Chapter Text
Harry James Potter:
Harry walked quickly against the forest, feeling a pull in his stomach that he had never felt before. It was like something was tied to him and it pulled him. His heart was pounding with an intensity that he had never felt before, or had he?
Harry thought back to his old life, and realised that he had felt this pull before, but played it away as nervosity. It was on the way to the Chamber of Secrets in his second year. It had just gotten worse the closer her had gotten to the diary, and Riddle. The teenaged Riddle had been attractive, Harry wasn’t going to lie about that.
He had thought about Riddle a lot since last night, enough so that both Ron and Hermione had told him, on different occasions, that he was acting weird, and for them he most likely was, but he was able to play it away as tired and worried about the Tournament, and the competition he had, because he did have competition.
“Potter, over here!” Malfoy sounded irritated, even though Harry had only been a few minutes late, since his last lesson of the day ended only ten minutes ago.
“Sorry I’m late”. He breathed out, the pull only getting stronger, and more painful. “Snape kept us for around 20 minutes longer than he should have done.”
“Severus just thinks that you maybe should try during your lessons.” Draco snapped back.
“Obviously you know Snape, he’s maybe your father?” Harry laughed with a fake laugh. He had missed the bantering between him and Draco, the kind of harmless bantering they had in their first three years, since it stopped completely after the battle of Hogwarts.
“Don’t talk like that to me, Severus has known my parents since he was a child. He is my godfather!” Draco shot back, until Viktor stepped between them.
“I don’t know vot you are talking about, or vhy you are arguing vith each other, but ve need to vork together, not against each other”. Viktor said calmly, accidentally making a quote that stuck on Harry’s mind.
We need to work together, not against each other.
“So, now ve are everyone and I can start. Since both of you go to Hogwarts I think that the most helpful thing vould be if me and Fleur helped you. Is that… ehh… fine for you, Cedric?” He ended the sentence with his confidence running out, and he once again started to stumble over the words.
Harry had noticed that under the few conversations he had with Viktor. He was confident in the beginning when he was talking, but in the end he started to pull back and stop more between the words.
Harry had missed when Cedric had said yes, because he was pulled out of his thoughts from someone stepping on a stick, and it snapped in half. He jumped, looking around, like there was something behind him, even if he knew that there was nothing. They were not yet long enough into the war in this life, for anything to attack him, even if Barty Crouch Junior was disguised as Mad-eye Moody.
Harry returned to his normal breathing right before Fleur started to speak.
“Zis is getting out of ‘and. Ze two of you, stop. Arguing won’t fix anyzing. ‘Arry, since you don’t know French, I think it is easier if I take Draco, and mentor ‘im. Cedric ‘as gone to ze same school as both of you, so he can’t teach you very much, more zan you already know. So Viktor, you are responsible for ‘Arry.
“I know just as many spells as Viktor, it is just that I might know more legal spells than him. I can teach them defensive spells, like I told you yesterday I could”.
“You know as many legal spells as I do. I am not stupid. I know very vell that I can not use illegal magic here at Hogwarts. If you are good at defensive spells that is good. I can teach them darker spells, still legal, but darker than taught at Hogwarts. Fleur, what can you give them?”
“I could teach zem charms. Beauxbatons focuses a lot on charms”. Fleur crossed her arms, with a look on her face, that told anyone looking that she was offended. Really offended. “We ‘ave always been like zat. Zat is why many of the best charms ‘ave been made at Beauxbatons”. She said it like it was obvious, and Harry noticed that Draco rolled his eyes.
“Could the three of you possibly stop arguing about Potter and I. We are only a few years younger than the three of you. I really want you to understand that. Mentally we are not much younger than you three, well there is a bigger gap between us and Fleur, than us and you other two, but please. You are arguing about who could mentor each of us. Potter, any idea?”
Harry, who had stood there staring at Draco, because that was not the boy he argued with during his fourth year, that was a young man, who was scared for his life. The Draco he had met during the battle of Hogwarts in his last life, was much closer to this Draco. This Draco was more mature, and showed a lot more feeling. Or maybe it was because he had not had the energy to care in his last life.
“Potter! Stop staring at me! And answer my question!” Draco exclaimed angrily, and Harry was instantly pulled out of his thoughts.
“Sorry, never thought you would argue for me” Harry mumbled with a joking tone.
“I am arguing for both of us, and I am giving you the chance to decide, so now do so!” Draco said, with so much irritation that Harry almost started to laugh.
“Sure. Viktor, you are my main tutor, and Fleur you are Malfoy’s… Draco’s. Cedric, you get two days each with us. One day on a weekend, and one day during the week, does that sound fine to everyone?”
The three older students nodded and Draco moved his weight from one foot to another. He looked over his shoulders into the forest each time a single sound was hearable.
“Well, before we continue, Potter, I am thinking of one more thing. If we maybe could act as civil as we have today twice a week, then we maybe could have the lessons with Cedric together, and swap tutors twice a week too. So that is going to give us enough time with each of them to get a little better on whatever each of them want to teach us. And could we maybe walk along the forest instead of standing still. I feel like there is something inside the forest watching us, and I really don’t want that to be possible.
They started to talk about the idea that Draco had come up with, and it didn’t take long before they had accepted that it was going to happen whether or not they wanted it to. It was simply the easiest way of getting as much information into their heads as possible.
Then it came to deciding on a place to have the tutoring sessions, and Cedric first told them about a room on the seventh floor that could transform into anything they needed, but neither Harry nor Fleur thought that was a good idea. It took them over fifteen minutes to decide how they were going to do it. Then Viktor said something about having his own room on the boat, and Fleur said the same thing. Madame Maxime had not wanted her to sleep together with the other girls, since they would try and claw her eyes out in her sleep. And Viktor’s reasoning for having a room alone was that Karkaroff favored him.
It was decided that they were going to do it in their rooms for their private sessions, with their respective tutor, and that Cedric was going to use the Room of Requirement when he met up with him and Draco.
They had walked for a while now, and even if they were going slowly they were quite long from the castle. Harry had checked so that he had his wand on him, even if he knew that he did. He had made it a habit long ago to keep his wand in his pocket. It was something he started doing after the war, when he started to wait for someone to jump out in front of him and shoot killing curses at him.
“‘Arry, not wanting to be rude, but where do you live during ze summer?”
“I live with my muggle aunt and uncle”. Harry answered, as fast as he could without really hiding the emotions that were bubbling up inside of him. He had not given Petunia, or Dudley, a single thought since he got to this life, but they must still be as bad as they were to him in his last life.
He had gotten an invitation to a funeral five years after the battle of Hogwarts, and it had been Vernon’s funeral. He had attended out of pure formality, and Dudley had a daughter, and had lost a lot of weight. Petunia on the other hand looked worse then he had ever seen her, and it turned out that Dudley had gotten a girl pregnant during the summer before Harry’s supposed seventh year at Hogwarts, and he got full custody of the baby. For the first two years Petunia took care of the little girl, but then she and Dudley realised that she was able to use magic. Magnolia Dursley was a witch.
Harry had not forgiven them directly, but he visited them sometimes each year, and they slowly grew to be friends, him and Dudley at least. Petunia was a lost cause. She died only three years after Vernon, from grief, the doctors said, but Harry had a feeling that Magnolia had something to do with it.
Magnolia had laughed, cried and smiled at Petunia’s funeral, and she even said sorry while looking at her dead grandmother’s face. That was the first time Mongolia talked in four years.
Harry had adored the girl, with her red hair and deep blue eyes, and all the freckles covering her face. Magnolia was two years older than James and they had a special bond. They had become best friends the second James could talk. James was the one that talked and she had listened. They had become best friends, and complimented each other really well.
“If ve are talking about our families, Draco, tell us a little bit about yours”.
Harry noticed how Draco tensed when he got the question, and it took a while before they got an answer from him.
“Well… I live with my mother and father in the Malfoy Manor.
“Names?” Fleur questioned, with a light smile.
“Lucius Malfoy, and Narcissa Malfoy, née Black.
“You’re an only child?
Draco started talking with Fleur in french, and it was only Cedric who seemed to know what they were talking about, so Harry asked him. Cedric told him and Viktor that he did not speak fluently but that he knew enough to understand what they were talking about. He could not translate, that was basically impossible, but he knew that Draco still was talking about his family.
Viktor asked Cedric about his family, and Cedric smiled as he started to talk about his parents, and how they had sent him a letter already, about him being the Champion, and how proud they were of him. When Cedric started talking about his little sister. She was five, and he loved her with his whole heart, even if they only met during the holidays, since he was at Hogwarts.
Cedric talked for maybe five minutes about his sister and how much he loved her.
“So, Fleur, vot about your family? Can you tell us about them?
“Mon famille?”
“If that means your family, then yes”.
“I live wiz my muzzer, and my father, and sister by a big lake. My muzzer’s name is Apolline and my father's name is Mael. My sister, Gabrielle, is eight now, and she is going to ‘er second year at Beauxbatons.
“What?”
“She is in ‘er second year. Is that not correct English?
“Yes it is, but she is going to her second year?” Cedric exclaimed, shocked.
Harry was also shocked, but he kept that to himself, even if he had had the same reaction when Viktor talked about having younger students at Durmstrang.
“We ‘ave eleven years at Beauxbatons. You start at seven and graduate at eighteen. The intake of students are ze same as ‘ere. Born between September 1st and August 31st ze next year, so some are already almost eight when they start. One fourth of ze students graduate at seventeen, since zair birthdays are in ze summer”. Fleur talked faster than she should have, because her accent slipped through more and more for each accent, even if it was possible to understand what she was saying.
“Ohh… Okay, then I know that. Interesting”.
“Durmstrang does the same. Ve start a little earlier in the year than you, but it is not more than ten days or so, and a year later in age”.
Viktor, Cedric and Fleur started a heated discussion on which of the three schools was the best, and Harry turned so he had his back against them, leaning against a tree. The forest had been scarily calm all day, something that made him think that there was more going on in this life that he wanted.
It would of course not be permanent, no one, not even Death, would give him a second chance at life. He had been in his “second” life for three days, and he guessed that he might stay there for a year or so, but not more. This was most likely just the transition from life to death, since he didn’t actually know what kind of transition it was. No one alive did, and he was dead, that was something he knew.
“So Viktor, what about your family? Do you ‘ave any siblings?”
Harry tuned back to reality when he heard the question that Fleur asked Viktor, and listened closely to Viktor’s answer, even if he didn’t know why.
“I haff three siblings. Teodora, Matea and Yosif. Teodora is the most crafty of us. She builds things all the time. Matea is the most interested in muggles, she haff one of the things that muggles kill each other vith, and she goes to competitions, shooting vith it. Yosif is the kindest of us. He also loves to cook, so he often helps mother in the kitchen. He is good at teaching other people things too”.
Viktor didn’t say anything about his parents, more than that his brother liked to cook with his mother, and that confused Harry. That was the most Viktor ever said about his mother, and he never talked at all about his father. Not that Harry was going to ask, that was rude.
The five of them kept walking away from the castle, and Harry noticed how the pull got stronger for each step he took. It hurt him more than he wanted to accept. It felt like something was ripping him into pieces, wanting him to be closer, and was pulling him closer and closer, even if it got more and more painful the closer he got. Like the thing pulling him had been growing inside of him, and only bloomed last night.
They walked in a comfortable silence, and Fleur had taken out her wand, showing off some spells for Draco and Viktor, while Harry and Cedric walked side by side slowly.
Harry couldn’t help but to look at Viktor laughing, and how happy he seemed. The last time Harry saw him in his old life he had been newly married with his first child on the way, but he still did not seem happy. He had smiled, laughed, and seemingly loved his wife and their unborn child, but when he was alone there never seemed to be a single smile on his lips.
After half an hour of talking, walking and laughing they came to a halt. There was someone laying on the grass only a few meters away. A pale boy with dark brown hair. He seemed to be asleep, but quite wounded.
Harry walked over, to get a better look at the boy’s face, and a face he would recognise everywhere met him. Tom Riddle’s face, even if it looked a little younger than when Harry fought him in his second year.
“It can’t be… He is… No… He’s supposed to be dead. Dead…” Harry mumbled to himself, ignoring the weird looks he was getting from Cedric, who stood close to him.
Riddle was alive again. It had to be the doing of some magical power, that Harry didn’t know anything about.
"’Oo is it ‘Arry?”
Harry didn’t answer, he kept his eyes on Riddle, but took a quick step back when he saw Riddle’s eyes fly open.
Tom Marvolo Riddle:
Tom opened and closed his eyes a few times, to be able to focus on the people in front of him. A thought that it could be his friends crossed his mind for about two seconds, before he realised that he was in the future.
When his eyes finally were able to focus enough to see more than the contours of the people standing in front of him, he looked straight into the eyes of one of the boys. A black hair boy, with the deepest, greenest eyes he had ever seen. They were really beautiful, and a colour Tom had never seen in the Wizarding World before.
The boy took a few steps back, and paled when their eyes met, which Tom thought was weird, but he broke the eye contact, and looked over at the only girl there. She had silvery blond hair, dark blue eyes, and she was eerily beautiful. Beautiful in a way that was scary, like in nature. The most beautiful flowers were usually the most dangerous ones.
The tallest of the boys had dark brown hair and bright gray eyes. It was like a stone that was lit up by the sun. He looked concerned and conflicted, more than scared, and Tom realised quickly that the wound he had inflicted on himself had bled through the shirt.
He looked between the last two boys, and decided to look at the older one of them first. He had dark brown shoulder length hair and light brown eyes, his nose was hooked like it had hit the ground a few times, hard.
The last boy was… Tom had to take a double take. He was pale, blond and quite good looking. Very much like his best friend.
“Abraxas?” He asked quietly.
“No. Draco. Abraxas is my grandfather. Why are you asking if I am my grandfather?” The blond boy said, while halfrolling his eyes the same way Abraxas does… did.
“What year is it?”
“It is ze first November of nineteen ninety-four. Why are you asking us zis?”
The girl’s accent was interesting. It was not the normal English accent Tom had met in the Muggle World. It was the kind of accent he had only heard once in his life, and that was when he and Abraxas were in France. Abaxas had been fluent in French since he was very little, but he still tried to include Tom as much as possible.
“Why are you here?” The younger black haired boy said, and if eyes could kill Tom would have been dead, five times over.
“I don’t know. I was in my bedroom a few hours ago, and then I was in a white room, and I got sucked out from the wall” He got five mistrusting looks and sat up, even if his wound hurt, and he could feel it slowly splitting, but he didn’t scream. He had been thought worse at the orphanage, when he was younger. That was what he had to tell himself over and over, while standing up. “It is true. You might not understand that, but I have no idea how I got here. A few hours I sat on my bed in the Slytherin dorm, and now I am in the future! I am over fifty years in the future, and I…” Tom took a deep breath, and the wound, where he had been holding his hand, started bleeding profusely. “...Need medical attention”.
It felt bad making himself so vulnerable but he had no choice. The pain was so bad that he almost could not stand up, and he was losing a lot of blood.
He felt a hand on his back, and looked up from the ground, that he had been staring down at. It was the boy who looked like Abraxas.
“Why?...”
“You knew my grandfather, that should be enough to make me not trust you, but apparently you revealing that did the exact opposite, and I was raised to help people, and you are wearing an old Hogwarts uniform, so you might as well be telling the truth”.
“Thank you”. Tom breathed, as he placed more and more of his weight onto the blond boy.
“Diggory!… Sorry, I mean Cedric, could you help me. He is heavier than he looks”.
“Never done this before?” The tallest of the boys said as he walked the last two meters, to close the gap in between them, and smirked. Tom guessed that it had to be Cedric… Diggory.
“No, why would I have?”
“It is notable that you are an only child.”.
Tom watched the two of them, Cedric and Draco, Abraxas’ grandson… half-jokingly argue over his head. They walked fast, but Tom didn’t really care. He was in so much pain that he could not breathe fully. He was shaking, and the only thing that actually held him standing was the arms of the two other boys.
“How are you doing?”
“It’s painful, but I’ll survive”.
“Want us to walk slower?”
“No, the faster we are at the Hospital Wing, the faster I can get the wound healed and try to get home, to my own time”.
“Okay, to distract you from the vound, tell us how you got it”. The older dark haired boy said an accent that Tom never had heard before.
“As I said before I don’t know how I got here, but when I did, I saw thousands of spiders crawling one way. That is a sign that there are Acromantulas close by, so I ran. Fast and I managed to run straight into something, and it left this wound. I have no idea of what I ran into, all I know is that I got wounded, and now I think it is infected”. Tom calmly explained, with a tiny smile on his lips.
He knew he could not laugh, but everything was making him want to. He really, really wanted to laugh at how absurd the situation was, but if he started laughing it would turn into crying, and he didn’t know these people, so he could not cry in front of them, even if he already had overshared a lot with them.
They got into the castle pretty quickly and it did not look any different from what Tom remembered. It was still beautiful, and it still felt like a home to him, but the atmosphere was different. It was less scared, and nervous than in his time.
“Has Grindelwald gotten defeated yet?”
“Who?” Cedric questioned, kind of answering Tom’s question.
“Grindelwald. Gellert Grindelwald. In my time he was the worst Dark Lord to ever have existed. So did someone defeat him?”
“Yes. Grindelwald is defeated. Not dead, but if someone vould vant to find him they vould haff to ask a lot of questions. He is locked inside his own prison.”
“Who defeated him?”
“Albus Dumbledore”.
Tom’s heart dropped, and he could feel his heart jump over a beat. Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore defeated the darkest and most cruel Dark Lord in hundreds, or maybe thousands of years. The man that Tom really hoped not to have to see again, because that man had never really liked him.
“Is he…”
“Dead?”
“No, he is alive and healthy.” The green eyed boy said, with a tone in his voice that scared Tom.
They kept walking in silence, a very uncomfortable silence, and Tom wondered how long it would take before any teacher or any of the students they passed would notice that he didn’t fit into the group.
His clothes were a little bit too small, since he had not had the money to buy new ones for the year, and it was completely different from what the other students were wearing. Dark green, only the first year students had black uniforms, and his tie was Slytherin green with the tip dipped in a silver colour, and the Slytherin emblem embroidered on.
The doors to the Hospital were painted in a bright green with red crosses on them, apparently a hint to the muggle world, as the only girl had said with a distaste in her voice.
Tom had not realised that until she said it, and he hated it. He was supposed to try and distance himself from everything muggle. In a few years, in his time, no one was supposed to remember his muggle heritage, and he was supposed to be able to pass for a pureblood.
That was the one thing that he knew was good. Since almost no one should remember his name, he could simply say that he is a pureblood. He could get his muggle father erased from the world.
“Oh… Dear, I will be out in a minute, I just have to get some supplies. Put the one of you wounded on the bed over there”. A woman who had been standing over a bed, with a passed out girl in, pointed at a bed and ran into a room that Tom guessed was the storage room.
He sat down on the bed that she had pointed on, and tried to ignore the pain. It was shooting deeper inside of him, and he felt ill. Taking deep and slow breaths became hard, and Tom felt more and more lightheaded for each one.
His grip on the sheets became tighter and he slowly let go with one hand to place it over the wound. There was a lot of blood, it was dripping down his side, and Tom had no idea on how much longer he could go without passing out.
The woman walked out, and Cedric was the one to start talking. He pointed at Tom, and exaggerated everything he said with hand movements, and the woman that he had heard being called Madam Pomfrey, turned to him.
Tom vaguely recognised her face, but she apparently recognised him much more.
“It can’t be. Riddle?
“Yes, and I can’t really place you. Pomfrey…” Tom had to think, since he really didn’t want to embarrass himself. “Poppy. You are Poppy Pomfrey. You are six months and three days younger than me, a Ravenclaw and obsessed with anything that has to do with healing and medical things. Both muggle and wizard things. You are a halfblood, who has separated parents, and you live one week with your wizard father and one week with your muggle mother, and you have to live completely different lives there”.
“Riddle, it scares me that you know so much about my life, but that was over fifty years ago. You know that?”
“Yes, Pomfrey, I do. I know very well that I am in the future, and I have no idea on how to get back.
“Well, you are wounded, and I will have to take care of that”.
Tom didn’t let go of the wound, and he didn’t move to let her even touch it. All he wanted to do was run away, but he would pass out if he stood up.
“You will have to take off your shirt if I am going to help you”.
“Can’t you just use a spell or something and fix it?”
“As much as I would want to do that, I can unfortunately not do that”.
“Then you don’t have to help me. I’ll fix it myself”.
“Does this have anything to do with us going to school together?”
“No, Pomfrey, it doesn’t”.
“Does it have anything to do with you always skipping the well checks at school?
“What, how did you know that!” Tom exclaimed before he realised that she could not have known that and he right out told her that he did.
“So it does?”
“No… I… That is because of a different reason. I skip the monthly well checks for a different reason”. He quickly explained himself as he looked over at the five who got him there. They had sat down in a little waiting area close to the door, and they were talking. All but the green eyed, black haired boy. He was staring straight at Tom.
Tom was quiet for a while, before he sighed, as blood started leaking through his fingers. The pain was worse than ever, and even if he had been through worse, he could smell on the blood, that the wound had gotten infected.
“Okay, you can heal it, but you are not allowed to ask a single question and you will have to do it in private since I don’t want anyone else to see”.
“Sure, I’ll put up privacy shields”. Pomfrey said as she pulled the drapes close, so it was just the two of them in there.
She mumbled a few spells, while waving her wand in some weird way. Tom knew it was privacy shields, even if she didn’t tell him. He stared at the floor for a few minutes, before letting his hand slip off the wound, really inspecting it for the first time since he got it.
He slipped his shirt off, ignoring the horrified scream coming from Pomfrey. She didn’t touch him, like the few others who knew, had done the second they had seen them. The scars.
Long scars, going along his chest, stomach and back, and he had had them for too long. He remembered getting them, and only a few days later, when he gained consciousness again, the boys who had made him get the scars died. He had nothing to do with that, but it was still Tom who had been blamed for it.
“Riddle, who…?
Pomfrey’s silence said more than any words could. Tom hated it, but that was the reaction he got from everyone. Every single time.
“I said no questions. Now heal me, and never say a word about this to anyone”.
“Do I know the reason why you used to skip the health checks now?”
“Yes, you do”. Tom sighed, and then he turned on the tone that he used to have when he wanted to scare people. “And you are not going to tell anyone at all, about these scars, and you are not going to ask me anything about them, okay?” He hissed, well, almost hissed, he had not yet perfected hissing in english the same way he could in parseltongue, but it worked.
Pomfrey backed into the bed on the other side of the drapes, and the pure horror in her eyes told him that she knew that voice.
“You sound too much like him…”
“Like who?”
“You-Know-Who”.
“No, Pomfrey, I don’t know who he is? Could you give me an actual name?”
“I’d rather not…
“I could ask someone else…”
“No… Don’t. His name was Lord Voldemort”. Pomfrey shuddered as she said the name, and Tom looked down at his hands, before slowly nodding and nudged her to keep healing him.
Tom felt Pomfrey’s cold hand touching the areas around the wound, and about the same time as the wound had closed itself and he had put on his shirt again, he actually realised what she had said. She had said “Lord Voldemort”, the one name he had tried to get his friends to call him. Firstly as a joke, when he was in third year, since all of them had made anagrams with their full names. Tom’s had become “I am Lord Voldemort”, and everyone had thought it was funny, so Abraxas had started calling him it as a joke, and in some weird way Voldemort had stuck. Usually shortened to Vol, but Tom had always thought it was better than Voldemort. And a few months ago, he had asked if he could legally change his name to Voldemort, and the paper he had in his hand right before he got sucked out of the white room, had been the papers telling him that he could, if he wanted to do it, and him trying to write Voldemort as a signature on another piece of paper, it was harder than he expected.
“What did he do?” Tom said with a voice that was so close to cracking it could be.
“He killed thousands of witches and wizards, and the person that killed him, or so it says at least, was a baby”.
She didn’t say more, and Tom could feel that he was close to passing out, over ten seconds before he did, and the last thing he heard was a scream, as he had started laughing.
Draco Lucius Malfoy:
Draco got pulled out of his quite interesting conversion with Fleur, by a scream. A scream that was too high pitched for his liking. He watched the drapes get pulled away, and Madam Pomfrey ran out. She ran out of the Hospital Wing without ever looking at them. She ran faster than he had seen her run before, and Draco could guess enough from the context that it was the boy that had scared her. The boy had seemed very sweet, and a little weird, but he had said he had timetraveled and Draco had known that it was true from the look in the boy’s eyes.
The five of them looked at each other, one face at a time. Draco met Potter’s eyes once, and he could see that the other boy was livid.
The kind of angry that Draco only had seen his father be once. He had been eight, and a man, that Draco got to know was an inspector, had walked into their home and started looking everywhere. Checking every drawer, every crack in the floor, everything, and he had turned Draco’s room upside down, even if Draco had begged him not to touch it. He had broken all Draco’s quills, and that had made his father livid at the man. The inspector had gotten kicked out in less than a minute, and he had replaced all of Draco’s quills. All but one. That one Draco’s father left broken in a display case in the living room. Draco had gotten it from his paternal grandmother, as she was on her deathbed, and it had been one of his most valued possessions at the time.
“Draco, vat is it?”
“I…” Draco thought about telling the others. “I have just never seen Madam Pomfrey get that scared, and he doesn’t seem very harmful”.
All five of them looked over, and Draco couldn’t help but notice their facial expressions were very different. Fleur and Krum’s were curious, but nothing else, Diggory’s was confused, and worried, and Potter’s was angry.
It was eerily quiet as they looked at the boy, none of them took a breath. He was still covered in blood, and Draco realised that he never had given them his name.
“Did he tell anyone his name?” He asked quietly.
A unison “No” came from three of the four others, and Draco’s eyes slid over to give Potter a look. He was pale, and his exceptionally green eyes were burning with a hatred that scared Draco.
After fifteen minutes of trying to talk and not look at the boy, the doors to the Hospital Wing slammed open, and Madam Pomfrey, followed by Dumbledore and McGonagall, ran in.
Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey quickly walked over to the boy on the bed, and McGonagall stopped at the table they were sitting at.
“Has he moved any since Poppy left?”
“No, ‘e ‘asn’t” Fleur mumbled, looking more confused for each second that passed.
Draco kept his eyes on Dumbledore and the boy. The boy looked harmless laying passed out on the hospital bed, but apparently he wasn’t, since both Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey looked at him like he had killed someone.
“What’s happening?”
“Stay where you are. We don’t know where he came from, but he is dangerous”. Dumbledore almost yelled at them, and that was the first time in four years Draco had heard Dumbledore yell.
It was the only answer he got, until about five minutes later when another bloodcurling scream was heard, and Draco turned around, having sat with his back against the bed, and looked at the boy who suddenly was chained against the bed.
“Riddle, don’t move!
Riddle? Draco wondered why Dumbledore called the boy Riddle and after a little while he realised that Madam Momfrey also had called him Riddle. The boy’s name must be Riddle, and Draco guessed that it was his last name, since having that name as a first name would be really weird.
He watched as Riddle started to scream once again, and Dumbledore pulled out his wand. Madam Pomfrey was pale, and shaking, like she had realised something, something bad.
Over an hour passed in complete silence since Dumbledore had put up a soundbarrier around the three of them. The five of them outside of the barrier could still see what was happening, but not hear a single word that was uttered.
“Who do you think he is?” Krum asked Fleur , with a nervousness in his voice Draco never had heard before.
“I ‘ave no idea. ‘E seems out of place. Don’t you zink?”
Diggory smiled ironically, and looked over at McGonagall, who was standing around three meters away from them, quite obviously listening to every single word they said.
“They were scared of him? Why?” Diggory questioned in a way that made sound both like an answer to Fleur’s question and another question.
Draco thought back to when they met the boy for the first time. He had laid passed out in the grass, either sleeping or unconscious, and when they had woken Riddle up he had flinched in a way that only someone who had gone through enough trauma would.
“‘E seemed scared when we told ‘im zat Dumbly-Dorr was still alive. It was like ‘e knew Dumbly-Dorr in ‘is own time too.
“You really think he is from the past?” Draco shot in when he had the chance, even if he already knew that Riddle was from the past.
“Yes, I zink zat ‘e is from ze past. ‘E knew ‘Ogwarts pretty well for someone neither of you had seen, and ‘e seemed to be your age. Zair is enough… preuve… Draco?”
Draco smiled at Fleur. “The word you are searching for is evidence.”
“Zank you Draco, as I said, zair is enough… evidence for it to show one zing, and zat is zat Riddle isn’t from zis time.”
“What evidence?” It was McGonagall that asked.
“‘E is clothed in ze old ‘Ogwarts uniform, and ‘e is talking oldschool. ‘Is name is also a zing. I would guess zat it is Tom Riddle, and zat means ‘e is ze sixth champion. I zink it ‘as to do with ze Goblet, since it is ze most… ehh… dangerous artefact in ze world, and anuzzer one doesn’t exist”.
“How do you know that, I vould vant to know those things, but I don’t”
“Viktor, I visited ze ‘Ogwarts library, and I checked on zings the second I got to know zat we were going to ‘Ogwarts. Zat led me down a road zat talked about zings like uniforms, and ze people zat ‘as won zings, and I remember a name zat stuck to me since it didn’t sound like a wizardname. It was Tom Riddle, and I don’t zink zair are zat many wizards named Tom Riddle”.
The room grew more quiet and then the silencing charm broke. The scream that echoed through the Hospital Wing made Draco shudder, Fleur put a hand over her mouth in shock, both Diggory and Krum slowly turned their heads against the bed where Riddle was laying, and Potter gave the boy an unimpressed look.
Riddle kicked and tried to get away, screaming words in a hissing language, which Draco was not able to recognise. He listened closely to the hissed screams, and then he studied Dumbledore.
“Mal… Draco, look at the wand!” Diggory whispered it into his ear and Draco’s eyes directly went to Dumbledore’s wand.
He stared at it for over a minute, before he realised that the magic from the curse used, that was pumping out of the wand, was looking very much like the magic from the cruciatus curse. Draco wanted to run over and rip Dumbledore’s wand from him, but he didn’t. Instead he chose the way his father would have done.
“Potter, fancy checking him for dark magic together with me?”
“Yes, I can do that”. Potter smiled while his voice cracked, like he had a history with Riddle, even though that was impossible.
They walked over to the bed that Riddle was chained to, and Draco heightened his wand, mumbling a spell he had learnt long before he got a wand. A spell that could detect if someone was under, or had died under, one of the three unforgivable curses.
The spell lit up in blue, which was an indicator that Riddle was under at least one of the Unforgivables and that made Draco act faster than he had ever done. He snatched Dumbledore’s wand at the same time as he placed a hand over Riddle’s heart pushing down as hard as he could, since that would stop the heart from starting to contract trying to find its old rhythm.
“DRACO MALFOY! What have you done!” The screams Dumbledore let out that made even McGonagall shocked, only made Draco hold onto Dumbledore’s wand harder. He was shaking with adrenaline, since it was the first time he actually had done something as stupid to a teacher. Everyone knew that you didn’t just rip a wand out of someone’s hand.
“I don’t care what I have done. I know one thing, and that is that it is illegal to use the Unforgivables on someone. You did only two minutes ago, and his heart was already contracting in an irregular beat, which is one of the most dangerous things that can happen if you are tortured with the Crustius curse for too long. You could have killed him!”
Dumbledore blinked a few times and then he sighed, exaggerated. “Mr Malfoy, you don’t know whose life you just saved, but if you let him sleep in your dorm, explaining exactly who he is is to your friends and have them accept him, then I will accept it, The boy you saved was not an innocent little boy, he is Lord Voldemort”.
It took Draco almost fifteen seconds from when Dumbledore said the Dark Lord’s name until Draco realised what he said, and he looked over at the boy.
Draco’s grandfather had told him a lot of stories about the Dark Lord when he was young, and how he had been a wonderful person, and a sweetheart that very much didn’t want people around him commenting on who he was. Riddle, even if Draco’s grandfather had called him Vol, since it was the nickname he had been given pretty early by the closest of the friends, had never wanted anything more than being accepted.
“I know psychopaths and the thing that makes them act on their behaviour is trauma. They can live like a normal human being, but when they go through something traumatic when they are young, it usually stays with them forever, and they want both payback and a reason as to why it happened”. Draco didn’t lie to Dumbledore, even if he could have. He had a friend who was a halfblood girl named Ashley, and the two of them had been best friends until Ashley’s stepfather had taken her younger sister and killed her. That made Ashley burn with a fire inside and kill the rest of her family, calculating that the pain she would go through burning up would be less than it would be if she continued to live knowing her stepfather killed her sister.
Draco only knew it because she had sent away all the owls with letters to her friends and to the rest of her family. She had been nine at the time, and even if he was two years younger than her at the time he remembered it clearly.
“It is Lord Voldemort we are talking about”.
“No, it isn’t. It’s Tom Riddle. A boy my age, he is not yet Voldemort, and we still don’t know what made him become the Dark Lord. It might have been you and the Headmaster then, who ignored his pleads for help. He begged to be able to stay at Hogwarts during the summers, did you listen? NO! You did not! You left a literal child to fend for himself in the muggleworld, where he was picked on for being different!”
“And Mr Malfoy, how do you know this?”
“Tom Marvolo Riddle spent more than his fair share of time in the Malfoy Manor. My grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy, took the boy under his wings and basically saved his life. Something that none of the teachers at Hogwarts wanted to do. All because Riddle tried to survive living in the muggle world, even if he was magical”. Draco didn’t know where the arguments came from, but his brain pulled toward memories that he had not realised that he still had, and most of them he recognised ever so slightly.
It took Draco a while to understand that Dumbledore had grown quiet, even if there wasn't any need for him to be quiet.
“You are saying I can stay?”
Draco looked over at the bed where Riddle was sitting up, still in chains.
“Yes. I am. If Dumbledore is done arguing I could take you to the Slytherin Dorm, where you are going to stay.”
“Wait, what! I never said he was able to stay!” Dumbledore almost shouted.
“Well, the Tournament makes him unable to leave. He has to compete, so if possible, could you move out of the way. I have to get him down to the Slytherin common room.”
Draco helped Riddle up from the hospital bed, and put an arm around him to keep him standing. The taller boy was trembling, and Draco knew from own experience that the shaking would stay for hours.
They left the Hospital wing with the other four champions behind them, and Potter turned off to the Gryffindor Common room, brooding with anger, while the other three followed him to the Slytherin Common room, where Draco pointed Riddle to the only unused bed in the dorm. The one closest to the window.
“What did you mean with the sixth Champion?” Riddle asked, and the dorm that had the rest of the champions but Potter, and the rest of the 4th year Slytherin boys in it grew quiet in less than a second.
Riddle looked over each one of them, and then he met Draco’s eyes once again.
“I don’t want to know, do I?”
“No, you don’t, but I still have to explain to you… Later…