When A Slaughterhouse Becomes A Home (selfcest/tomarry)

one

Harry keeps many secrets. Most of the time they are harmless. He refused, for the great half of his time in elementary school, to tell people his middle name. He doesn't tell his friends he actually enjoys Potions, no matter how lousy he is in it. He doesn't say to his fans and admirers that he's fairly sure there's not a special bone in his body and that he is Harry, just Harry. He has abandoned in his heart his celebrity status, thinking the Harry potter that everyone loves or hates is an alien to the real him.

These are the secrets that don't really matter. He is free to keep them close to his chest, no harm, no foul.

But there are darker secrets he keeps. Things that no one must know, for surely if they did, he would be proven to be some fraud, some impostor instead of the beloved Boy Who Lived.

Like the fact that Voldemort has done many unforgivable things but one of the only things Harry will never forget is his betrayal. And betrayal... the funny thing about it is that it doesn't come from your enemies; you are only forsaken by those you trust enough to forsake you.

He keeps, from his second year, a diary under his pillow that has a stab mark through the middle of it and is ink stained all the way through. He keeps it because it hurts just too much to throw it away. He needs it, like he needs his dad's Invisibility Cloak and how he needs the photo album of his parents; a memorial of the now deceased.

He will resent Voldemort for a lot of things, but he will only resent Tom for valuing their friendship a little less than he valued his title of He Who Must Not Be Named.

These are the secrets he keeps, and they are deadly serious.

Tonight, it is the anniversary of his parents death. October 31. He lays outside in the evening chill, alone, because while everyone else is celebrating the anniversary of the defeat of Voldemort (only they will never say his name, the cowards)... Harry is mourning. It isn't fair. He holds the diary to his chest, a sick sort of comfort, for what boy doesn't go to their friends for companionship, but to the corpse of their enemy?

Feeling like he is once again the freak child at the bottom of the stairs -- his very existence the secret he is forced to keep -- with no parents and no one to take their place.... He can't help it -- he cries.

A teardrop joins the ink marring the diary's front cover.

The deep breath of life enters his body once more. He flexes his fingers and toes and although he does not feel solid, does not feel flesh and bones... he does not feel dead, either.

For so long, all he can remember is another lapse in purgatory. Nothing. No one. Barely his own thoughts can be heard, reverberating in his own head.

He is Tom Riddle, and his last real memory was three years ago, during the failure of the Chamber of Secrets. He had tried -- oh yes, very hard -- to gather a form. He had almost succeeded.

But he had not, and he knows Voldemort would reprimand him when the time came, if only he had room to talk. (Say, what is worse; getting murdered by a twelve year old, or by a two year old?)

He remembers vividly the feeling of his newfound flesh tearing itself apart. The deep breath of his exiting his body like steam in a tea kettle. Pain.

And of course anger. It is hard to forget the anger.

So that is what he's been reminiscing on, these last three years of near insanity. Pain and anger. He has been thinking of new ways to tear apart Harry Potter, just like Harry Potter tore apart him. Something vicious. Something horrific and soon to be gasped about in gossip nationwide.

He wants to leave a mark. He was justice. So killing his Basilisk, for killing him then, and for killing him all those years ago. He has awaited in a quiet land of nothingness for years now. Barely existing. A phantom of his own horrid design. He has learned patience, and so he will play this game the long haul.

He remembers talking with Harry Potter for those few (in retrospect) long months. The way that boy gravitated toward him, the fellow orphan, the upper classmate that knew everything there is to know. They were so alike -- and even Tom can admit that without pretense.

And then in the Chamber, when Harry realized he was being turned on. The angry face. His own sort of vengeance.

Yes. Betrayal does not come from your enemies.

It will be some work, gathering the boy's trust again. Tom has already revealed his true colors, and that will be... difficult to undo.

Or so he thinks.

Because when he comes to, a ghostly form standing in front of a curled up Harry Potter, he notices a couple of things.

One, Harry is... crying. Poor Boy Who Lived, broken and frayed beyond belief.

And two, in Harry's arms, he is holding a diary. The diary. He is crying onto it, unnoticed tears staining the pages. He... unwittingly, though perhaps no unwillingly, has brought Tom back to life, even if not fully.

Tom crouched down into a squat and -- hesitantly -- runs his hands through Harry's hair. Harry's eyes shoot open, and he stumbles back immediately. "T -- Tom?"

Tom. Not Voldemort. Tom buries a smirk. Yes, it would seem the Boy Who Lived is much more susceptible to forgiveness than he might of thought.

"I'm here," Tom says, sweetly and full of kindness he does not feel. "Harry."

And though Harry's face flashes with old anger... it crumbles and he throws his arms around Tom's neck, winding them tightly.

Tom's plan, formed over years and years of anger and pain and regrets, is as follows: befriend Harry Potter. Get him attached. Then destroy his little heart, and get him to kill himself.

Harry is too heartfelt a boy, too forgiving and too resentful, too loyal it is a wonder he's not in Hufflepuff. It will work, this plan of his. He just has to play the long haul.

And he is ready. He will not fail.

Not again.