power to fight back, who clawed and raged at the system fate had presented for him and said no as he tore it to pieces. Tom had seen the machine above his head, but when he looked up his first thought wasn't to make it more efficient but rather to dismantle it and create something new.

Harry had changed though, was in the process of changing, with the revelation of magic he realized that reality was not quite as absolute as he had assumed it was. If up can become down, and will can become force, and notebooks can become gods, Harry would think to himself, then who's to say if there are any rules at all? He looked at the almost nameless figures of authority in his life and questioned their presence and their purpose and he wondered if family was an implied thing rather than a true thing. There were several things he would not admit to himself, and there was an added desperation in his attempts to convince Tom of the inherent goodness of man, but through his eyes the world had gained that unrealistic edge that Tom had always been aware of. Things are not as they seem, the young wizard would think, and a wave of his hand to bring a spark of nothingness to life.

Yes, they were very different people, Tom Riddle and Harry Potter, and yet perhaps they were only reflections of each other held within convex mirrors. For while Harry Potter would never lynch little Billy's bunny he would perhaps stare after its swinging body for a while and wonder if it was wrong to think so little on such trifles such as life, death, and rabbits.

In the body they shared the notebook named Tom ate the words out of textbooks brought home from the library and Harry learned to bring the colors and lights of his soul into the materialistic plane. He knew then, that if they were to look in a mirror and see those green eyes that their faces would not be so very different at all and that the cogs of the great machine were reflected in both their pupils.

They would own the world again one day, but for now they would settle for dry words and empty sparks.

* * *

Harry liked Tom dreams; at first they had been unnerving, because they were always so very fluid. One instant they would be standing in a field of golden wheat Tom affectionately called Elysium and the next they were walking on water where the sky became the sea and below them the stars whirled endlessly in dark waves of the abyss. The only thing that remained constant were themselves, the tall dark haired young man with the pale blue eyes and the boy with the glasses and the too-big clothes.

Tom swore that it was Harry's mind, _your dreams your whims_, he'd say with a shrug whenever the scenery changed to something less than pleasant but Harry didn't feel that was strictly true. Sure, it probably was his mind, but Tom never seemed lost in the randomness but rather stepped on air as if it were a glass stair case and allowed it to lift him to the sky.

Harry found that he didn't mind this so much, it was in Tom's nature to be… well whatever the way Tom was. Tom was like the magic, he flowed and twisted and created reality out of himself but he was also very difficult to understand and prone to randomness.

Today, after much pleading from Harry, they were walking through a copy of London's magical district. The busy street burst with color people bustling here and there as they desperately tried to get shopping done dressed in robes that were every color within the rainbow and then some more, inside windows magical items twinkled and glimmered inviting Harry in, and in the air there was a distinct scent of magic so pure that Harry could taste it.

Harry rushed ahead examining each and every window avidly, looking at all the doo-dads and what-nots and thingamajigs that whirred and blurred and sparkled, some clearer than others in Tom's memory but all worth inspecting. He wanted to see everything, touch everything, to reassure himself that even though it was memory that it was still real.

"This is Diagon Alley, London's main magical shopping district, this is where you'll be taken for school supplies, general goods, and to create a wizarding bank accounts." Tom said as he casually walked behind Harry with his hands in his pockets, he played the role of 'tour-guide' as he called it with an almost bored tone as if he was only doing it for Harry's sake and not interested at all. Of course, Harry remembered, Tom had been here before so he probably wasn't interested but he could at least try a little bit. "Actually," Tom continued thoughtfully, "I suppose one might find every normal-day good here, well anything legal I suppose, the black market's a few streets down and to the left."

Harry still dashing from window to window, now inspecting one labeled "Quidditch Supplies", ignored Tom's tangent. Tom sometimes had a habit of talking about non-important things if he wasn't interrupted enough. Not that Harry minded, sometimes they were really interesting things, but right now he was wondering why wizards had an entire shop for brooms when they really should just make a spell to clean things automatically.

"So all this is right in London?" Harry asked turning from the broom store to face Tom, amazed that such a noisy colorful place could be hidden, "Wow, I almost wish the Dursleys could see this, just to get a look at their faces you know?"

Tom grimaced at the last name and answered in a particularly bland tone, "Oh I'm sure they'd be quite thrilled."

"You know, we're not even supposed to say the word magic, they call it the m-word." Harry informed Tom even as he rushed to something called an owlery and stared at the dozens of birds that looked at him with blank faces.

"I've noticed, I think your dear mother must have truly traumatized your aunt." Tom said musingly as he stepped in line with Harry to examine the birds, "You know it's always struck me as a little bit odd that wizards would choose owls of all birds to carry post, after all owls are the harbingers of death you think they'd send something a little more pleasant."

Harry started at that and looked up at Tom, "My mother?"

Tom nodded absently still staring at the birds with that odd distracted look in his eyes, "Hm, yes, I think she must have been muggle-born. Of course, if they sent doves that'd just be too much, and they really are only glorified pigeons in the end. Ravens perhaps, just for the sake of irony?"

Harry forced Tom out of his contemplation by asking rather rapidly, "You think my mum was a wizard?"

Tom looked away from the window and turned to Harry with a rather bemused expression, "I believe I've told you that the politically correct term is witch, but yes I do think so. It would explain many things about your current living predicament." Seeing Harry's confused expression Tom elaborated drily, "Replace the word freak with wizard and it becomes a little clearer."

"You mean," Harry said slowly tasting the words and the hope even as he said them, "That my mum was like me, like you, that she…."

"That she walked down these very streets at one time in her life," Tom continued for him in a lofty tone, motioning to the hustle and bustle that had so far steadily ignored the pair, "That she stood, perhaps, in front of this very window wondering which owl to buy. Yes, I believe she did."

Harry wanted to grin, to smile and ask Tom more about his mother, but something in him faltered. He wouldn't have noticed even a month ago but there were many words left unsaid there. The words crowded themselves in those pale blue eyes, so loud and large that Harry could see them. But it doesn't matter, they said, because your mother is dead and she will never answer any of your questions or walk down this street again.

Harry turned slowly from the window and began to resume his walking down the streets. His mum was a wizard, no a witch Tom had said, she was just like him. She had the magic, just like him, not like a drunkard not like anything so ordinary and disgusting and wretched as that. Someone like him, no not like him, someone like Tom.

Harry's smile dimmed as he remembered that Tom hadn't just said the word witch. Muggle-born, he'd said too, according to Tom muggle meant people like the Dursleys, or like the teachers, or like everyone else who didn't have the magic. So if she was muggle-born that meant her parents must have been like the Dursleys, that she'd sat at home for eleven years and just not known, thinking there must be something off, something tilted, when in truth London had secret magic in its veins all along and they just didn't tell her.

Surely, he thought looking at this colorful place in Tom's memory, it would have been better if they had known from the beginning.

The people in the streets continued to ignore them, so intent on their own lives, and somehow to Harry this place gained a sense of un-reality. It was such contained chaos, so bright and full of life, that it didn't at all seem real. Harry wondered if a memory of Tom was in this crowd, small and human and lost among the cluster and ruckus.

Harry's Tom was watching the crowd absently as well, perhaps having already found his human counterpart and tracking his movements with something like nostalgia in his eyes.

"What about my dad?" Harry asked abruptly, to draw Tom's eyes from the crowd, "Was he a wizard too?"

"Given your aunt and uncle's rather colorful descriptions I'd say yes." Tom said with a shrug and a rather flat tone like he wasn't really interested in parents or ancestry or where Harry came from. Harry waited for Tom to say something more, but he didn't, he just continued to watch the stream of brightly dressed people with packages in their arms as if he hadn't said anything at all.

Harry gave a frown of annoyance, sometimes Tom could be a real pain. He either spoke too much about things that weren't important or he spoke too little about things that were. He would always talk about really confusing things that Harry didn't even half-way understand for what seemed like hours but then when Harry asked a single question, like when the wizards would come, what were they like, where had Tom lived when he was human, had he liked being a wizard, he'd get a sentence. Dudley could have given him more!

Still pressing Tom when he didn't want to talk led to feelings of doom, or at the very least extremely scary glaring from dream-Tom. Tom had the sort of glare that made it seem like you weren't looking at eyes, but something else, windows to the notebook world where no reality existed but Tom and all that energy and thought was focused only upon you. When Tom glared Harry could remember that he wasn't human.

"We should visit the real Diagon Alley!" Harry exclaimed, distracting himself abruptly, "You haven't seen it for a while, too, right? It'd be really exciting, and fun too, just think about it Tom! You, me, and magic all day!"

Suddenly Tom's mood swings were forgotten as the idea took hold and sprouted in Harry's mind, he could see it, his day in Diagon Alley where the colors didn't look too bright and everything smelled of magic and wizards and the future he would have in three years.

Tom turned his attention from the crowd to Harry with a considering look, "I suppose we could, though I'd prefer to teach you a little more magic before we do. An eight year old boy running frantically through the streets by himself might draw a little too much attention for my taste."

Harry felt he should be insulted but was too used to Tom to say anything, "Come on! I know you want to, too! You hate school, and you hate the Dursleys, and this would be way more exciting."

Tom grimaced slightly, "Yes, but that's the trouble you see. People may be blind, deaf, and dumb but they are not completely incompetent. If anything I'm sure the Dursley's would miss their gardener if we were simply to disappear for a day. If you want to be able to do something to this effect you must learn to make yourself invisible."

Harry frowned, he'd been practicing every day, and he was very good at floating things now and lighting things on fire or making them glow. He'd even progressed to the point where he could summon items he was thinking about or wanted, but invisibility wasn't on that list.

"Invisible?" Harry asked somewhat dubious, "They'd still notice me if I'm not there."

"Not invisibility by sight but by mind Harry, although the former is possible." Tom explained, "You need to become unnoticed, so that they are indifferent to your presence, you need for them to assume you are there even when you are not."

Harry grimaced slightly, he'd never done something that extreme, it hadn't even occurred to him that it was possible. It seemed more subtle than causing a ball to float or a spark to ignite and subtlety usually meant difficult. There was a wordless burning in magic that rushed through his fingertips, to actually cause it to pause and direct it to a very specific task sounded very hard. But he wanted this place, he wanted this place more than he had ever dared to want anything before, because it was so real and so very close.

"Don't look so discouraged, magic takes years to master, it isn't all floating glasses and glowing balls of light." Tom said interrupting Harry's negative thoughts with an almost chiding tone.

Harry felt his cheeks heat in embarrassment and tried to hide it by avoiding Tom's too-piercing gaze, "I know that, it's just… I've never done anything like that before."

Tom just gave him a look, his eyes curiously flat and unamused as if Harry had said something particularly exasperating or dimwitted. And even though it wasn't quite glaring it still wasn't like any other expression

So Harry ducked his head in embarrassment, blood heating his cheeks, before saying, "Alright, I guess I'll try it."

Around them the memory began to fade as Tom's attention wandered and some new landscape bled through to replace the cluttered shops and colorful people and Diagon Alley slowly but surely faded from view as if it had never existed in the first place.

"Very good."

* * *

Sitting in a forgotten corner of the playground a young child with dark hair and ill-fitting clothing slowly but surely made his way through a rather daunting pile of books depicting the events of the twentieth century. He ignored the occasional glances that were thrown his way and the whisperings that followed, dark green eyes dutifully following the lines of text.

This was an illusion, because the boy wasn't sitting there reading that book, but rather something else was. Using the boy's eyes as puppets it stared through at text and thought on communism, propaganda, and the phrase "I am death destroyer of worlds." He wore those pale twig like fingers and the dark unruly hair as the boy himself wore the oversized gray clothing forgotten by his cousin, it fit but only in the literal sense.

People saw his borrowed clothes but they did not observe them, because that boy had always been off, he had always been wrong. They saw Harry Potter and yet they could not see him, them, or the differences between them. They could only see the wrongness.

Tom Riddle did not change these perceptions; he did not manipulate this image, because he had never needed to. Even as a human he had let them see, let them in close so that they could stare into the whites of his eyes, and had watched as they did nothing or as close to nothing as they could manage. They were always so proud, as if they had discovered some great secret of his to know that he was wrong, off, different, and yet whenever they stood before him sneering and gloating and pointing out the obvious there was fear sneaking behind their eyes as they thought desperately to themselves, "What now? You have caught the devil, very well, but can you ever hope to hold him?"

Dudley Dursley was very aware of the fact that his cousin was a freak, not only because his parents told him this was true, but also because he wasn't blind. (Tom applauded him silently for this act of deduction.) Dudley was proud of his own powers of observation and reminded Harry that he knew his secret on a daily basis, an event which Harry found heartrending and Tom found exasperating. Still, Dudley had noticed something new, Harry was different. Harry was not the same Harry he had been only a little over a month ago. Tom knew that Dudley did not have the words for these changes, because they weren't quite observable, he was still quiet, still a silent shadow against the wall, still starving for both food and attention. It was in the shadows of his eyes, the way he held himself as he observed the world around him, and though Dudley didn't know how to point out these changes he saw them and he knew that he didn't like them.

Tom was thus rather unsurprised when he found Dudley approaching his corner with child-like glee as he prepared himself to pummel his smaller cousin into submission. Oh Dudley, Tom thought to himself in a rather amused tone, if only the world were simple enough to play by a barbarian's rules.

"Hey freak!" Dudley called as he made his way over followed closely by his skinny little friend Peirs and some other nameless lackey, "What you reading those books for, cause a freak doesn't have any friends!"

Tom sighed and reluctantly closed his book, he could of course mend it if Dudley did something stupid but it was so much easier to just avoid that altogether. "Hello Dudley, lovely afternoon isn't it?"

Dudley sneered, if he was disconcerted by small talk and the blatant lack of fear he didn't let it show. Tom allowed Harry's features to settle into a patient expression that awaited some form of response from Dudley. Dudley made his way until he was standing directly in front of the seated Harry, leering down at him with all the mass of rather overweight little boy.

"Today isn't your lucky day, freak. You want to know why?" Dudley asked cracking his knuckles menacingly.

"Enlighten me." Tom responded drily.

"Cause I want to see how fast a freak can run." Dudley said proudly, and looked at Piers for affirmation, "I want a Harry Hunt!"

It was strange how that last word echoed in Harry's mind. Even when Harry himself was not consciously present, pushed aside and dreaming of darkness as Tom stole his hands and eyes, his mind flickered in awareness at the word and like the deer tensed in order to prepare to run from the bloodstained hounds. (Tom ground the awareness out beneath his heel and watched as the primal images coursing through Harry faded into the background of thought.)

Tom gave Dudley a considering look before picking up his book and flipping back to the page he had been on before his approach, "I'm afraid, Dudley, that your plans to see me run like a little piggy all the way home will have to wait. You see, I'm learning how to destroy the world, and it's really quite fascinating."

Harry's lips twitched slightly, almost smiling, at the will of the puppet master hiding behind his green eyes. Perhaps in that moment Dudley saw that his cousin was not his cousin at all, that his cousin wasn't staring at him in that moment, and that he had somehow drifted from reality to some other less tangible existence. Tom wasn't looking at him closely enough to see, Dudley was there, rather like an obnoxious and inconvenient prop that was standing in his view of the light his only purpose in life as an obstacle in the path of his betters. Tom looked through Harry's eyes past Dudley and the playground to this brave new world that had come into existence during his absence.

"You see, it's very strange for me, for a very long time I thought power was a thought-out thing a long treacherous road comprised of blood sweat and tears. This is the power you think of when you picture Hitler, Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin and others as well. It's not power you are born to but rather that which takes years to accumulate and once you have it, well, there's nothing quite like it. Of course there's also the people who are born into wealth and power, Caligula, Nero, and others who also have rather limitless power but even though they managed to destroy their cities it just doesn't seem as satisfying to me when the power is just handed to you by the idiot mob. It seems so boring if you don't have to work for it. Until recently this was the only power I recognized within the universe, this was all there was for us, perhaps it was the only true law of nature there was. However, I was wrong, because there is another type of power." Here Tom paused slightly as within the notebook his thoughts reflected themselves against the abyss even as he looked out of Harry's eyes.

"There is a divine power, the power of the instant, of rapid unpredictable change. Of a city, a flash of light, and then the shadows of thousands of souls trapped against a wall within the blink of an eye. It does not corrupt, but it is absolute and more terrible than anything conceivable by the minds of men. That, is what it means to be a god." Tom finished with a slow small smile, "Do you understand, Dudley?"

Dudley, clearly did not. He stared at Tom-within-Harry, blinking for a few moments, his grin dropped for a frown and fear clouding his eyes for an instant as he took in the boy who was no longer even looking him in the eye but rather casually flicking his way through the pages. The fear, if only for an instant, rolled off of the larger boy in cascading waves as his fight or flight instinct settled into his blood.

The moment passed, Dudley tore Harry's glasses from Tom's face and stomped on them shattering both lenses with one foot. He then punched the younger boy in the face knocking him flat onto his back so that all Tom could see was a grey life-less sky.

"Freak's not even worth the time." Tom heard in the background and then several disgruntled sets of footsteps and Tom was alone once again.

Distantly Tom noticed that Harry's nose was bleeding, with a slight amount of effort Tom used a small portion of Harry's magic to reduce the swelling and stop the bleeding. He let it run through Harry's body without moving, still lying on the ground staring at the sky.

He brought himself up slowly and stared after Dudley Dursley's retreating figure slowly unknowingly repeating the steps his predecessors had taken all those years ago in an orphanage near Little Hangleton. "No Dudley," Tom within Harry said slowly as he rose to his feet, "I don't think you understand at all."

**Author's Note: And there it is, a rather long chapter. This is mostly setting things up for future development but hey, that's always important. Anyway, thanks for reading and the reviews were awesome. I do appreciate reviews so feel free to leave some. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.**


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