The Diary (pottermort)

chapter twenty-two

Tom Riddle collects Gellert Grindelwald's wand when he dies. He tells people it is a trophy, and he is not entirely lying when he does. He takes Gellert's wand and because he is the reason the Dark Lord lies dead, they let him.

The press has taken to calling him "The Boy Who Lived"; a fact Harry relishes in with only mild amusement. No one has been able to figure out why Tom, and Tom alone, rebounded the killing curse. Harry thinks they won't anytime soon. He's confused himself. Hope is often unfounded, and this might be, too.

When Tom collected the second Deathly Hallow, Harry became alive, in some sense of the word. He lived and breathed (and slept) in his own world inside the diary, and his magic became thick and palpable in the world outside. He has taken to exploring Hogwarts with a renewed spring in his step.

Harry, on another note, thinks Tom is traumatized. Everytime Harry broaches the topic of that radical night in July, Tom scrambles to find an excuse to leave. Harry minds the time left alone less now that he lives (if only in some sense of the word), but his concern grows for Tom.

Tom is not entirely in dispair, though. The protective charms have been almost entirely removed, and now he and Fleamont are welcome to exist in someplace other than just the Manor. It is delightful.

Death arrives when Tom is buying his books for fourth year. Harry is sitting in the Great Hall-- his own House's table; he truly is a Gryffindor at heart-- and bumbles up when Death walks through the doors. He swallows down his mouthful of food and exclaims, "I made a list just for this, gimme a second." Death's visit is long overdue, he thinks.

He jogs down the hallways, disappearing in the direction of the Gryffindor tower. Death, amused, takes a seat at the Gryffindor table in the meantime.

"The feasts have been appearing daily since I came to live," in some sense of the word, "again," Harry says when he returns. He sits besides Death, a crumbled piece of parchment in his hands, which he stuff inside his robes before continuing his so rudely interupted meal.

"I'm aware," Death says. To Harry's raised eyebrows, they add, "It's a gift from me, to you. It is one of many."

Harry sips pumpkin juice from his goblet, pausing to say, "One of many?"

"Yes. Me sending you back is a gift," elaborates Death.

Harry nearly chokes on his drink. He coughs, gasping out, "You've got to be fucking with me. This does not feel like a gift." This feels like punishment.

Death tilts their head (a head that is not a head, that is not anything except nothing,) and says, "Is it not, though? You get to save your friends, save every wrongly slaughtered Muggle. You get to save Tom. It is a very thoughtful gift, if you would consider it as such."

Harry stabs a piece of chicken, shoving it in his mouth. He runs his free hand through his hair, swallows, then sighs. "I don't know how to feel about that," he admits honestly.

"That is okay, too. Now, you had a list?"

Harry nods, pulling out the parchment. "Numero uno; why didn't Tom die? From the killing curse, curiosity of good ol' GG."

"It is quite simple, actually," said Death. "Your magical core intertwined with Tom's. Since you could not then die, it made it so Tom could not, either. The killing curse rebounded because it had no place better to go."

"I didn't know magical cores could do that." Suspicion lines his tone.

"Normally, they cannot." Another gift.

"I was expecting it to be a love thing," confesses Harry. "Like with me and my mother."

Death shrugs. "And why are now and then so different."