To Kill You With a Kiss

Chapter 7

Harry walked slowly back from Hogsmeade in the golden light of a long-ago day in September. The path itself was familiar, but some of the trees that grew alongside it were different in this time. He paused and ran his fingers over the bark of a massive oak tree. This tree will not be here in the future; I wonder what will happen to it? Perhaps it will be struck by lightning? Or perhaps it will be cut down? I don't suppose I will ever find out; it's not the sort of thing anyone will remember. It's just a tree, after all, part of the unremembered landscape of the past.

Am I still inside someone's memory? If so, are my actions changing what that person remembers? Perhaps there is a person, somewhere is the future, who is being driven to insanity right now by what I am doing to the recollections inside his mind? Oh, nonsense! If this is indeed someone's memory, he must already be insane...

I wonder if any of this is real? I can feel the rough bark of this tree under my fingers; how can this not be real? Perhaps this is reality, and my recollections of the future just some strange dream? Perhaps I am Elias Black of Slytherin House, who dreamed wondrous dreams of a scarred boy named Harry Potter, and imagined that his handsome young teacher would one day become a terrifying monster?

"Lost in dreams, Elias?"

Harry looked up, startled.

"Are you all right?" Tom Riddle touched his arm gently.

Real. His touch feels real. We are standing here together, Tom Riddle and I, on a golden day in September, under a tree that no longer exists. But right now, in this moment, the tree is real, and so are his silver eyes. The crimson-eyed Lord Voldemort does not yet exist.

"I'm just... thinking..."

"Would you like to go for a walk?" Tom asked softly. "It's a beautiful day for walking, and I could use some company."

Harry nodded silently.

They veered off the path and walked together over the heath that stretched beyond it. The Forbidden Forest was a dark blur at the horizon, but the shadowy forest seemed strangely weightless and insubstantial in the golden light, as if it were nothing but a black cloud lingering in the distance. They wandered, side by side, over moors covered in purple heather. They marveled at the colors, but the heather tore at the bottom of their robes, so in the end they had to pull their robes off and carry them. They were both wearing ordinary pants and shirts underneath.

If someone saw us now, they wouldn't know that we were wizards; they would just think we were two boys roaming around the countryside. They wouldn't know that Tom is a professor, and that I'm his student. They would just think we were friends.

They walked till they tired, and then they flopped down in the heather, side by side. It wasn't very comfortable, of course; the little shrubs poked them through their clothes, but it felt good to rest in the sunshine anyway.

Harry glanced over at Tom, who was lying in the heather with his eyes closed, and tried to remember that the boy by his side was Voldemort. Somehow, that thought seemed terribly unlikely in the September sun.

"Ouch! My hair is stuck..." muttered Tom suddenly, and Harry, laughing, leaned over and helped untangle his dark curls from the heather.

"It's not safe to lie down in the heather, Tom, unless you have straight hair, like me."

Tom sat up with a smile. "Well, you may not be stuck, but you have little twigs in your hair, all the same. Here, let me... You can't go back to school looking like that."

How odd, to feel his fingers through my hair... It feels pleasant.

"Do we really have to go back to school? I think I'd rather stay out here in the sun."