RP: Darkness Comes, but the Light Shall Not Die Characters: Harry Potter and Sir Didymus Time/Date: Late Morning, 10/06 Location: His Room, then the Kitchen Warnings/Rating: pg-13 Summary: Harry wakes to find something that brings back memories, and resolves to face them head-on. Along the way, he meets up with a brave soul, and resolves an issue he once faced himself. Status: Complete
Harry yawned as he woke, slowly rising into a sitting position. Sleep skittered away from his mind as he blinked, yawned and then stretched. He’d had no dreams, and he felt pretty damn good. He glanced around the room, and his eyes fell on a slightly familiar looking book at the bedside table. A shiver ran through him, and he reached for it with suddenly shaking hands. No...
He opened it with trembling fingers. The pages were as slick as he remembered, and though there was no mark on them, he could see that it was the same. The leathery binding of the book felt almost oily, and slick, and he felt a surge of nausea as he stared down at it. It shouldn’t,. couldn’t be here. Tom Riddle’s Diary was supposed to be locked away in the Headmaster’s study in Hogwarts along with other rather bad memories! This... this was not possible. It was whole, and in his hands.
Unbidden, memories of that dark day rose up, and he recalled seeing Ginny laying cold and alone on the Chamber floor as still as death. He remembered Tom’s cold voice and colder laugh, and the pain of the basilisk as he felt it’s poison burning into him, and thinking it was killing him. The only thing that made him smile was the surge of joy as he remembered destroying this damn book. But so much had gone wrong that year... so very much.
If this was here, and whole, then it was possible that the man who had first written in it, and made it what it had become was also here. Voldemort could be here.
He’d faced that villain too many times, and the forces led by him had taken too much from Harry, so much that he had spent years getting over it, and now, here, there was entirely too much for Harry to lose. He would face Voldemort if he had to, but why now? Why here? Harry shook his head, hand clenching and then releasing it’s grip, the diary falling from suddenly nerveless hands and crashing to the floor.
He stared into space for a few minutes, before taking it up again, dressing, and almost automatically walking downstairs. Food. He needed food.
***
Harry sat and ate, slowly. His body felt trembling, electric, alive. He had managed to get some breakfast upon stumbling down here, and found a small section of the tables to sit at and be unbothered, and had been unsure if he could even eat. He knew he should, but those memories were deep and dark and thick with fear and old pain. Slowly he had started eating, and slowly everything impressed into him.
The strange events of the last few weeks had pushed him to a certain edge. Dementors, and his daughter being attacked twice, and loud insane music for a week, and just-- sometimes, he felt like being a father and an Auror was too much for any man to ever be at the same time. Seeing his daughter victimized like that, well, it had hurt, somewhere deep where he kept such pains. It was the same place that Dumbledore’s death was kept.
He drew a deep breath, closing his eyes, and tried to remember everything Dumbledore and Kingsley had taught him. Sometimes, being like either man seemed entirely beyond him.
When he opened his eyes, he blinked, peering around the kitchen. He was awake, the book was real, and somehow it was here. Tom might be here as well, and Harry knew that, no matter what, he would face Tom, and he would defeat him. He would stop that madman.
A slow grin worked it’s way onto his face, a grim, dark thing. He’d end this.