"I've been doing a lot of thinking, and the thing is, I love you."

"What?"

"I love you."

"How do you expect me to respond to this?"

"How about, you love me too."

"How about, I'm leaving."

- When Harry Met Sally

January, 1943

Tom Riddle's brain was weird.

Well, Harry couldn't say it was that much weirder than anyone else's. For all she'd become acquainted with the inside of her own head, she wasn't an expert. Even in her own head she and brain Tom never really went strolling through it or anything.

No, Harry would just show up and there would be the Gryffindor common room, Number 4 Privet Drive, the Hogwarts grounds, you name it, and Tom Riddle in the middle of it all looking like a hopeless nerd.

So, while she wasn't an expert, Harry still had the feeling that Tom Marvolo Riddle's brain couldn't be the norm.

First, it was on fire.

This was not a metaphor. She and the other Tom were currently walking down the middle of the street through Westminster, and everything was on fire. The bloody Thames was on fire. Cars were abandoned on the motorway, buildings were caving in, but oddly enough there was no hint of people.

There was no screaming, no frantic fleeing, no sign of any recent human distress and panic. Just… abandoned cars, crumbling buildings, and a whole lot of fire.

"So," Harry started, and the sound of her voice felt entirely too loud even with the crackling of the flames, "Is this—um—a normal thing?"

Tom looked down at her with an artfully raised eyebrow.

It was funny, he looked cool as a cucumber. There'd been a look of apprehension when they first crossed the bridge, but ever since they stepped down to the other side it was all business. Now it was Harry that was edging around nervously, wondering if maybe this had been a bad idea.

"I mean," Harry clarified, "When you do legilimency, is this—"

"No," he answered, "We're on a deeper level than legilimency typically goes. When you perform legilimency, you're placed much closer to the memories and further from the conscious mind. Granted, you sometimes run into defensive or organizational metaphors, but this is not that kind of metaphor."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

He motioned to their surroundings with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Many purebloods have at least a basic understanding of and proficiency in occlumency. It gets them by weaker legilimens, but ultimately, they have no imagination. With them you'd typically see a library to organize and store the memories—and to guard them, usually a dog of some kind."

"A dog?" Harry asked, imagining Fluffy over the trap door, but he just nodded.

"I've also seen vaults and dragons," he said with a shrug. "People aren't very creative, is what it comes down to. In advanced occlumency the key idea is to have some understanding of both how to organize your own memories, helping identify forgeries or stolen information, as well as how to guard them from unauthorized intruders."

Harry blinked in confusion, then pointed out, "We haven't talked about that—"

"Harry, you can't sit still for fifteen minutes and clear your mind," he said with a sigh. "I'm not going to put the cart before the horse and start asking you to come up with elaborate mental analogies to help shield your thoughts."

That—

Sounded like a very good and very sad point. Harry, as she'd pointed out to him, had more or less given up on occlumency for the moment, but she hadn't realized she was really stuck on step zero of something that sounded like it could take a lifetime to perfect.

Dumbledore had made it sound like this was something Harry could become proficient in just by meeting up with a very reluctant Snape once a week for a year. The way Tom was talking about it, Voldemort wouldn't even notice that Harry was trying to protect her thoughts.

She tugged at her collar uncomfortably, trying not to look too closely at London crumbling around them.

"But you don't think this is one of those?"

Tom shook his head. "First, this isn't how I organized my memories. Granted, I don't think your Tom Riddle has sat down and studied occlumency in depth yet, but even before that point I doubt they'd take this shape."

"More," he added when Harry opened her mouth to interrupt, "Notice something strange?"

Harry looked around. "It's on fire?"

"We're not on fire," he corrected. "Everything else is burning, but we haven't been attacked yet. Tom hasn't noticed our presence yet because we've bypassed the memories and entered his unconscious mind."

"Oh," Harry said, as if she understood exactly what he was talking about. "So he's just—unconsciously on fire?"

"It's the Blitz," Tom explained as if that word alone should be more than enough for Harry. When it clearly wasn't, he added, "He's worried about the war, extremely cynical, and conflicted about his muggle background. He's suppressed those feelings all the way down here."

"Oh," Harry said, and was about to say more, when she recognized the sign for the Leaky Cauldron. Tom walked through the door easily, pulling Harry along with him, and then through the wall to Diagon Alley which was—not on fire.

It looked about the same as usual, actually, except that like everything else it was completely empty of people.

There was no trash, no debris, all the stores were left open, but there was no sign of any vendor present. The noise from the fires had disappeared and everything was eerily quiet.

Then, looking closer, Harry realized that the shops weren't quite the ones in Diagon Alley. The writing on the windows was illegible in the way that writing in dreams sometimes was. All the characters were written with the normal English alphabet but for some reason Harry couldn't seem to read them.

More, everything looked a little too clean, a little too fancy and expensive. The robes in display windows, the cauldrons and supplies, were all very high end and nothing that Harry could currently afford.

There was probably something important about that, something about Tom Riddle she could figure out from that, but she had no idea what it was.

Only that everything about this place put her on edge.

When she'd said "let's enter Tom Riddle's brain" she had not signed up for traversing yet another creepy landscape on par with fairy land. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, maybe something a little like her unintentional forays into Voldemort's brain or Nagini, but it had not been this.

"Where is everybody?" Harry finally asked.

And again, Tom was looking down at her like she was missing something very important. "Why should there be anyone here?"

Harry threw her arms out, starting to feel an edge of panic creeping through her. "I don't know—it's Diagon Alley, isn't it?"

"Is it?" he asked, having the nerve to let an amused smile grow on his lips, never mind that Harry was sort of starting to freak out a little here.

"Well it sure as hell looks like it," Harry said. "I mean—mostly, but there's no people anywhere."

"Why are you so surprised?" he asked. "Of course there aren't any people."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, and here he finally took pity on her and motioned her over to a small café table.

He sat down, and as soon as he did, a full afternoon tea for two appeared on the table in front of him. It was a really fancy tea, too, Harry couldn't help but think. The kind of posh afternoon tea that England was famous for, including little pastries, sandwiches, and exotic blends from China and India.

In other words, the kind of afternoon tea Harry Potter, unwanted niece of the Dursleys, never expected to have in her life.

Harry reluctantly joined him and took a small cucumber sandwich off the bottom tray, only to pause and ask, "If I eat this do I get stuck here forever?"

"No," he said as he started pouring tea for the pair of them and taking a croissant for himself, "But it might have an aftertaste of Tom Riddle."

Harry had already started to eat the sandwich when he got to that last part and almost spewed it out but forced herself to swallow, and then—it was the weirdest thing, but god, she did have some weird aftertaste that you could maybe call Tom Riddle.

It was a little bitter, with an edge of some spice, the aftertaste of something very rich. It was like a chocolatey, cinnamon, licorice mix without any sugar at all. Harry wasn't sure if it was good or bad, but Jesus, it was strong.

She winced and eyed the tea he was drinking with longing and suspicion. "Does the tea taste like Tom Riddle?"

Tom nodded as he sipped at it. "It's an acquired taste."

Guess she couldn't wash it out with tea then.

She looked around again. Despite the tea suddenly appearing, there was still no sign of anyone or anything else, just the eerily empty shopping district. It wasn't on fire, but in a way, Harry thought this place might be worse.

"So, you were saying? About the lack of people, I mean?" Harry asked the man sitting across from her.

"People don't really exist for Tom Riddle," he said easily, as if this should be perfectly obvious to anybody who thought about it for more than two seconds.

Why was it, Harry thought, that every time she talked about Tom Riddle with the other Tom Riddle, she just ended up really confused? She tried to think about the last time he'd done this, but it seemed like he pulled one of these "Oh, young Tom Riddle is obviously suffering from the mind weasels, didn't you know?" every time she met up with him.

You'd think Harry would get used to it after a few weeks, but she was still trying to wrap her head around his easy confession of, "Voldemort is a hopeless romantic and this is why he tries to kill you every year". The way brain Tom had explained it, it made sense at the time, but it was just so weird out of context.

And also, just a little disturbing. Harry hadn't needed to know that, thanks Tom.

Harry shook her thoughts away and started over. "You're going to have to break that one down for me."

"I'm not saying he doesn't believe people exist," Tom said, "That he can't remember names or faces or anything like that. It's more that people make little to no impression on him, and those that do make an impression rarely change his outlook on the world or become enough of a concept for him to truly care about them. Few, if any, have really touched who and what he is."

He motioned out again at Diagon Alley. "We're in Tom Riddle's innermost self, not simply his memories, or his day to day thoughts. Of course there wouldn't be any recognizable faces here."

Harry tried to follow, tried not to feel even dumber than usual. "So, you're saying in my head this is where Ron and Hermione and everyone would be."

He nodded. "That said, I'm surprised we haven't run into you yet. Then again, chances are he wouldn't stick you in London or Diagon Alley. No, he'd make another place for you."

"What?" Harry asked and he just sighed, looking like he almost regretted saying that out loud.

"If you haven't noticed, Harry," he said dryly, "You've made a very large impression on him."

"I—"

"You have noticed," he interjected, swallowing down the last of his tea before she could interrupt. "It's why we're here, because the thought of how important you've become to him in only a few months makes you uncomfortable."

"No," Harry said, feeling herself flush, "We're here because he has—you know—he has—"

"If you can't say it out loud then we'll turn around and go right back to where we came from," he said pleasantly, which was easy for him to say, but Harry's face was on fire.

"He has that crush," Harry spluttered desperately, face likely the color commonly found on stop signs. "You know, that thing he thinks he has—"

"He's head over heels," Tom corrected. "He gave you an entire wardrobe for Christmas."

"I didn't ask—"

"He never gives anyone shit for Christmas. The last 'gift' I gave anyone for Christmas was drunkenly throwing Bellatrix over a desk after some Yuletide party at Malfoy's and—" he abruptly cut off, and for once, looked as awkward as Harry did.

"Let's just say, it was a terrible Christmas for all parties involved," he finally finished lamely, sipping at his tea and looking anywhere but directly at her.

God, was he blushing?

Harry wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"So he gave me some warm and fancy clothes," Harry dismissed, waving her arms all over the place as she tried to make her point, "And he's—kind of nice sometimes, maybe? That doesn't mean—"

"Yes, Harry, it does mean," he said, apparently over his miniature embarrassment episode. "I can tell you that I never felt the way he feels about you about anyone."

Harry felt like she was adrift, like she'd unwittingly pushed off from shore and could see it fading away in the distance. "How does he feel?"

"Honestly," Tom said after a pause, "He might be in love. At the very least, he's well on his way."

Harry wanted to die. She wanted to sink into the ground and die, but all that came out of her mouth was, "How?"

"I told you," Tom said like it was bloody obvious, "I'm a romantic."

With great strength of will, forcing herself not to think of snake face Voldemort watching romantic comedies and crying at the happy endings, Harry pulled herself together. "Which is why we're putting an end to this!"

"Because it makes you uncomfortable," Tom agreed with a small nod.

"Because it makes me—" Harry caught herself before she agreed. "No, because Tom Riddle can't like me like that!"

"I don't see why not," Tom said. "I never would have seen it coming, yet here we are, so he can clearly feel whatever he likes."

"What, so you think this is a bad idea?!" Harry asked.

"I did say you were doomed and that you should have let him think you were his sister," he pointed out, then held up a hand to stop her rant. "But I did promise to help and I'll do what I can. Though I can't promise it'll be much."

Harry was starting to regret all of this. She should have just stuck to the occlumency. She should have just thought up some way to embarrass Riddle in public (even though he'd sort of already done that to himself with the whole slug club meltdown and even Harry couldn't top that).

She shouldn't have wandered into his mind to have tea with another Tom Riddle so they could discuss Tom Riddle's feelings.

At the same time, she really really really didn't want to deal with Tom Riddle's feelings.

She didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. It felt like a bad thing, but she just wanted all of it to go away. She didn't want Tom Riddle to get her Christmas gifts or like her or try to become her friend. She didn't want to promise to spend time with him, to actually laugh at his jokes, or feel the future slipping through her fingers.

She just wanted him to maybe not become Voldemort. Then she could go her way, he'd go his, and that would be that.

Why couldn't it be that easy?

"Chin up, Harry," the other Tom said as he filled her cup of tea and passed it towards her, "There's always quidditch."

With a sniff, Harry decided to just go for it and downed the whole thing, only to wince as the flavor caught up with her. "Oof, that was a lot of Tom Riddle."

Somehow, it was even stronger than the sandwich.

"It's an acquired taste," Tom agreed, now outright grinning.

For a moment, neither said anything, and then they both burst into laughter. She didn't know why it was funny, she wasn't even sure she understood how bloody tea could taste like a person, but something about it was hilarious.

She was glad, in a strange way, that the Tom from her head understood the joke too. Whatever the joke actually was.

It was only after their laughter died down that she turned her head and noticed yet another, younger Tom Riddle staring at them both from the middle of the street.

"Oh shit," Harry said.

Tom didn't typically remember his dreams.

When he did, though, they had always been strange. He didn't know if they were in any way prophetic, if he had a gift for divination, but there'd always been a lingering air of something extra to them. Something that felt like it should be more than a dream.

It started in Hogwarts.

He was in the Chamber of Secrets, Harry with him of course, and he was watching her put together something she called a Rube Goldberg machine.

"So you see," Harry explained as she motioned over the mechanical monstrosity that was the machine, "This monkey with the cymbals will clap his hands together, which will knock over this domino, which will push forward this chocolate frog, which will then hop onto this portrait of super old Dumbledore, which will then flick the switch for the lights."

Tom nodded, because in the dream he understood exactly what she was talking about, though he couldn't help but voice, "I don't understand why we couldn't just cast lumos."

"Because magic doesn't work in the Chamber of Secrets," Harry said in exasperation. "The chickens ate it."

Right, of course, dream-Tom remembered exactly when the chickens had eaten the magic in the chamber. Thankfully, they hadn't gotten to the rest of the castle yet.

One of the chickens in question appeared in the library, clucking menacingly even as it waddled in on legs that could barely support its newfound girth, still overstuffed with all the magic it ate.

They really should do something about those blasted chickens.

Though, that did remind him: "Why haven't the chickens eaten Alphard Black yet?"

If the chickens were going to eat anything, they should eat something useless and annoying. Harry just shook her head again, crossing her arms. "Honestly, Riddle, they can't eat Alfie."

"I don't see why not," Tom said. "He didn't help build the machine, did he?"

"Because I have to ask Alphard Diggory to the Yule Ball," Harry explained, as if they'd been over it twenty times already. "He invited me to his hot tub, I think I have a good chance."

"Damn the Yule Ball, damn Alphard Black, and damn you, Harry!" Tom said, before noting, "I can take you to the bloody ball."

"No, you can't," Harry said, shaking her head with a sense of finality, "You're a diary scar snake. McGonagall said it has to be a real boy."

"I'm a real boy," he said, motioning down to himself, only as he looked down, he noticed—to his horror—that his skin had been replaced by birch wood.

"You try," Harry said, patting him consolingly on the shoulder. "When Cedric Black and I get married we'll be sure to name our first child after you. I'm thinking 'Tomette' for a girl."

"I will crash your wedding!" Tom threatened, standing from his seat and paying no attention to the increasingly menacing clucking of the chickens. "I will ruin it and throw the cake onto his face. And you can't name a girl 'Tomette', that's the worst thing I've ever heard."

"No," Harry mused, "Pretty sure Voldemort's the worst thing I've ever heard."

"What's wrong with Voldemort?" he asked, because in the dream Harry knew all about Voldemort.

"It sounds like a snake name," Harry said.

"I don't even know what that means," Tom said.

"It means when you picture a man walking around who looks like a snake, his name is Voldemort," Harry said, "Or Snakey McSnakeFace."

He had hardly noticed, but as they'd been discussing Voldemort they'd gotten closer and closer together. They were now only an inch apart, her hand trailing up his arm, and her eyes so very green.

"For a diary snake, you look very real today," she said, moving closer and closer, so very slowly.

In the dream, Tom's eyes fluttered closed, but he could still see both of them as they moved closer together and her lips—

"If you haven't noticed, Harry," a dry and shockingly familiar voice interrupted, "You've made a very large impression on him."

Tom pitched forward, Harry disappearing like smoke along with the chamber, and he found himself lying in the middle of an empty Diagon Alley. As he picked himself up, the haze of dreaming lifted somewhat, a single ray of lucidity breaking through the clouds.

He turned his head towards the overcast sky. "Did it really have to end there?!"

The sky didn't answer.

"I was enjoying myself!" he continued, watching as the clouds transformed into Dumbledore's smirking, holier than thou face. "We were just getting to the good part!"

Cloud Dumbledore didn't answer, but his patch of sky-blue eyes twinkled damningly.

"We might have actually gotten to the part without clothes this time!"

Dumbledore offered a cheery wave and then closed his office door, fading back into the overcast sky.

Tom sighed, wondering why even his dreams couldn't cooperate with him, and why Harry had to turn him down for a hot tub. However, before he could try to find his way back to Hogwarts and the surreal sex it promised, he stopped in his tracks.

The district was perfectly empty, as expected in this dream iteration of Diagon Alley, but someone, somewhere, was having a conversation.

No, not just someone.

One of them, the masculine voice, sounded very much like his own. It was a little dryer, a little more certain of itself, calm and patient, but it was certainly his voice. The essence of Tom Riddle was in that voice somewhere.

The other was unmistakably Harry's.

Not just Harry's either, he thought to himself as he unconsciously stepped forward, but truly Harry's. The girl in the chamber, for all that she was Harry Evans, had been a shadow of a memory. A projection of Tom's impressions formed into a nightly specter.

Even in the dream Tom knew she wasn't really Harry.

This other Harry though, it was like Harry concentrate, like everything in the air suddenly screamed and smelled of Harry. Whoever was talking, it wasn't just a mere shadow.

The other Tom Riddle and Harry were very upset over something. No, not quite; Harry was very upset over something and the other Tom Riddle was just making her more upset about it. Not surprising, as that happened to Tom a lot, but still, did it have to happen in his dreams too?

Couldn't Harry for once not blow him off for a hot tub in a tuxedo?

Well, they couldn't have that.

This time, Harry would take him to the Yule Ball and Ronald McWeaselFace taking her as a pity date could stuff it.

Tom followed the voices, not catching the words so much as the tone, and wound his way through the alley until he finally found them. They were seated outside of a small café taking tea for two.

The food was left mostly untouched, but both had cups of tea in front of them. Half a cucumber sandwich remained on Harry's plate.

As for the Tom Riddle, he wasn't quite what Tom had expected. He was much older, looking to be in his late twenties if not early thirties, and wearing distinctly muggle clothing. Tom supposed he should be wondering why he'd projected himself at such a distant age, why he wouldn't have Harry take tea with his current self, but to tell the truth he wasn't surprised.

He recognized the other Tom easily. This wasn't him or anything he'd conjured up; this was Harry's personal Tom Riddle. The one she took on adventures, entered into riddle competitions, and stored in the back of her cupboard beneath the stairs. She must have brought him with her when she entered his dream.

He and Tom had never been formally introduced, especially not in the real world, but in the world of dreams it was easy to get the grasp of another person. There wasn't any need for logic, explanations, or background when you were dreaming.

Harry, at least, was certainly Harry.

At the moment she and the other Tom were laughing their heads off, Tom clearly having missed the punchline to some clever joke, and he patiently waited for them to turn their attention to him.

Funny, he usually hated being passed over, especially in dreams. It was very rude of his own imagination to ignore him, and he usually demanded its full attention immediately. For now, though, he was perfectly content to wait for them to finish.

He somehow knew they had come for him.

Finally, Harry's laughter died down, and she turned her head to look at him.

Her eyes went wide and a pair of very familiar words tumbled out of her mouth. "Oh shit."

"Harry," he acknowledged, and took the seat across from her at their small table.

"Um—hullo," Harry bit out, offering the world's smallest wave to him. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Fancy seeing you here," Tom repeated. "It's my dream after all."

"Oh, you know about that?" Harry asked weakly, face growing very pale, and he nodded as he took one of the sandwiches.

Oddly cinnamon-tasting, maybe a little bitter. He should really think about adding in some sugar to his outlook on life; he'd have to borrow some from Harry sometime.

"It's a pity though," Tom said with a sigh. "I think I was actually going to get lucky tonight."

"What?" Harry asked.

"Well, before you showed up," Tom said, "I was in the Chamber of Secrets, we both were—well, me and an impression of you. You'd just blown me off for Cedralph Blackory, but goddammit, I think we really were going to have sex this time. I suppose there's always tomorrow night."

The other Tom spewed out his tea and started choking. Harry, meanwhile, went a vibrant crimson.

"Really?" Harry finally said weakly.

Tom nodded glumly. "You'd think, being my own head, that it'd actually be very easy to get laid. But no, I think I enjoy the challenge too much—and apparently competition. Remind me to kill Alphard Black back in the real world."

"I'm not reminding you to do that," Harry said.

"Well then how will I ever remember?" Tom asked in exasperation. It was so hard to remember in the real world anything he figured out dreaming. "You have to work with me here, Harry."

"No, I don't," Harry said with a very strained smile.

He waved her off. "Never mind all that, what brings you here?"

"Um—" Harry started, stopped, and slowly looked over at the other Tom Riddle who was only just recovering from his coughing fit.

"Harry, he doesn't know you're here," the other Tom finally said.

"I'm pretty sure he knows we're here," Harry said, trying to say it very quietly, but the silence of the alley just made everything that much louder.

"I know you're here," Tom confirmed, "Even if you both have awful timing and owe me a sexual fantasy or two."

"Harry," the other Tom assured Harry, placing a hand on her shoulder, "Trust me, he has no idea you're here. He's dreaming, he'll forget ninety-percent of this in the morning."

"This is also, sadly, true," Tom admitted with a sigh, thinking of his waking self with a sense of fond exasperation. "Waking Tom can be so dense sometimes. You have to tell him things twenty times before he even begins to get it through his thick head. You wouldn't believe how many times I've tried to tell him you're from the future."

Harry spluttered, "You know about that?!"

"But of course," Tom assured her, and motioned behind him where the pathway to Harry's mind miraculously appeared. "You leak information like there's no tomorrow."

As always, it wasn't so much a bridge as it was a giant doorway overflowing with thoughts, memories, and so very many feelings. Even just bringing it up here caused it to dump everything all over the cobblestones.

Tom tried not to look too sheepish as he explained, "I keep having to sort through it. I swear, I get through the last batch and then a whole new mess comes pouring through. There's just no end."

Harry looked to the other Tom in horror. "Did you know about this?!"

"Well, you are very bad at occlumency," the other Tom said sheepishly, purposefully looking away from her as well as the bits and pieces of Harry flooding onto the cobblestones. "And you two do share an unnatural connection."

"You mean he already knows about all of this?!"

"Well," Tom interjected, "Know is a strong word. I might know, but Waking Tom is a very busy man. He has his OWLs coming up, prefect duties, immortality, relatives to track down, and then trying to figure you out on top of all of that. He doesn't have time for any of this junk. Even if it means he occasionally gets stuck on things like believing you're his sister—and hasn't that been a mess?"

Upon seeing Harry's abject horror, Tom felt himself falter and said slowly, "I suppose I can—stop trying to tell him, if you like."

"Please," she said, reaching over the table to him, and he reluctantly nodded.

He didn't really like keeping secrets from himself. Granted, there were some things the waking Tom didn't like to acknowledge and threw back down here (this was many things, in fact), but that was a little different. He didn't think he'd ever purposefully stopped trying to convey information before.

"Was that why you came?" he asked slowly, wondering if she'd made her way here simply to tell Tom Riddle to lie to Tom Riddle.

He was a little disappointed. She'd come a long way and he'd never visited her mind before, so he'd hoped she'd come for something a little more than that.

"No!" Harry said too quickly. She tried to regain her poise and more calmly said, "I mean, no."

She glanced over at the other Tom Riddle. "Isn't this where you had some sort of a plan?"

"Right," the other Tom Riddle said slowly, "I can't say this was exactly what I had in mind, but I suppose we'll have to make the best of it."

He dusted off his jacket and turned to look at Tom. Tom looked pleasantly back at him. "I suppose you know who I am."

Tom nodded. "You're that Tom Riddle Harry carries around everywhere."

Tom reached out with a hand towards the other, grinning as he did so. "Nice to meet you, and thank you for saving my life. I suppose I owe you one."

Not that the waking Tom Riddle would ever remember or acknowledge such a fact. Being saved by Harry, that he could accept—being saved by anybody else was a shattering blow to his pride. Still, Tom supposed it was best to say such things while he could.

The other Tom eyed it dubiously for a moment but then reached out and shook it. His hand was warm, a bit larger than Tom's, and more calloused. He'd seen real dueling, then.

"I am not just the Tom Riddle Harry carries around with her," he corrected as he let go of Tom's hand, "I'm what she turns him into and what will become of you if you don't watch your step."

"Come again?" Tom asked.

The other Tom gave him a pointed look. "Tom, do I look like Voldemort to you?"

No, no he didn't.

Tom found himself looking the other man up and down, far more critically this time. He was older, yes, but Tom hadn't considered him as Voldemort before. The clothing was too muggle, and not just that, but the way he held himself.

The shining idol of Voldemort was further down the path of Tom's mind. It was decorated in gold leaf and in the sunlight it practically burned. Voldemort was a shining, untouchable, almost inhuman figure.

This man was not.

There was something otherworldly about him, but not untouchable; he was too at ease with himself and the world. There was no ambition in him, no drive in him, just a lazy contentment and deference to Harry.

"You can have Harry, or you can have Voldemort," the man said, eyes pale and knowing. "You cannot have both."

The man motioned to himself. "And if you even think of trying, you will become everything you fear most in the world."

"Mediocre oblivion," Tom finished for him.

Glory was fleeting and obscurity forever. Napoleon had said that, and for most, Tom had believed it. However, he would become one of those great men who would never be passed over. They would never forget his name, Voldemort, or the mark he left behind on this country and the world at large.

Tom had promised himself this.

Had he forgotten it already?

He felt the ground shaking beneath his feet, not enough to tear apart, but a subtle tremor of fear as he reconciled himself with what the man was saying. He could see it, he could see the roots of it already growing inside him, that softness that would lead to weakness that would lead to—

"Hold it!" Harry said, "Hold it! You did not say we would make him Voldemort instead!"

The shaking stopped.

"I don't have much to work with here," the other Tom noted in exasperation. "Honestly, my first plan of action was to dress up in drag and tell Tom here that hanging out with you turns him into your sad little housewife. Unfortunately, we're in a little too deep, I don't think Tom here would even blink at that."

Indeed, while the waking Tom was very easy to throw off his game, Tom felt that he was very unflappable while dreaming. Harry, it seemed, wasn't quite as take-things-as-they-come as a dreaming Tom was.

"You were going to what?!" Harry asked.

The other Tom held up two fingers with a sigh. "Tom Riddle wants two things in this world. He wants Harry and he wants Voldemort. Currently, he wants Voldemort a little more than he wants Harry. If you want him to back off, threaten what he wants."

"I don't care what he wants," Harry spluttered, "We can't just go encouraging him to be Voldemort!"

"Well then you're just going to have to live with his growing crush," the other Tom said, throwing his hands in the air, "Because I am officially out of ideas."

"This was your plan?!" Harry asked, looking completely at a loss. "This was your great plan?!"

"I never said it was a good plan," the other Tom said.

Harry turned back to Tom. "Tom, you can't like me, and you can't become Voldemort."

Tom looked at her dubiously, pouring himself some tea. "I'm pretty sure I can."

More, he didn't think the other Tom had lied to him, but certainly he had an agenda. If Tom treaded carefully, then he could probably try to both get the girl and get Voldemort. If he had to pick and choose, well, he'd cross that bridge later.

"No, you can't," Harry said, "You shouldn't."

"Why not?" he asked simply and very honestly.

Harry seemed to have no idea how to answer for a moment, and then blurted, "Because people don't like me like that, and I'm not going to start with you!"

"I'm sorry if my feelings are inconvenient," he said slowly, "But I'm not going to make them go away just because you're uncomfortable."

"It's not because I'm uncomfortable!" Harry spluttered and then pointed at the other Tom in accusation before he could say anything. "And don't you start."

She held up both hands then. "Alright, fine, we'll do it your way. Voldemort is bad and there's nothing wrong with living an ordinary life."

Tom laughed. "Oh, Harry, what Kool-Aid have you been drinking recently?"

"I would love to be ordinary," Harry said. "Take it from somebody who's ridiculously famous: it sucks. Everyone watches what you do, people make shit up about you all the time, and when dark lords rise from the grave, they expect you to do something about it. I'd love nothing more than to be just like everyone else."

"That's easy to say," Tom said.

"Why would you want to be famous for being the worst?" Harry asked. "People hate you. Nobody likes you, I'm pretty sure your Death Eaters don't even like you. And for what, so you can limp around in decrepit bodies that aren't even human anymore? Don't do it."

"And what would I do instead?" Tom asked. "Become a clerk? That sounds like fun."

"I don't know!" Harry said, throwing her hands in the air, "Something that's not about killing people. Just—"

She trailed off and looked around desperately. Finally, her eyes landed on the other Tom. "Look at him!"

"At me?" the other Tom asked, motioning to himself in confusion.

"At him?" Tom echoed, because if there was a Voldemort to behold then this one was very lackluster indeed.

"Before I met him," Harry started, "I didn't think Tom Riddle could be anything but a Class-A dick. I thought you were doomed to become Voldemort, maybe you didn't have to be pure evil, but you'd never be anything good either."

She stood and placed her hand on the other Tom's shoulders, ignoring his look of confused alarm. "Then I met this bloke. He's been hanging out in my brain for fifteen years. He could have sold me out to Voldemort, could have probably given me a seizure, he could have ruined me in a heartbeat. Instead, he takes every little moment to teach me occlumency, explain whatever I want to know, and even goes along with my ridiculous schemes like 'save Tom Riddle from evil fairies' or 'invade Tom Riddle's brain to make him not like me anymore'. He's risked his life twice now to save me from my sheer stupidity."

She looked down at the other Tom with a blinding grin. "And at first I thought he must have something up his sleeve, he must be at least passing information to Voldemort, or trying to gain my trust for when he has a chance to betray me. I don't know, maybe he is, maybe he's playing the long game and I'm an idiot. You know what though? I think you're right. I think this is the soft-serve Tom Riddle who can never become Voldemort. And he's bloody brilliant."

"Harry—" the bloody brilliant soft-serve Tom Riddle started, but Harry didn't even seem to see him.

"He's tall, he's handsome, he's witty, charming, and he doesn't have a snake face," Harry continued, eyes almost glowing with emotion. "He's brave, braver than half of Gryffindor put together. The guy took an arrow for me for Christ's sake. Even when in intense pain he always has some catchy, surprisingly muggle comeback for something. He always listens to what I have to say, and you know what, screw it, I'm living for it."

She motioned down to the other Tom in all his glory. "You want to date me? Guess what? If this guy weren't like a billion or a ghost in my brain, I'd date him in a heartbeat. He asks me to the Yule Ball, I'm gone. In fact, I might just ask him."

The other Tom went very pale, tensed beneath the hand still on his shoulder, and tried to interrupt again, "Harry—"

Harry didn't listen, instead she continued, ignoring the reddening of the other Tom Riddle's face, "In fact, I might still date this asshole, because of course Harry Potter ends up dating the Tom Riddle ghost in her brain. It'd just be par for the course, right? And he's beautiful, and I can tell him anything, and he's—"

Harry suddenly paled and sat back down, removing her hand from the other Tom's shoulder. "Oh my god."

She then looked back up at the other Tom, flushing as violently as he was, and repeated, "Oh my god."

Tom coughed politely and tried to steer the conversation back on track. "I'm guessing the point of this was that he gets the girl, Voldemort doesn't?"

Neither Harry nor the other Tom answered. Tom, with a distant pang of regret, remembered that the night had started as a sex dream.

Hopefully, the waking Tom would only remember the important parts of this in the morning. Not that Tom knew what the important parts were either, he was just sure that something important had probably just happened.

Probably.

There were no words.

There was nothing, in fact, for either of them to say.

Harry was staring straight at him, mouth open in the dumb horror left over from the realization neither of them knew had been bubbling. Tom was staring straight back.

It was as if a door neither of them had ever acknowledged had been flung open. Now that it was open, and sunlight was pouring in, neither of them could ever shut it again.

Words could never be unsaid.

There were many things that could have happened venturing into Tom Riddle's mind. He hadn't seen this one coming.

Clearly, there was only one thing to do.

Tom stood robotically, grabbed hold of Harry by the collar, and waved to the subconsciousness of 1942's Tom. "Give Tom our regards."

He then dragged the listless Harry out, over the bridge, and back into the safety of her own mind where he'd be spending the next week trying to patch that leak from her head to Tom Riddle's. Yes, that sounded like good, mind-consuming work.

Author's Note: It's not a Carnivorous Muffin story if you don't have a few chapters dedicated to surreal weirdness. And cliffhangers about feelings.

Thanks to the wonderful GlassGirlCeci for betaing the chapter. Thank you to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter