There Are No Second Chances

There Are No Second Chances

"Pacifism killed us all..." Manic Street Preachers

Harry stalked through the lamp-lit streets, pulling his coat tighter around himself with one hand while the other clutched at his wand; eleven inches of holly and phoenix feather and the only thing he had to protect himself if the rendezvous went wrong. This was no was way to spend Christmas Eve, no way at all. Somehow, he felt he would have minded the biting chill considerably less if it was at least snowing, but it didn't snow in London at Christmas anymore. The snow came in January or February if it came at all, an icy reminder that the festive season was gone; the winter's last stab of bitterness. The bitterness was everywhere, now - even the Muggles felt it. Voldemort had returned and the war was raging in the wizarding world as The Order struggled to keep the Dark Lord and his followers at bay. There had already been countless losses on both sides. The early fatalities had been buried with due respect and honour; people given heroes' send offs who had once been friends, neighbours, family... Now they were hurriedly committed to the earth with the barest of rites and optimum haste. No one ever knew how much time was left.

And yet, for Harry Potter little had changed. In the three years since he had left school he had continued to rail against the Dark side, to 'do his duty'. Those closest to him - Ron and the Twins, Hermione, Sirius and Remus, Hagrid, Dumbledore - had so far escaped death, although not all had escaped unscathed. He was still the symbol of hope, of righteousness, of good that was so desperately needed by the masses; and he still didn't like it. And, even two decades after that first confrontation, it always remained Harry who was the axis around which Voldemort's plans revolved. Tonight he was risking his life. He had agreed to meet with a high-ranking representative of the Dark side, alone and on neutral territory, and was expecting to come face-to-face with Lucius Malfoy in a matter of minutes.

He hesitated at the mouth of the alley. Nerves and fear tickled at his neck as the scathing laughter of the wind funnelled between the buildings and burnt his exposed cheeks. Sirius had fought tooth and nail to stop him going alone. He had been enraged that Dumbledore, as head of the Order, would even consider allowing him to go without back up and before he had even completed his training. The Death Eaters do not negotiate, he had argued, it was akin to murder to accept their conditions. But, as ever, and with considerable help from Remus, Dumbledore had won out. Harry was an adult now, and Harry could make his own decisions. Harry had agreed to go and Dumbledore had every faith in him. It all came down to Harry, which left Harry with no choice.

He took a step into the shadows and felt them close around him like a curtain. It was odd how an absence of something could feel as real and textured as fabric. Ahead of him a silhouette, blacker still than the darkness that was never truly total in the city, stood close to the wall. "Do you have the time?" Harry asked, forcing down the trepidation that was boiling in his stomach. This could so easily be a trap, and it would be so easy to kill him here, alone in the wet, the dark. Harry felt himself shiver.

"The hour is late and Darkness awaits," came the reply. It was the contact.

"You have half an hour," Harry stated levelly, "if I don't make contact within that time they will come looking for me. I'm cloaked it wards, you can't harm me."

There was a small chuckle in the shadow and a voice that certainly didn't belong to Lucius Malfoy answered him. "You won't be needing them."

Icy fingers ran down Harry's spine as the voice registered in his mind. He knew that voice - he'd heard it before. It had belonged to a sixteen year old boy, then, a boy who had grown up to become the most feared man in the wizarding world. But it was impossible. Harry himself had destroyed the only thing that remained of the boy - a diary with which he had tried to return to life - he simply could not be here, in London, in the Real World. He was a memory then, and he was still a memory now. He was not here.

"It has been a long time, Harry Potter," the voice said, sounding like a wry smile was stretched across its owner's face. "You didn't think you'd see me again, did you?"

"Tom Riddle..."

"Lord Voldemort." The voice was still smiling. "I always said I would return to my body, didn't I?" He gave a small laugh, "And I did. I have absolute power; I can do whatever I wish. In truth, I went just a little further than I ever planned - I restored myself to being with your most generous help, and then I returned my young self to being. This being. There are two of me, now, Harry - twice the power and twice the will."

Harry forced himself to remain impassive. "Have you really? How would I know? I can't see you. Step out of the shadows, Tom. If you're that powerful you have nothing to be afraid of."

"Would I want to spoil the fun? Maybe I prefer to simply look at you..."

"You can look just as well when I can see you, too," Harry reasoned confidently, before adding: "I'm not afraid of the unknown, anymore, Tom. This isn't going to work, and I'm sure you're very proud of yourself, aren't you? Disposing of that hideous snake façade?"

"I, the most powerful wizard of all time," he replied coldly, "am above pride."

Harry gave a small smile, and he took a bold step into the shadows. "Are you afraid you aren't as pretty as you were, Tom? Is that it?" He reached out a hand and felt for the silhouette before him, half afraid of what his fingers would come into contact with. They met with cloth, velvety and rich to the touch. Carefully he raised the hand towards the face. Last time Harry had confronted the Dark Lord his skin had been ice cold and reptilian, foul and sickening to the touch. But as his fingertips met with the other figure's jaw the skin was warm and smooth, as real as Harry himself. At such a short distance it was possible, even in the dark, to see the glittering of eyes that Harry remembered as clearly as he could remember Hermione's or Ron's. They had reminded him, when he had first seen them as a young boy, of the crystal paperweight Mrs. Figg had on her welsh dresser in Privet Drive when he was a small. It had been the only thing about her house that he had liked.

"So, you are real..." Harry observed quietly, running a hand down from the jaw, down the smooth flesh to his shoulder, "How did you do it?"

Tom laughed quietly; sinister, yet somehow infectious. The sound of it made Harry want to smile and recoil at the same time, and he felt the slightly taller figure lean down close to his face and utter one single, all-explaining word:

"Magic."

Harry allowed the smile to form on his mouth and pushed his face an extra inch closer to the other's, "I might've known," he murmured, "that you were too good for that monstrous form you created in the cemetery, Tom. Of course, a wizard of your standing can't spend his days looking like a beast when his natural appearance is so much more appealing, can he?"

"No, indeed he can't."

Harry fumbled with the wand in his pocket, his proximity to the other close enough for his breath to brush Harry's cheek. It was warm and misted in the air, just like Harry's; just like anybody else's would. "Show me," he said quietly, "I want to see how good you really are. After all this time I think I need to see for myself."

"You doubt me?" he asked.

"No, but it's been a very long time, hasn't it? Remind me."

Harry drew his wand from his pocket and uttered "Lumos". The gentle bluish glow of the wand tip cast shadows in peculiar directions on Riddle's face. Harry gazed at him; he hadn't aged a day since he had met him in the Chamber of Secrets. A boy five years his junior stood before him, where once he had seen a mature, superior sixth year. He had certainly not lost any of his looks in the process of re-birth. His cheekbones were still high and smooth, his skin as soft and flawless as a child's but drawn over the frame of a boy rapidly growing into an extremely handsome man. At twelve, Harry had dismissed his curious interest in Tom Riddle as the result of being drawn into his diary and reliving events that had never occurred to him. Now, standing in the barely-lit cobbled alley in London, Harry Potter knew very differently.

"Are you impressed?" the boy asked him with knowing conceit.

"Very," Harry replied, studying his face carefully and committing it to memory, "And I'm also amazed. Voldemort sent you here to meet me, unaccompanied - surely he would prefer keep his greatest achievement close to him? Couldn't one of his minions come to negotiate? I was expecting Malfoy."

"Are you disappointed, Harry? Would you rather our pseudo-aristocratic friend had come, instead of me?" Tom asked, fixing him with another dark smile.

"Not at all, but a matter as simple as hostages - it just seems above you, that's all..." Harry explained. He ran his fingers over the plush, velvety material of Riddle's coal-black robes and murmured: "Only the best for Voldemort's precious boy..."

"I wanted to come. It does become rather boring when you spend all day torturing, you know... It's nice to get out." The chilling humour in Riddle's voice sent shivers down Harry's spine and he pressed his hand flat against the boy's chest, gently guiding him against the wall a few inches behind him.

"It must be terribly lonely, too. Nothing but Muggle-borns and Muggle-lovers to talk to while the Dark Lord and all his little helpers run around and cause havoc - leaving you behind to deal with them all by yourself..." Harry murmured sympathetically, "Is that how it is, Tom?" Warily, the boy nodded, and Harry pressed on. "It doesn't have to be that way. Maybe spending time with all those Muggles has changed your mind about them a bit..?"

Riddle gave his paradoxical laugh once more, although it sounded slightly less confident, now. "Would you rather I changed sides, Harry? Would you like me to renounce my other self and join your Muggle-loving army of virtue?"

Smiling, Harry pressed nearer to him so that the boy was pinned against the wall, the full-length of their bodies pressed tightly together. Leaning against him and tilting his head up to reach his ear, Harry whispered: "It would be so much more pleasant if we were on the same side..." He allowed his lips to brush softly against the boy's skin as he spoke, pleased when he felt an involuntary shiver run through him. It had taken him some time to grow used to acting this way, but he was obviously improving, and he'd learned from a master, after all; a master that would have been proud.

Harry brushed the hair out of Riddle's eyes, caressing the dark locks with his fingertips and searching his glittering eyes for some sign of submission. There, somewhere dark and deep down at the recesses of the boy's psyche, he could see it. He was flawed - the Dark Lord's evil wasn't entirely complete in the teenager he had brought back into being by some Dark art Harry didn't understand. There was a chance. Still staring into the boy's eyes, Harry pressed his lips against Tom's.

For a moment Riddle remained motionless, either too confused or too afraid to respond; when he did, it was as though a blazing fire had consumed them both. It scorched and blistered and Harry feared, for one terrifying moment, that his very skin was melting. But he could not pull away. Something was pulling them together, drawing them into each other, and every stroke of Riddle's tongue against his was akin to a mouth full of molten lava. He wanted to cry out, but his voice was gone, too, vocal chords burnt away by the fever of the kiss. It was like nothing he had ever felt before, as painful as Cruciatus, as enticing as Ecstaciata. He wanted to die, but he never wanted it to end. If it stopped he would crumble into ashes.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the burning stopped, and instead he was frozen. The dank chill of December 24^th surrounded him, suffocated him, and his lips were no longer on Tom Riddle's. Instead, the boy gazed back at him with eyes as black as the bottomless pit into which they had cast Peter Pettigrew when he had failed to bring Harry to them. And here Harry stood, lips still stinging from the searing kiss and entirely alone with this strange replication of Voldemort himself as he had once been. "Well, Harry Potter," Riddle said, eyes boring coldly into him, "I see the Order's methods of negotiation are slightly... unorthodox, these days."

"Negotiation?" Harry half-choked out, "I haven't even begun to negotiate, yet."

"Really?" he asked softly, his flawless face set into an expression of sheer loathing, "Then it seems to be a little... too... late." With a swift movement, Harry was flung against the wall where Tom Riddle had previously stood.

"Tom," Harry pleaded, trying to force his voice not to shake - this was not how he'd planned this - it couldn't happen this way; "Tom, this is not the way it should be..." he reached out with his left hand, stroked the face just inches from his own.

"Yes, Harry Potter, it does." The dark eyes seemed to glow from within, as though the burning lava Harry had felt in his mouth also ran in Tom Riddle's veins. A thin, elegant hand raised a wand to show Harry the impeccably carved mahogany from which it was made.

Harry swallowed and raised his own wand, brushing the hair away from the boy's forehead with its tip. "Tom..."

"Say your goodbyes, Harry, this is it. You are about to join your beloved parents," Riddle said in a strong, dramatic tone, "Would you like to beg like your mother?" he added innocently, "Or stand tall like the fool of a father who tried to hold me off?"

"Neither," Harry whispered gazing desperately into his eyes, tracing his wand down to the high, refined cheekbone and gently back up again, "Tom, you can't do this..."

"Watch me." With a flourish, he twisted Harry's wrist, causing him to drop his wand and yell in pain and frustration. Harry set his jaw and gulped, then stroked his hands up to the boy's hair, one on either side of his face, his eyes re-capturing Tom's gaze and with one last effort he pressed his lips to Riddle's again. He felt a self-satisfied smile form on the shapely mouth as he drew his hands down to touch his fingers to the boy's temples and uttered "Cudio" against them. There was an explosion of lilac light, and as Harry pushed him away, Tom Riddle slumped down to the floor, his mind and nervous system entirely closed down by the curse.

Harry stared down at him for a moment, his heart beating erratically from the effort. But at least his training had paid off. He picked up his wand before telling a palmful of green flame that the mission had been completed, and extinguishing it. In the minute before Sirius, Snape, Ron and Draco apparated into the alley he smiled almost sadly and whispered: "I'm sorry, Tom, you were far too gullible for this job, really. And... well, I always preferred blondes, anyway." He crouched down beside him and planted a kiss on top of his head, "Merry Christmas."