Chapter Text
Harry stood in a gloomy chamber he had hoped never to reenter, looking at the ghost of a boy he had killed nearly two years earlier. Well. Killed might be a strong word. Can you really kill something that’s not properly alive? It was hard to say, and ignoring the ethical considerations seemed easier in the end. Dementors, for example, were neither properly alive, nor properly dead, and so destroying them, which one way or another, Harry would find a way to do, couldn’t be considered murder. How convenient.
The apparition in front of him seemed to fill a similar not properly alive, not properly dead niche. Looking exactly as he had while standing over the limp body of Ginny Weasley (perhaps slightly more disheveled) was a flickering, slightly transparent, Tom Marvolo Riddle.
“What the fuck.”
The spirit (boy? ghost? nightmare?) spun around, sheer shock flitting across Riddle’s face, before a blank, mildly contemptuous mask slammed down into place. “Ah, Mister Potter, an absolute pleasure to see you again.”
“What the fuck?!”
Riddle frowned, the flickering lights of the chamber somehow producing shadows on a face that was not truly solid. He crossed his arms in a manner that appeared almost petulant, “I could’ve sworn you were more eloquent as a second year. They didn’t lobotomize you did they? It’d be a shame if the first person I had to talk to in two years is utterly brain dead.”
Harry finally shook himself out of his shock to take stock of the situation. Tom Riddle, teenage Lord Voldemort was in the Chamber of Secrets. Tom Riddle had not left the Chamber of Secrets in the last two years, therefore there was not an imminent danger of him burning down the school or unleashing another basilisk he’d pulled out of some hidden crevice. Tom Riddle did not have a body, and still lacked a wand or the ability to do magic, as he had at the end of Harry’s second year. There was no immediate danger. Right? That said, there really was only one thing to ask.
“How in Merlin’s name are you still here?”
Riddle shrugged, the gesture simultaneously nonchalant and full of barely concealed frustration. “I was mostly out of my diary by the time you destroyed it. The connection I had with it was severed, as well as my link to Ginny Weasley, but I was still outside of it. There’s enough ambient magic down here I’ve mostly held myself together. The more important question, Potter, is why are you here?” Riddle, still taller than Harry, despite the growing he’d done since their last meeting, peered down at him with a look that could generously be called “calculating”.
Harry deeply regretted the idea to come down here. He took a step back, his instincts screaming at him to get away, that this thing had tried to kill him multiple times, and would again given the chance, but he stopped himself. Gryffindors were supposed to be brave. He’s never felt particularly brave, but Harry’s always figured that if he pretends enough it’s basically the same thing. Fake it till you make it right? Besides, who’s Riddle going to tell? The poor bastard’s clearly been alone down here for nearly two years, a proposition that honestly is sounding pretty good to Harry at the moment, given the state of the school above. If one more person asked him how he had entered the Triwizard Tournament, he was going to scream, hex them, then go dig through the library for a nastier hex to threaten his next interrogator with. “Wanted somewhere no one could bother me,” Harry finally grumbles.
Riddle chuckled in a way that seemed bizarrely normal to Harry. Murderers shouldn’t seem so normal. His next words came out in a low hiss. “ Ah yes, Parseltongue is ever so useful isn’t it? Salazar Slytherin knew the value of a place no one could get into. ”
While Harry could begrudgingly agree that was true, it didn’t mean he had to tell Riddle that. The Chamber of Secrets was extremely private, and that was why he’d come down here in the first place. He had not expected company, and the fact of it was extremely inconvenient. It seemed like he’d need to find somewhere else to mope, and he should probably make a visit to Dumbledore about the teenage Dark Lord hanging out in the basement. Said teenage Dark Lord was still staring at him, clearly expecting a response of some kind. “ Yes, at least the lunatic who left a basilisk behind to murder his students understood the value of privacy, somebody give him an award! ” Harry finally hissed back, realizing, belatedly, that his response was also in Parseltongue.
To Harry’s surprise, Riddle didn’t get angry at the insult to his fabled ancestor, instead he seemed almost disappointed. He switched back to English as he shook his head. “Harry, I thought you would be smarter than to fall for that old propaganda. Blood purism as a real concept didn’t exist until the 1400s. Salazar Slytherin lived in a world pre-Secrecy, the only reason people cared at all whether your family was magical was to check whether you were in danger of being burnt at the stake,” he paused, as Harry reeled from another shock, just another of too many he’d had in recent days, before continuing, sounding almost excited. “Muggles were dangerous of course, being burnt at the stake was a death sentence if you didn’t have your wand or if they caught a magical child, and there was always the possibility of a quick, violent execution to prevent any magical funny business, but for the most part, all that mattered was that you had magic. Anything else was secondary.”
Riddle paused again, passion coloring his voice, and despite himself Harry leaned in as the story continued, idly thinking that Riddle made a much more engaging lecturer than Binns. “The argument between the Founders did happen, but much of the context has been lost in later histories. The school had just been attacked by a small army of Muggles from a nearby kingdom, led there by the parents of a young Muggleborn student who had wanted to save their child from ‘those evil devil-worshippers’. Slytherin believed that having the children of Muggles in the castle, who could, often completely innocently, tell dangerous Muggles about the school’s location and defenses was an unacceptable security risk. The others disagreed.”
Harry blinked, this version of history completely different from the one he had heard in Binn’s recounting of the Chamber of Secrets. But none of that (reasonable sounding) story had explained the presence of the giant murder snake and the secret chamber in the school’s basement, and Harry told Riddle so.
Riddle smirked at him, and continued his tale. “That ‘murder snake’, as you so eloquently put it, was placed here as a last defense for the castle in case of invasion. Should the school come under attack, and the walls breached, the students would be hidden away in the chamber, where none could reach them, and the basilisk unleashed upon the invading forces.”
That, again, almost sounded reasonable. Then Harry remembered that he was talking to teenage Voldemort (seriously, it shouldn’t be this hard to remember, he just seemed so normal ) and shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said, preparing again to finally leave the Chamber and the strange boy behind, hopefully forever this time. “There’s no way you could possibly know that, and there’s no reason I should trust you.”
For some reason, Riddle seemed delighted at being called a liar. “Excellent Harry, you’ve gotten much better about taking things at face value since the last time we met. Believing anything I told you about Hagrid was rather embarrassing on your part,” Harry flushed, about to interject, but Riddle pushed on. “Most of what I’ve told you today I found in some of Salazar’s personal journals. Primary sources truly are the pinnacle of historical reference material after all. The bit about blood purism you could easily find in the library if you cared to look. I’d recommend The Truth About Blood by Miranda Kipley if you’d like to fact check me.”
Harry couldn’t help but be a little interested in the idea of Slytherin’s personal journals, wherever those were, but hesitated to trust anything Riddle said, let alone read books he suggested. Then again, Riddle didn’t seem to want him to trust him. Riddle wanted him to find out the truth on his own, and seemed confident Harry would find the same answers. It was disconcerting for someone to want Harry to believe them based on something other than blind faith (echoes of Dumbledore assuring Harry he was safe at the Dursley’s briefly distracted him before he pushed them away), but Harry found he liked it. That didn’t mean he was going to stay down here any longer. Riddle was still a little off, a little stilted, a little too put together for being alone the last two years, never mind however long he’d been stuck in the diary. Harry turned and quickly began to leave, sparing a glance to make sure Riddle wasn’t following him.
Riddle gave a sharp laugh, seeming to delight in Harry’s discomfort. “Farewell Harry!” He called. “Enjoy the fools bothering you up above!” Harry continued walking, and it wasn’t until he reached the exit that Riddle’s voice changed, a note that Harry didn’t recognize entering it. “Will you be back?”
Harry paused, and looked back at the spirit. There was something different in his stance, something that didn’t seem to fit the older boy, but somehow more genuine for the discomfort it seemed to cause Riddle, something… human. Harry shook himself, sure he must be imagining things, but despite his misgivings, he couldn’t quite give the vehement denial that waited on the tip of his tongue. “...We’ll see,” he finally said, after a long, silent staredown between the two boys. Without another word, Harry left.