Prompt: "You can't leave me, you can never leave me. Where ever you go I will follow, and where ever you hide I will find you. Even in the deepest depths of the ocean, or in death. You are mine and you belong to me, my love." Tomarry, Possessive!Tom – from an anon on Tumblr.

Author's Note: Sometimes I get prompts. Sometimes they become monsters like this one.

The Man in the Diary

It was something so simple. Something so so unassuming, so innocent seeming. It was just a book after all, and what harm could ever come from a book?

Of course, harm could come from a book, in the form of tears spared at the death of a beloved character, sleepless nights spent hunched over a novel with only a dim, singular light for comfort. But it was never real harm, nothing that followed you when you closed the book and set it back on your shelf, ready to continue about your day.

But this book...

It was different.

It was dangerous.

It hummed with energy, with magic that Harry did not know- he was not familiar with it but knew without knowing how he did that it was dark. Terribly dark. And he could feel it pulse out to him in waves, feel his stomach twist and a dull ache settle behind his right eye as fingertips grazed over the leather bound journal. It was soft, the leather worn and pages yellow but it was in well enough condition. At the very bottom of it, embossed in golden lettering was the name T.M. Riddle.

He did not know who that was, or why Lucius Malfoy had had it in his possession and felt it appropriate to drop it within Ginny's cauldron. But Harry had not trusted it in the slightest, fingers plucking it from her small collection of texts when she wasn't looking and hiding it in his own, promising to investigate it further, when it was later in the evening.

And it was later- several evenings later to be exact, and he sat on his bed in the Gryffindor dormitories, the thick, crimson curtains drawn and the journal settled in his lap. An index finger traced over the printed letters, the sharp turns of the T and the M, the rounded bellies of the R and the D's. It was as if a syringe had been placed to the tip of his finger, injecting something into his veins that made his arm itch and burn as it coursed through him- venom, acid, or something euphoric.

He opened it, the heel of his palm smoothing down the center of it to flatten it and keep it splayed open. The pages smelt crisp, ancient, like dust and the less frequented corner of a library. He reached for his quill, unscrewing a bottle of ink and settling it on his knee, dipping the brass tip of the quill into the black well. He brought it to the right hand page, hesitating for a moment as he chewed his lip.

What had he intended to do, exactly?

If Malfoy had slipped the diary to Ginny, it had to be for a purpose. And what purpose was it? What was it capable of? It was just a book. A blank one at that.

A bead of ink fell from the quill, landing on the page and splattering against it, specks of black dotted randomly throughout. It glinted, the gloss drying down rather quickly, when a curious thing happened. Of course, many a curious thing happened in Harry's life, ever since his eleventh birthday, beginning with a flurry of letters with red stamps raining from the sky. Though curiosity was commonplace long before then, if he was being honest. Snakes slipping from once enclosed cages, hair regrowing overnight.

But this was curious in particular in that the ink seemed to disappear into the paper- saturating the yellow pages until there was nothing left but blank space. And surely that was odd, even in the magical world. After all, what was the purpose of a blank book if all writing on it vanished?

Before he could ponder the thought any further, words appeared before him, curling, elegant script.

Hello?

-xXx-

Tom Marvolo Riddle was who the journal had belonged to, and there was something about the name that did not quite settle in Harry's mouth. It was metal on his tongue, it was a twinge behind his eye. He did not know why a man existed within the slightly too stiff pages, and he had thought to ask Hermione of it but decided against it. She was oddly suspicious of things, and surely a diary that wrote back to him would be cause enough for her to alert McGonagall. Dumbledore even.

And there was no sense in bothering the headmaster with something so silly. It was just a book.

'I was trapped in the pages of this diary long ago,' Tom had explained at Harry's prompting. 'The effects of a spell I used that had not gone as planned.'

'But what is it like in there? How can someone exist in a diary?' Harry asked, his own words looking sloppy, hasty against the fading calligraphy. But they disappeared soon enough, replaced with Tom's own answer.

'I am left with nothing but memories. Empty rooms and empty halls from my life before I was locked within this book.'

Harry frowned at that. That sounded awful! He couldn't imagine what that might be like- spending eternity with nothing but the paths he once walked, rooms he had familiarized himself with enough to recall them in imprisonment. No Ron or Hermione, no Hedwig or Hagrid. Nothing at all except his own meager supply of memories. Worse than that, what if it wasn't even Hogwarts at all laid out before him? What if he was trapped within the home on Privet Drive, stuck within the suffocating walls of his cupboard beneath the stairs, not even the spiders for company?

'What spell did you use? Maybe there's a way to undo it.' After a moment, he added, 'I can ask Dumbledore. He might know.'

The words came back faster, a bit spikier this time as if Tom was rushed. 'No, it was a spell of my own creation, and as such, it is impossible for anyone but myself to undo. I am just happy to have someone to talk to. Tell me about yourself, Harry.'

Harry blinked owlishly, a hand reaching up to slide the glasses back up his nose. No one had ever really asked him to talk about himself. Either no one cared, believing he was the disturbed delinquent nephew of Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and as such, nothing he had to say was of any worth, or they already knew everything there was to know about Harry Potter. More than even he knew of himself.

He didn't even know where to begin, exactly. His family, or rather, lack there of? Or perhaps that was too personal, too intimate to share with a book. School? Tom was a wizard himself- or had been- and surely they would have something of common ground? A favorite subject shared between them, complaints about particularly challenging studies?

A question from Tom settled the discourse for him. 'You said you're a Potter? Any relation to Fleamont Potter?'

Harry shifted in his bed, spine straightening in interest. Fleamont Potter? The name bore no meaning to him- the only Potter he knew was his father, James- but Tom seemed to know. Had he known his family from his own time? Wasting no time, he scrawled back, 'I'm not sure. My parents died when I was young, and I was raised by my aunt and uncle who were muggles. My father was James Potter. Did you know him?'

'I'm afraid not, and I'm sorry for your loss. I don't have parents either.'

And even as he was filled with disappointment at having nothing more of his parents than some photographs, he was filled with something else. Something thrilling. It was strange, Harry thought, the source of comfort that came from shared tragedy. The way your shoulders slumped, you exhaled deeply, when you learned you were not alone in this world. That others knew your pain, the absence that came with having no proper family to speak of. And perhaps it was rude, but in his excitement- the longing reach to a kindred spirit- he glossed over Tom's own admission of loss, adding, 'My parents were killed by a dark wizard. You probably don't know him, I don't think he was around in your time. Lord Voldemort- have you heard of him?'

His heartbeat pulsed out of rhythm.

A snore disrupted the silence.

He worried if he had offended Tom, if he should have offered comfort as well instead of losing himself in the desire to share with a fellow orphan- someone who knew what it meant to have no mother to tuck you in, no father to ruffle your hair.

He brought his quill to the page, ready to right an apology, when Tom wrote back. 'No, I haven't. Dark wizard you say? How terrible. I could never imagine something so awful. Would you like to talk about it?'

-xXx-

Harry decided he liked speaking with Tom. He was smart and kind, and he seemed to understand Harry in a way that Ron or Hermione could not. He was an orphan as well, raised in the muggle world until he was eleven and learned of his true identity, that there was an entire world hidden below him. A delightful world, vibrant and technicolor, full of life and energy and wonder and literal magic. The muggle world was not like that. The muggle world was grim, dull. Monochromatic, several shades of gray and beige and nothing more.

He carried the journal with him, bending the front cover backwards so as to keep it small and hidden on his lap, and he wondered how Hermione might admonish him if she saw him treat a book in such a way. But she never noticed him scribbling away, he never intended to tell her.

Tom would help him in his studies, explaining things that had not made sense in class and putting them into words that he could grasp onto, fingers curling triumphantly around the concepts. But he never supplied the answers, instead forcing Harry to come to the conclusion on his own.

'You'll get nowhere if I just tell you what to do. You need to understand it yourself. You could be a great wizard, and it would be a shame to waste it all because it was easier to tell than to teach,' he would explain, making Harry blush at the praise. Everyone assured him he was a great wizard- he had to be after all, he defeated Lord Voldemort when he was only a baby. But the words seemed genuine coming from Tom- he was not handing him praise, cooing him with it. He was simply holding them above him, like a goal to be reached.

Because Harry wasn't a great wizard, really. He was lucky. He had survived a terrible thing; a terrible thing that had claimed the lives of many an actual great witch or wizard before him. That was all. He had no memory of the event that earned him the taunting moniker, and he was not the smartest boy in his class. Far from it. He was decent on a broom, but that was hardly the marker of someone great.

Tom had to have been a great wizard when he was alive. Perhaps he still was alive, though. Not quite dead, not quite living. Caught on some unfathomable plane in between, trapped in something flat and two dimensional.

There wasn't a subject that Tom did not seem to know of. There wasn't a spell that he couldn't do, a potion he couldn't make. Harry was in awe of his brilliance, really, and he thought it quite a shame that someone with so much potential- someone who could have done some truly remarkable things for the world- had been removed from it. He had considered bringing the journal to Dumbledore once more, in an attempt to free him from the confines of it. But Tom assured him it would be useless.

'Besides,' Tom wrote, in his looping and neat script, 'I think I may have found a way to reverse the spell. But I will need your help, Harry. Can you promise me you'll help?'

-xXx-

Of course Harry agreed to help Tom, the words scribbled earnestly back before he had even realized he was writing. Though Tom wouldn't need his help right away, he was still researching his options, he had explained. And so they continued to speak, of nothing and everything and all the things in between.

There was a pleasant hum surrounding him, muffling the world and reality away as Harry sat with the journal propped on his thighs, back against the rough textured tree. His head felt heavy, but not in weighted, dreadful way. Like the sort of heaviness that befalls you right as your about to sleep after a particularly exhausting day, reality distorting into the nonsensical worlds of dreams.

His dreams had been a tad funny, as well. Blurs of things not remembered, things that could not have possibly existed in his own mind. Of a stern faced and frightened woman, of tides crashing against jagged rocks of a deep and dark cavern.

But dreams were always funny, and he thought nothing of it. Sometimes he even shared the dreams with Tom.

'I was in a cave and a bunch of snakes slithered out from the rocks and crevices, winding around rib cages and other bones. But they weren't scary, they just wanted a chat. It was sort of funny. I think they were lonely.'

'Snakes can get lonely, too.'

'I know. I met one once, at the zoo with my cousin. He told me he was lonely, and I let him out. My cousin fell into the enclosure-'

Tom wrote back before Harry could even finish the story. 'This was a dream?'

'No, it wasn't.'

-xXx-

'Tell me about the night your parents died, Harry,' Tom wrote, and Harry settled back against the propped up pillows of his bed, skewing his lips in thought. He had never told Tom everything about that night, only that he had been young and both his mother and father were killed by the dark wizard. Some called him You-Know-Who. Others He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Harry told him he thought such names were ridiculous, that he was just a wizard- not a monster or a boogeyman. Tom had told him that it was possible for those things to be synonymous, that sometimes the most terrifying monsters are the men and women you pass on the streets.

But that was it. He had not told him that he himself was meant to die. That he had a terrible scar on the right side of his head; like he was porcelain doll, dropped once and fractured with little white fissures cracked permanently into him. He had liked that Tom didn't treat him like a celebrity, a pariah. He liked that he spoke with him because he wanted to, not simply because he had become a modern day myth and he wanted the opportunity to speak with the great Harry Potter.

But they were friends, he supposed. Tentative friends- as much as someone could be a friend with someone when they existed as nothing more than vanishing black text against yellowed paper. It was November now, and they had been speaking for a little more than two months- surely if now was not the time to divulge such secrets, there would never come a time.

And so he shared it with him, a dissonant and perturbing whistling sound filling his head all the while, itching at the back of his brain. He told him how Voldemort had supposedly died that night, that his own curse had rebounded off Harry and struck him. That his parents were dead, and he had nothing to show for it except a distinct scar. That his aunt and uncle reviled him, that he had been made to sleep within a cupboard for most of his young life, having nightmares within the small space of bright, green flashes of light, a woman screaming his name, and motorcycles flying through the air. He was a hero in the Wizarding World, but 'the boy' in his own muggle home. That he thought it very funny when he freed the large snake and trapped Dudley inside the enclosure.

Tom did not respond for quite some time, and Harry chewed his lips, worried that he had done something wrong. The whistling was growing louder, and he palmed his ear, pressing it tight against it and releasing it in the hopes that the pressure might stop the sound. But it did not, and it continued to ring achingly against his skull.

When Tom wrote back, his words were curt. Short and too the point, and Harry wondered if he had upset him. For some reason, the thought of such a thing was devastating. He did not want to upset Tom.

'Harry, I'm sorry to leave like this, but I think I need to do some more research.'

He did not write back for about two weeks.

-xXx-

Harry knew Tom had finally written him, though he did not know how he did. It was as if it were a premonition, a tingling within his brain that let him know that there would be words inscribed for him when he opened the journal. And perhaps it was because it had been so long since he spoke with the wizard, perhaps it was because he was growing more and more agitated as the week progressed, snapping out for the smallest slight against him. Perhaps it was all the reasons, or none of them, but he excused himself from class- feigning an illness and threatening to vomit everywhere should he not be allowed to head to the infirmary- and ducked within the nearest empty classroom, opening the diary eagerly with his back pressed against the door.

'Terribly sorry for my absence, Harry. I hope you are doing well. But I've made great strides in my research.'

Harry fumbled in his bag for a quill and bottled ink, fingers trembling as he assembled them and put the brass tip against paper. 'That's good. Do you still need my help?' He wanted to help Tom, needed to, he felt. Something ached within his chest, his heart pulsed erratically and harsh against his sternum. It was strange, and had he not felt so clouded, so ill to begin with, he might have sought out help, realized that he was not well, not in the slightest.

'Yes, in time. Until then, I'd like to meet you, Harry. Would you like to meet me?'

Harry licked his lips, blinked once, twice at the words. Of course he would. He had been corresponding with him for what felt like years, finding him as easy to talk to as if he was a long ago friend, forgotten by nothing more than time and distance. But it was impossible. Least, impossible until Tom could put his research to good use.

When he did not write back promptly enough, Tom added, 'It won't hurt, and you'll be back before you're missed.'

He narrowed his eyes at that, frowning at the vague, enigmatic words. What did he mean? Before he could ponder it any further, the words begin to glow, shifting in color from black to glittering gold, the diary vibrating in his hands and becoming hot to the touch. He dropped it to the ground, shuffling to his feet. He thought to run away from it, that perhaps it wasn't a simple book after all, but there was a pull from behind his navel, a great tug and it was if he had jumped into a lake, the water warm from the sun and seeping into him. Dragging him further and further into its void.

The sensation dimmed, his feet once more landing on solid ground, and he lifted his head to find that he had been transported.

Where was once an empty classroom, desks and chairs neatly pushed aside, was now the library. Or rather, a version of the library. It was nebulous and gray, dull. Like he was viewing it from behind a thick black veil, the gossamer fabric distorting the shelves and books and making them appear nothing more than the phantom traces of a forgotten memory.

It was empty, a terribly disconcerting thing since it had been well into the day and the library should have been full of studying students, heads bowed over parchment and tomes. There was something awful about places that should have been full with life, suddenly absent of it.

"Harry?"

He twisted around at the voice, hands sinking into pockets, patting around the fabric in an attempt to find his wand. It wasn't there, and something sunk into the pit of his belly, heavy and weighted. Where was his wand? He had had it when he left the classroom!

"You can't do magic here, you needn't have a wand," the voice spoke again, softly and sympathetic sounded, legs of a chair screeching across marble floors. Harry looked up, blinking at the sight of a wizard- only a few years older than himself, but much taller. He was impossibly sharp and clear against the distorted library, a very real, concise thing against a world of nothingness.

It was Tom Riddle, and he was incredibly handsome, with dark, luxurious hair that was combed neatly in place, a swooping curl over his brow. His face was angular, with sharp and high cheekbones that cast shadows over the hollows of his cheeks. Everything about him was perfect, like marble statues he had only seen in pictures, depictions of Roman Gods with slim noses and sinewy muscles.

He felt much smaller in his presence, diminutive in every sense of the word as Tom practically towered over him, gazing at him with a curious, intense look in his dark blue eyes. It made him swallow, made the incessant ringing in his ear grow thrice as loud. It was not an unkind look, the exact opposite really, but it was the sort of look one had when they knew something that they weren't quite ready to divulge.

"Tom? How..." Harry choked out, brows furrowing as he glanced about him, at the insubstantial bookshelves. He might have been relatively new to the magical world, but he was certain that books weren't supposed to consume you.

They weren't really supposed to talk back either, but he shoved the thought away. His head was beginning to ache, the twinge behind his right eye turning into a sharp pain.

"Don't worry, you'll not be here for long," Tom assured him in a quiet, placating tone as he reached outward. Fingers brushed over Harry's forehead, pushing aside the hair to reveal the jagged lines of his scar, like the traces of a lightning bolt sinking into the soft earth. He shifted under the appraisal, tipping his head back so that the hand fell away and his dark hair was left to stick up in an awkward angle. He patted it down.

"That doesn't explain how you got me in here," he asserted, something within his stomach coiling intensely. Perhaps he had made a terrible mistake, trusting Tom. He should have marched to Dumbledore's office the moment the thought first crept into his head, should have sought out the help of someone much wiser. What if he never got out? What if he was trapped here for eternity, stuck within the nonexistent world that quivered in and out of focus, as if someone had wiped a dirty rag over it all?

A hand settled on his shoulder, and his chin whipped upward to meet Tom's soft, friendly gaze, his lips raised in a small smile. "Harry, relax. It's just magic is all. Surely, this isn't the strangest thing to happen to you?"

No, honestly, it really wasn't. He hardly even knew what was considered odd in the magical world, so skewed was the absurdity of it all. People lived within the pages of books, the brushstrokes of paint, and who was he to know which of it was meant to be that way?

Harry chewed his lip. "So, I'm not trapped here, then?"

Tom frowned. "No, just me. You can come and go as you please."

He swallowed, thickly, like he had something lodged within his throat. "I'd like to go, then," he asked. It wasn't out of fear- in fact, he hardly felt any fear at all. He was terribly intrigued by it all, and what he really wanted to was lob questions at Tom, to speak with the man- properly speak- about anything and everything, from the subjects they had discussed prior to all the ones left untouched.

He wasn't afraid, he just wanted to leave to make sure that he could.

He thought he saw Tom's jaw clench, his eyes flash from blue to something else entirely, something dark, but it must have been a trick of the light. Or perhaps he had blinked, distorting the image of Tom before him, because he looked just as pleasant and kind as he had from the few minutes he stood before him in the library. Tom nodded his head, smiling as he waved a hand through the air. "Well then, until next time, Harry."

Something pulled behind his navel.

He was submerged in water once more.

And within seconds, he was back in the empty classroom, blinking at the edges of his world which suddenly seemed too sharp, too clean. The colors too bright and saturated.

The journal was on the floor before him, Tom's final words to him disappearing.

'Until next time, Harry.'

-xXx-

"Do you think it's possible to be drawn into a book?" Harry asked, attempting to sound casual about the question, fingers thrumming over the table. He had not written back to Tom since he had been consumed and then spat out by the diary, though his heart always seemed to skip a beat whenever Tom attempted to reach out to him, his veins and capillaries pulsing with the sensation as ink sank into paper.

Hermione huffed. "Is that a joke? Of course you can get drawn into a book, why do you think people read in the-"

"No, I mean literally. Like the book sucks you in?"

She looked at him, her eyes narrowed, lips pursed. "No, absolutely not. Why would you ask such a thing?"

He felt that he should tell her. That he should tell somebody. But the words died on his lips, his tongue unable to meet the roof of his mouth, press against his teeth to make the sounds that became syllables which became words. He needed to tell someone, but he needed to protect Tom more.

He shrugged. "No reason."

-xXx-

His face was hot, fevered, and he could taste blood, tinny and vinegar in his mouth, from where his teeth tongue too deeply into the soft flesh of his cheeks. Fingers curled into his palm, nails digging into skin, and his hands shook, knuckles turning white.

It wasn't fair. He had been trying to help Justin. Why on earth would he tell a snake to attack him? He was telling the snake to stop. To leave him alone. But of course, no one listened to him, rumors spreading around the school faster than a fiendfyre, talking of how Harry Potter was a parselmouth. That Harry Potter was surely not to be trusted. After all, no good or respectable witch or wizard spoke to snakes.

It wasn't fair.

Even Ron had looked at him with uncertainty, as if seeing him for the first time. He hated it all, the way the familiar and kind eyes had become that of a stranger, and just like that his veins were hot, his skin prickled. He turned away from them, walking fast in the opposite direction, ignoring their pleas to him, begging him to just stop so they could talk.

But he didn't want to talk.

Not to them at least.

-xXx-

When he arrived in the journal, it was not into the library, but instead outside, to the tree beside the lake that he, Hermione and Ron often sat under when the weather was favorable. It was just as distorted as the library had been, the greens not quite green enough, and the blue of the sky was instead a murky gray, a mirror reflection of the lake below.

Tom was sitting under the tree, inclining his head only slightly when Harry traipsed until he stood just before him.

"Hello again, Harry," he said without looking up from the book in his lap, long fingers turning a page over. "I've missed our talks. I thought I might not see you again."

He blinked, shrugging his shoulders as a blush crept up from the collar of his shirt. It was always a surprise when someone actually missed him, that someone might enjoy him and his presence. He sat down beside the older wizard, crossing his legs.

"They found out I can speak to snakes," he said after a moment, reaching down to pluck at a blade of grass, more brown than green, as though it were dead. "They weren't impressed," he added, laughter bubbling from his throat and then dying almost immediately.

Tom hummed. "No, they rarely ever are. But they were frightened I'm sure, and isn't that just as good?"

He wasn't sure if Tom was joking, but he smiled all the same.

-xXx-

Months passed, a blur of golden leaves, fat, fluffy crystals of snow, and heavy droplets of rain that splattered against the ground, left Harry's glasses a fog. The diary sat snug in the inner pocket of his robe, where it always did, beside a spare quill and some ink just in case he needed it in a pinch. He spoke with Tom more than he did anyone else, either visiting him in his empty castle, or scratching quill against paper. It had become a need, and a ball of tightly wound wire would settle in his chest if he did not have the journal with him, the wire unwinding and coiling around him if he did not feel the indent of the diary against his chest.

He needed Tom almost as much as he needed oxygen to breathe. It was something he had not felt about anyone else, and he thought it strange, foreign. One day when he was feeling particularly brave, he mentioned this to Tom, writing it down in the middle of class when Professor Binns was drawling on about something uninteresting.

Tom's response was smug, and he could imagine his full lips curving into a smirk. 'Good.'

-xXx-

'Have the rumors of you being a dark wizard in disguise settled down at all?'

Harry snorted derisively at that, shaking his head as he wrote back. 'No, I've been blacklisted. Might as well join You-Know-Who and live the life they all seem to want of me so badly.'

Tom wrote back after a moment. 'Always good to keep your options open.'

Harry frowned. 'I was kidding, of course.'

'I know.'

-xXx-

Harry was freezing. It was the first thing he knew. Consciousness came to him slowly, dizzily. He felt airy, light, as if whatever was weighing him down was gone. He blinked. Wrapped his arms around his chest.

He was outside, bare feet sinking into damp earth, the sky navy, purple at the horizon, a soft pink and orange glow seeping into the palette of colors. He was shivering, nothing but a plain t-shirt and flannel pajamas bottom. Hardly enough to keep out the chill of spring, crystals of frost iced over every individual blade of grass.

How had he gotten out here? Had he been sleepwalking?

He flushed, embarrassed to have done something so...well, weird. It was bad enough he had become the kid who talked to snakes, he certainly did not need to be the kid who sleepwalked as well.

It took great doing, and he had to duck behind several statues to avoid being caught, but he was able to make it to Gryffindor tower unnoticed. He slipped into his bed, but he was unable to sleep, too wired, his brain too alive with thought and activity. He reached beneath his pillow, pulled out the slim journal.

-xXx-

Harry awoke from his sleep with a start, sputtering and coughing, hands clutched tightly onto the curtain as he attempted to pull it apart. He was covered in a thick sheen of sweat, his heart palpitated wildly, as if it might burst through his ribs and his skin at any moment. His head spun on his shoulders, bright, white lights prickling into his vision, and his foot caught on his blanket, causing him to fall to the floor.

He groaned, entangled in the sheets and the blankets and his drenched nightshirt which clung to his skin, and he turned on his side, vomiting.

Lights flicked on.

Feet padded around him.

Hands tugged at him.

But he could not respond to their questions, could not hear them over the loud, ringing sound in his head. His eyes remained closed, too heavy to lift.

He had had a terrible nightmare.

Of blinding green lights, dead white rabbits, and a giant snake with fangs the size of his forearm.

-xXx-

"Harry," Dumbledore asked, his voice low and soft and warm, filled with concern and it made Harry twist his head to the side, burying his face in the white pillow slip of his bed at the hospital wing. He had no memory of how he came to be here, no memory of the what had occurred several hours prior to it as well. There was a chunk of time and thought missing from his recollection- having fallen asleep at precisely 10:02 the night before, and was found wandering the halls at exactly 4:28 by Peeves, who made such a commotion that Filch came to see the cause of it all. What he found instead was an unconscious Harry Potter, and the poltergeist claiming that he hadn't done a thing- that Harry had just collapsed all on his own.

"You can tell me why you were outside your dormitory, you know that, Harry? You won't be in trouble, I'm just worried and we need to make sure you're alright," the elderly wizard said, blue eyes gazing at him over half-moon spectacles. After a moment, he added, "Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger have informed me that you've not been feeling well. That you've been having nightmares, have been very irritable lately."

He wished he could tell the Headmaster why he was out in the halls- he really did- but he couldn't. Because he genuinely didn't know and if he had meant to wander the halls wouldn't he have the forethought to bring his invisibility cloak with him? But he couldn't very well say that, insisting instead that he must have been sleep walking.

Dumbledore frowned. "Is there something you wish to tell me, Harry? Anything at all."

Harry shook his head, the motion dizzying him. "No sir, nothing at all." The words sounded cold even to him, foreign on his lips as if they were not his own. Dumbledore sighed.

"Very well."

-xXx-

Tom's fingers threaded through Harry's locks, smoothing the hair back as his head laid in the older boy's lap. His eyes were closed, and he was enjoying the peace of the world. It might have been a prison for Tom, but it had become a solace for him. There was no Hermione with her worried, furtive glances, no Ron with his clunky jokes. No Dumbledore gazing at him in a way that made him shift uncomfortably in his seat, no students whispering behind hands about him.

But more importantly, there were no chunks of time left unaccounted for, no blank spaces between one moment and another. When he was in the diary, the quell of his stomach settled, the ringing in his head began to get quieter, and it was as if he ceased to exist. A nothingness surrounded by nothingness.

It was simply him and Tom in the crude facsimile of Hogwarts. And it was enough.

"I feel sick all the time," Harry muttered. "And no one will leave me alone about it. I get so angry, I just want to scream. I snapped at Ron for no reason the other day. Well, okay, he was chewing with his mouth open which is not only rude but just disgusting and the sound was grating on my nerves and I just-"

A hand settled down on his chest, pressing down lightly. "Harry, I think I've perfected the reversal spell," Tom said.

Harry lurched forward, elbows pushing him upward from the soft ground and raising to his knees. He twisted to face Tom, his lips curling into a wide grin. "Really?"

He nodded, leaning his head against the tree. "Yes. You're still willing to help me?"

"Of course. What do you need me to do?"

Tom smiled. "Don't worry. You'll know."

-xXx-

There was blood on his hands. Not in the figurative sense of the term, where he had just done something very bad and was caught. But in the literal sense. His hands trembled, sticky and warm from the viscus fluid, looking almost black in the low light of the lavatory. Beads of it slipped down the curve of his hand, down his wrist.

He had blacked out again. He had no idea of why he was here, how he had gotten here, or why there was blood. Not just on his hands. His shoes were stained with it as well, the hem of his cloak saturated and heavy and there was so much of it and he didn't think it was his but then whose was it?

He couldn't breathe, his chest was constricted and would not expand, his throat was swollen and searing from the strain of not breathing or not breathing enough. Panic racketed through him, made his body convulse, his stomach twitch. Slowly he pulled himself up from the floor of the bathroom- how had he gotten here?- and turned to the sink, not knowing of what to do but knowing that washing off the blood was as good a start as any.

The water ran red, swirling around the drain until it varied in shades, from deep crimson to pink. His hands sat underneath the faucet, wispy strands of steam rising above him as his skin burned at the too hot water. But it never ran clear. The water remained at least pink, and his hands were stained, the pigment deep within valleys of his skin, the lines of his individual fingerprint dyed deeper than the rest of him.

It wouldn't come off, not fully.

When he could bear the pain no more, he pulled his hands against him, cradling them to his chest and bunching them in the fabric of his cloak to dry.

He needed to speak with someone. Someone he could trust. Someone who might tell him what to do. What he had done.

What did he do?

He found the diary, slipped within the pocket of his robes, beside a near empty bottle of ink and a small quill with a bent tip. His hands shook as he opened the ink, having to try four times to get it as each time his hand slipped from the lid, and he propped the diary on the lip of the sink. His writing spiked, curved with his shivering.

'Tom? Are you there?'

He waited, his head shaking when the words didn't disappear, when they remained etched on the page, the glossy black ink drying and not once sinking deeper-

He ripped the page from the journal, crumpling it in his fist before bringing the quill to a new, separate page. He wrote again, the words even messier than before. 'Tom?'

They remained, a taunt, a contrast between the dull yellow pages and the sharp ink. The did not disappear, and he wrote again, pressing the quill too hard into the page that it ripped through, left an impression on the pages behind it.

'Tom, please, I need you.'

Nothing. No response. No vanishing words.

Tom was gone.

-xXx-

Everyone was still asleep by the time he made it back to the dormitories, and he sat on his bed, hands tangled in his hair as he tried to even his breathing. As he tried to make sense of the events that alluded him. The diary sat before him, several pages ripped from its binding so that he could see frayed white thread that ran down the center of it. It was just an ordinary book now, nothing special about it. The engraved name on the front cover had disappeared, not even an impression of what once existed.

Had he imagined it all then? Had it all been a hallucination, a series of dreams that cropped up throughout the entirety of his school year? Had it been a- what was it called? Psychotic break? Had he lost his mind?

He did not know, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. He was not certain of anything anymore- had Tom Riddle even existed? Was he a real person at any point in time? And whose blood had he cleaned off his shoes?

His chest burned with his panicked, frightened sobs, oxygen searing his lungs. Hands shook as they gripped onto his hair, as his glasses fell from his nose. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think. All he could hear was his blood in his head, like waves of an ocean were crashing over top him, like he was drowning, the undercurrent of the ocean pulling the sand away from where he stood.

He fell asleep after his eyes burned, no more tears to shed, his cheek tacky and salty. The blanket was twisted over his head, and he hoped that when he awoke it would be to learn that this had all been one elaborate nightmare.

-xXx-

The curtains surrounding his bed were pulled open, and Harry sat up, his pink hands diving to wind in his comforter. Ron stood at the part of his curtains, white hands holding them in place, his eyes wide and wet with tears. Light streamed in from the window, warm and golden. It was well into the morning.

"Ron?" Harry asked, his voice hoarse from the night before, from his inability to breathe and his constant tears and the amount of times he hunched over a toilet in the lavatory, emptying his stomach until nothing but dark green and black slime rose from his throat.

His lip trembled. "Ginny-" was all he managed to whisper before his face crumpled, his knees giving out before him.

Something flashed within Harry's mind, the glimpse of something forgotten. Of red hair and blood- so much blood. Dark blue eyes and a diary with pages so soaked in blood that they clumped together, curled and warped.

Ginny was dead. He didn't know how he knew this, he just did.

He knew that she was dead, that Tom Riddle was gone, and that his hands were still stained with blood.

What had he done?

-xXx-

Harry sat on the bench at Gryffindor table, a somber silence settled over the whole Great Hall. Trunks sat behind each student, heads bowed in whispers, in gossip. Some wondered why they were being urged to leave so early, what had happened to summon so many Ministry officials. But the Gryffindor table was the most silent of all, seeming too empty with the absence of the Weasleys, every one them gone, yet their presence weighing down heavy on them. There were even gaps between the students that they might have sat beside, Hermione sitting opposite Harry, no one to her left, no one to his right. Just an empty space where once presided Ginny, Ron. Lee Jordan and Katie Bell were separated by the space of two Weasley twins, no one daring to pass the divide. An unspoken rule.

"I wonder when Hogwarts will reopen," Hermione muttered, to no one in particular.

Harry had not spoken, not a word since he left Dumbledore's office, the conversation echoing around in his head on repeat, an unending stream of words and letters that ran into each other.

'How long will Hogwarts be closed for, Professor?' Harry had asked quietly, knowing that perhaps it was a selfish question. A selfish concern. Someone had died. His best friend's younger sister was cold and pale and dead somewhere and he was wondering when he might return to school.

'Until the cause of her death is determined and it is no longer considered a threat,' he answered, his blue eyes dull, void of all mirth. He seemed much older all of a sudden. He should have told him. He should have told him about the diary and Tom Riddle and of the hands which were still pink in his pockets. But he couldn't. He wouldn't be believed, there wasn't any proof of it. He wasn't even sure if he believed himself.

'This isn't the first time a student has passed away, I'm afraid,' Dumbledore spoke, and Harry lifted his head, wondering if he knew he was talking aloud. If he meant to share this information. But he still continued to speak, his eyes not quite meeting Harry's as he added, 'We almost closed then, too. But the creature who caused it was believed to have been found. By a former student of the time, a Mr. Tom Riddle.'

His spine straightened, his jaw clenched. 'Believed?' he asked, licking his lips. 'Tom Riddle?'

Dumbledore lifted his chin, gazing at Harry with an indiscernible expression. 'Yes. He was lauded as a hero, even awarded for his services to the school. But that was a long time ago. Things have changed since then.'

'How so?'

'Tom Riddle is better known as Lord Voldemort these days.'

Tom Riddle was Lord Voldemort. Ginny Weasley was dead. And Harry Potter had blood on his hands.

-xXx-

Dumbledore sighed heavily, placing his glasses on the desk beside him so as to rub his eyes with long, bony fingers. The Weasleys had left his office only moments earlier, a weary and broken unit of red rimmed eyes and wretched sobs. There was something inherently tragic about the death of someone so young, with lips sticky and sweet from treats and eyes wide, blind to the horrors of the world.

People were meant to grow. People were meant to be broken. They were meant to leave behind their mothers and fathers, to marry, to conceive children of their own. They were meant to be buried in their own cemetery plots, separated from their parents by a fence, a town, a country. They were not meant to be buried beside the two graves that would someday belong to their father, their mother. Families were not meant to remain whole in death, they were not meant to be buried side by side like that.

And the school would be closed, a decision that he agreed with. It was unsafe, and he would be damned if another child fell victim to the same cruel hand that had ended young Ginevra's life. Though, he didn't think that anyone else were in danger, if he were being honest.

He didn't know for certain, but whatever role the youngest Weasley's death had played in, there was no more need for it. No more need for another child to die.

But children did not need to die to be lost, and the thought alone made Dumbledore sigh once more, his shoulders sagging.

He was concerned for Harry, concerned by the wide and frightened look in those green eyes. Concerned for the way he made himself small, shrinking into a ball. Concerned by the way he perked up at Tom Riddle's name, as if he had heard it before. As if it meant something. Concerned by the silence, the tightly pinched lips that seemed too purposeful to be unintentional.

Concerned by the fact that over the past several months, Harry had evidently become quite an accomplished occlumens, and that no amount of prying on his part could allow him in.

-xXx-

Harry sat against the tree, the letter clenched within his fist. He read over the words, eyes scanning the page, flicking over them as if they might change. As if he could will them to change.

'We are sorry to inform you that Hogwarts will not be opening this year...' 'Students have been enrolled into nearby schools, taken into consideration location and eligibility...' 'Mr. Harry Potter has been accepted into Beauxbatons...' 'Travel accommodations have been made and a train will depart from the usual platform of 9 ¾ at King's Cross Station...' 'Students are encouraged to leave the morning of August 31 so as to have time to familiarize themselves with their new schools...'

He crumpled the paper, holding it in his hands as he chewed his lips. Hogwarts was closed. It was his home, the closest thing he had had of such a thing, and now it was gone. For how long, he did not know.

His hands were clean, and yet if he strained, he thought he could still see the pink tint.

He had tried to tell Dumbledore of everything, he really had. He had even on more than one occasion sat down to write a letter, sitting up in bed after trying and failing to sleep for several hours. But the words would not come, and his scar would hiss in pain, roaring to life, blinding him. It was as if a hot poker was being pushed through his eyes, searing his brain. He was bound to secrecy, signing a contract he had not meant to sign.

He pressed the heel of his palm against his head, breathing in the fresh, earthy scent. Much of the town he lived in had been paved in concrete, buildings clustered together to fit as many in a row as possible. The woods he sat in now were perhaps the only of it's kind for miles, and it had become a haven. Away from the Dursleys. Away from excitable and screaming children at the playground.

They had not been pleased at all to find that his school had let out early, and that he was expected to return home in May instead of midway through June. A student had died, and they suffered for it. They had taken away his room as punishment, locking him within the cupboard once more, the walls and cobwebs familiar, the spiders that inhabited the corners more of a family to him than the ones beyond the little space underneath the stairs.

He had written to Hermione and Ron, though Ron was slow to return them, his letters short, bare. He couldn't imagine what the Weasleys were going through, they had even turned down a trip to Egypt offered as a reward from the Ministry.

He carded a hand through his hair, fingers trembling, tugging too hard at the roots. He exhaled, his chest shaking with the breath. Months had passed, he had not found the diary- the real one, crisp and hardened with blood. He had not spoken to Tom Riddle- to Voldemort- in the same amount of time, and hung his head, heavy with shame.

The entire time. It had been Lord Voldemort the entire time. He had not known how, he had not known exactly what sort of magic led to a young version of Lord Voldemort existing within the pages of a book. But he did, and Harry had spent an entire school year conversing with him, had confided in him, trusted him.

He had promised to help him escape the prison, and his hands were coated in blood.

He could hardly eat with the guilt of it all, and Dudley's old clothes hung even looser on his skinny frame, the contours of his bones pressing too sharply against his skin. He looked sickly, with thick, shadowed bags below his eyes and his skin a sallow color, looking just as gray as the world within the diary had been.

He hadn't slept, not properly, and all he wanted to do was confess, to tell someone what he knew and the role he had played and apologize because it was all his fault, if he hadn't written in that bloody book none of this would have happened.

But even the thought of doing so left him with crippling pain, and once when he had brought pen to paper, ready to write it all down for Dumbledore, blood had dripped from his eyes, from his nose. Trickled down his neck from where it slipped over the shell of his ear. He had fainted before he could even write the u in the Headmaster's name, his body thudding to the floor of the empty dining room.

He had not seen an optometrist, but he had held a hand over his left eye with no glasses on to determine that he had lost most of his vision in his right eye. That there was a bit of a film over it, like a cataract.

He physically could not admit to it, and he wasn't sure why.

He startled at the sound of rustling leaves, a twig snapping under someone's weight. He looked up, jumping to his feet and shuffling backwards at the sight of Tom Riddle standing between two trees, his forearms resting against them. He was smirking, lips skewed unevenly so one side was lifted higher than the other, a slight crescent of a dimple forming in his cheek.

Lord Voldemort had dimples.

"You," Harry hissed, lacing the one singular word with as much venom as he possibly could.

Tom chuckled. "Me."

Harry shook his arm, sliding the wand down from where it sat tucked in his sleeve and into his palm, curling his hand around it and aiming it at the wizard in defense. This only made his smirk deepen, his dark blue eyes gleam. "Not happy to see me, Harry? Pity, seeing as how happy I am to see you."

"You tricked me!" Harry roared, his voice cracking over the words.

"Guilty," Tom said, unabashed by the claim. He took a step forward, pausing as he flicked his gaze over Harry, humming in thought. "You've grown so much over a single summer. Funny how that happens, isn't it? A child one month, practically a man the next."

It wasn't funny at all. Nothing he said was funny.

He should have cursed him, underage magic rules be damned. Surely, defending oneself against the Dark Lord was a special circumstance. But he didn't curse him, chewing his lip instead as he asked the question that had tormented him since the night he awoken covered in blood, "What did you do to Ginny?"

He needed to know. He didn't want to know, but he needed to. Perhaps if he knew what sort of spell Tom had used to free himself, he could reverse it, vanish him from the world permanently.

Tom frowned. "I protect you from being arrested for murder- hide all the evidence for you, even go to the trouble of occluding your mind, and you want to repay me by killing me? That isn't very fair." His tone was light, playful, and it made Harry's stomach coil into a tight knot.

Occluding his mind? What had that meant? And was he able to read his thoughts?

His green eyes fell to the ground for a moment, flinching when Tom barked out a sharp laugh. "If you really must know, yes I can read your thoughts. And I did nothing to Ginny. You did it all yourself."

He shook his head. "No, I would never-"

"It's a shame you forgot it all. You might have enjoyed it, the way she cried, begging you to not hurt her. To not kill her," he said the words as if reminiscing over a fond memory, his lips curled into a small, wry smile.

Harry's lip trembled, his wand wavering in his grasp. "Why...why would I do that-"

Tom shrugged. "Because I told you to. You'll find I can be rather persuasive when I need to be." After a second, he added, "If it wasn't her, it would have been you. The diary leeches onto a soul, whichever one pours itself onto the pages, and siphons the life from them, feeding it to me. I decided I rather liked you, and that another soul would have to do in your place. It took a bit of doing- some rather archaic usage of blood magic, but it did the trick you see." He thumped a hand against a side, as if it was evidence of how alive he was. That he was flesh and blood and muscles and tissues instead of ink and paper.

So that was it then? Ginny had died so that Harry wouldn't- yet another instance in his life in which he had lived, another falling in his place. If possible, the guilt mounted even more within him, and he clenched his jaw, ground the crowns of his teeth together.

Tom took several steps forward, kicking pebbles out before him as he did so. Harry made to step back, to jab his wand forward, but branches burst through the earth, flinging dirt as they wrapped around his ankles, winding tightly around his clothed legs and locking him in place. He stumbled, waving his arms to prevent himself from falling backwards, when an unseen force tugged at his wand, pulling it from his grasp.

It flew in an arc in the air, settling in Tom's outstretched hand as his fingers curled around it. He held it up, twirling it within his fingers experimentally, skewing his lips in thought. "It's not as good as mine was, but extraordinarily close. Phoenix feather?" he asked.

"Go to hell," Harry seethed, digging nails so deeply into his palm that he drew blood.

Tom took another step forward, until he stood directly before Harry, using the tip of the wand to push aside the air that had fallen over his face. A hand rose, cupping his chin to hold him in place as he looked at the scar with interest, blue eyes narrowed. "You are far more special than you give yourself credit for, Harry Potter," he murmured. And then he bent his head, placing a chaste kiss to the small fragments cutting over Harry's skin. It sparked, as if electrified, and something shot through him, something delicious and euphoric as if he were whole and complete and Harry was horrified to realize that he had leaned forward, a hand raised pressed flat against Tom's chest to steady himself.

He quickly brought it back to his side, struggling against the hand that held onto his chin, a second hand reaching out and wrapping around his upper arm. "I'm not special. I'm nothing. Why don't you just kill me and get it over with then? Isn't that what you want- why you tried to kill me in the first place when I was a baby?"

Tom eyes flashed, the blue turning into red so quickly, so wholly, that it seemed to happen all at once, instead of a transition. The fingers around his chin tightened their hold, nails digging into flesh. "NO!" he roared, and Harry stiffened at the fire in his voice, at the warning that lurked beneath the words. Tom spoke again, his words lower and quieter yet far more frightening, the hair on Harry's arm standing on end. "Nothing will harm you, not if I have anything to say about it. Not me, not Dumbledore, and certainly not that pathetic creature, searching for a new host to play parasite with until he can fix the mess he got himself into."

It took only a second for Harry to understand what he meant by creature. Voldemort, the sliver of the man that had fed off Quirrell in his first year. He furrowed his brows at that. Were there two of them then? The younger version of him, stepping out from the encrypted pages of a book, and the one that had always existed, the one that had killed his mother and father?

And Tom was planning on...protecting him from Voldemort?

The hand on his chin moved, running through Harry's hair and disheveling it before settling on the back of his neck. "Yes, it does mean I'm protecting you from him."

If anything, it was more disconcerting to be offered his protection than to be threatened, and Harry squirmed against the hands that wrapped around him. The roots had risen to his hip, snaking further along him and holding him in place, and he could only wriggle his torso.

"Let me go," Harry hissed, raising his hands and shoving against Tom. Not as if it would accomplished much, as he couldn't run anyway, bound by the branches that were thick as his calves. But Tom's grip was too tight on him, and he was too sturdy, and he remained standing before Harry, fingers dinging into his arm, hand cradling his neck.

Tom shook his head, making the curl fall in front of his face. "You can't leave me, you can never leave me. Where ever you go I will follow, and where ever you hide I will find you. Even in the deepest depths of the ocean, or in death. You are mine and you belong to me, my love." He spoke the words, his voice hardly above a whisper, as if he were making a vow to a lover.

A desperate sob broke from between Harry's lips, and he shook with anger. Anger that he had ever seen Malfoy slip the journal into Ginny's cauldron, anger that he had taken it and wrote within its pages. Anger that he fell for it, for every caring word, for every pretty lie and broken promise. Anger that he offered his soul away, that he had killed someone else in his own place.

And all over a book; a simple, blank diary.

It was something so simple. Something so so unassuming, so innocent seeming. It was just a book. What harm had ever come from a book?