The Sun Sets Twice Again

Harry stood there for a minute, staring blankly at the retreating form and then the area that the form had vacated. He stood there, fists clenched, nails and knuckles white with strain, until his anger abandoned him like so much else. His hands ached from being clamped too tight for so very long, and he just wanted to disappear into the carpet, to melt into a puddle of non-existence and seep into the floor beneath him until it dried and there was nothing left of him. Trembling, he stumbled his way back to Gryffindor Tower and passed the Fat Lady without so much as a glance at his surroundings. He made it to the fifth year boys' dormitory out of habit, and to the bed that had been his for four years-- and might be his for three more if he was very, very lucky-- out of tendency. He had barely climbed into the bed, shedding clothing as he went, when the shock receded, leaving him open and vulnerable and raw. Without the anger or daze or fear to abide his actions he saw them as they were clearly... too clearly. He remembered, aware of every little detail, his hands wrapping themselves around Tom Riddle's throat, following his desire to destroy. The other boy's body rushed with adrenaline caused by what he could only see as fear now but had taken at the time as anger, another person's pulse hard and fast beneath his fingertips. He felt sick, suddenly.

Blindly he made his way to the boys' toilets, all shaking limbs and raging panic wanting desperately to rid himself of the phantom nails digging into his skin, and his memories, and this feeling--a rage so foreign and absolute he barely recognized it in himself as the memory--and that damned scene, that played over in his mind, out of him. Out of his body, out of his mind -god--just wanting it away from him now. How? He wasn't like that, he couldn't be like that. No. He stumbled over to the sink, feet planted firmly underneath him but so very weak, and leaned against the white porcelain for support. He caught a single, sudden glimpse of himself in the mirror before he started retching, bringing up his meager dinner and emptying himself until he was choking on his own bile and dry heaving. Until he was certain everything was gone. When he was done he calmly turned on the tap, washing away the taint of evidence before splashing some of the warm water on his face. Finally he stopped, straightening himself, and breathed a sigh of relief. He felt empty again, but it was so, so much better than the alternative, than the pain and the fear and the anger and the emotions he didn't even want to name or didn't have a name for. He felt empty and it felt good; he didn't bother wondering why that didn't scare him.

For the moment he was at peace and he let it wash over him, feeding on it like a starving man. He laughed at the irony of that, considering what he had just done, and when he heard the echo on stone walls and tile he realized he had laughed aloud. He didn't mind that, though, since no was here to hear him. Ignoring the mirror's tsking sounds he walked out of the room and into the hallway, moving back towards the fifth year boys' dorms, the place that had been his home for the last four years and might be for the next three, though he didn't have much faith in that. With that thought his peace was shattered into little irreconcilable bits and pieces of want and need and what-if. Harry couldn't bring himself to be angry at the loss but he mourned it momentarily, before the abating flow of emptiness surged again, overtaking his emotions in a brief respite. He was well and truly numb and there was calm in that, instead of the coldness as he had once expected. Emotion was cold, or could be cold; he understood that now. Emotion could be hot as well, burning and all-consuming, but numbness was just numb, like skin so cold it doesn't feel, or pain so hot it no longer burned. It wasn't peace but it was nearly enough to block out everything.

He made his way back to his room, which seemed bare with its lack of noise and movement, and crawled into bed under the covers, pulling the comforter over his head as he lay on his side, before pulling his legs up and against his chest. The bed was warm and soft and safe and his, and he lay there like that, staring into the darkness that the cover provided for a long time until he finally drifted off to a peaceful sleep for the first time in months.

* * *

Tom was annoyed--irritated, aggravated, unamused--but not angry. He was certainly not angry if for no other reason than he would not allow himself to become angry. Anger was rarely a truly usable emotion and would certainly just get him into a situation he disliked right now. The problem was he didn't know *why* he was ang--annoyed. He had just woken up that way. And *that* was starting to anger him, as well, except: he wasn't angry. He had gone to sleep in a perfectly good mood, one of the best ones he had in months. He remembered his dream, which while odd wasn't unpleasant. He shouldn't be angry, or annoyed, or anything of the sort. Oddest of all, he felt disconnected from the anger, as if he *wasn't* angry, but that there was anger inside of him, which made less sense than him being upset, actually. Of course, he hated it when things didn't make sense, and therefore had decided to get to the bottom of this little mood immediately...or as soon as he had breakfast at least.

As he enlarged the clean clothing and robes he had sealed away in his other robes' pocket--he needed to buy more clothing that fit him very soon--and dressed for the day, he mentally went through all the spells and potions he could think of that might cause a person to feel another person's emotions. The list was rather long, but it would be shortened once he discovered *who* exactly was angry and therefore at the other end of this connection. Most potions could also be ruled out, as the effects were nearly immediate and this hadn't been affecting him since right after he had last eaten or drank something. Anything after he had entered this room could be ruled out as well, unless Dumbledore really did know how to get in, but then the wards more than likely would have woken him. That left a spell performed on him between dinner and entering the room.

He supposed it was possible that someone had merely performed a spell to make him feel angry in the absence of actual anger, but no one who didn't know who he was had a reason to do so, and no one who did know him would be idiotic enough to purposely make him aggravated. So, the spell must have been performed with the hopes of connecting him to someone else, like a grounding force to restrain him somewhat. Apparently, they had chosen the wrong person to connect him with, because these emotions were just making him agitated, not tempered. He was fairly sure that this ruled Dumbledore out as the other person in the connection as well because the emotions didn't feel *that* different from his own. As if the thoughts were male-- for female thoughts would be foreign-- and they were young, undeveloped, raw. Raw. Oh, hell.

This left the obvious conclusion. Some idiot had decided to connect him to Harry's emotions. The question remained as how...which also had an obvious conclusion: the old man. Of course he wouldn't need a wand and if he did, Tom wouldn't necessarily have seen it; he could have done it as early as their meeting at dinner and it wouldn't have come into effect until Harry actually arrived on grounds. Damn it; damn him! He didn't *want* anyone else inside his brain, thank you very much, even if it was Harry.

Tom finished dressing in a flurry of movements and after checking that no one-- alive, dead, or spectral-- was in the immediate vicinity he left the room, replacing the wards as he went. By the time he had stalked up to the Great Hall, intent on eating quickly and then confronting Dumbledore, he was indeed angry himself. How dare he! What the hell was that crazy old wizard thinking! What the hell was going on!

Then, just as he was about to slam into the doors and push them violently forward to enter the hall itself, he had another thought: could the connection be used both ways? If he could not only sense the other boy's emotions but actually influence them or share his emotions with Harry, this could be very, very useful. Harry would be more easily convinced if he was unable to deny not only their shallow likeness but the agreement and similarities of their emotions and the actions that came from them, so long as the connection, and its fallout, was handled correctly.

Smiling to himself, Tom calmly walked into the Great Hall, glancing around. Harry was sulking against the single, well-sized, circular wood table in the center of the large room. Tom stood there for a moment, watching him drag a fork over the single hot cake on his plate before stabbing it a couple of times. Then again, and again, the clang of metal against glass was unnaturally loud in the nearly empty room. His features were twisted into a scowl and his jaw continued to clench and unclench rhythmically, though he never once took a bite of food. Even if Tom hadn't been able to physically feel the emotion pouring off of the other boy in waves, he would have been able to describe the expression accurately as 'seething'.

Artemis was there as well, sitting three seats around the table from Harry, a book propped open with her elbow as she munched on bacon and chips. Tom ignored the boiling anger and sharp glare coming from Harry and sat directly between them, three seats away from each.

"Chips for breakfast?" He directed towards Artemis.

She didn't even look up as she threw a chip at him, hitting him directly in the chest, and muttered, "Sod off, mother."

He grinned. Harry glanced up again, his eyes flitting over Artemis and then Tom, before returning to stab the hot cake. Time to test the bond. Tom concentrated, attempting to draw up a visual representation of calmness, something that had often tempered his own anger in dangerous, deciding moments, and then, once he had in the form of a silver-white sort of brightness, instead of using it to calm himself he directed it, mentally, towards Harry. The boy glanced up sharply, his eyes glinting behind the glasses, searching the room for something before resting his gaze on Tom. As he did this, his left hand, the one not holding the fork, came up to rub at something above his right eye. When he pulled his hand away, his features soft with confusion, it pushed back his fringe to reveal a lightening-bolt shaped scar. Tom suddenly remembered where the book had said Harry had gotten that particular scar and his eyes widened as he resisted the urge to bang his head against the table.

Oh, brilliant that! Let's completely ignore the most obvious connection out of pure stupidity! Tom sighed. A curse scar between the two of them; connected through the same curse, a curse of death made into life. Yes, they were bound. Hell, it'd be surprising if they weren't. Of course, no one could be quite sure how this would happen or how they would react to it-- for if there had ever been a similar case in history it was lost in myth or man's stupidity. He didn't personally know how this worked himself, as he couldn't remember, but Harry certainly would or, barring that, Dumbledore.

Tom didn't realize he had been staring until Harry asked, quietly, "What are you looking at?" It then occurred to him that the experiment had actually been a success, as Harry's anger had, for the large part, ebbed away.

He shook his head. "Not looking so much as just thinking. Something's occurred to me but I'm not ready to share it yet. I'll tell you once I figure out how correct I am, all right?"

Harry looked startled and it was almost enough to make him grin again. This was so very amusing, watching Harry become confused at every polite statement, even if Tom was sincere about it. He might have even described it as 'cute' if he wasn't certain Harry would try to hex him for it. Not that Harry could hex him, or him Harry for that matter, as long as they used their own wands. So maybe he would still describe it as cute just to aggravate the other boy.

"Er...all right," Harry replied finally, turning his face back down to the hot cake marred with little holes. He made a face and pushed the plate away, evidently not so hungry after all. Then he looked back up at Tom again. "Dumbledore wants to see you in his office after breakfast."

Tom nodded his understanding and muttered 'bacon and bread' at the table top. The food appeared immediately, a plate full of bacon and four slices of bread, and though he felt like he was absolutely starving now that Harry's anger had dissipated, he knew from experience that eating even a third of what was in front of him would make his stomach hurt something fierce until he was use to normal sized meals again. He finally decided to eat half a sandwich made of a few strips of bacon on a piece of bread, in hopes that he wouldn't be hungry again before lunch but he wouldn't make his stomach hurt before then either. Harry had given up on stabbing the hot cake to pieces and moved on to shredding it, but had yet to actually take a bite of it. Tom wanted to comment on this, but not with Artemis there. He had a feeling--was the connection the cause of this sudden burst of intuitive action?--that confronting Harry on it in front of anyone else would be rather more idiotic than he cared to be, as well as quite counter-productive.

"Hey, Lucas, don't suppose you happened to see a tall, blond bloke on your way here from...well, wherever you're staying?" Artemis asked, glancing up from her book. He noticed it was a book on dangerous potions, which he was fairly certain should have been in the restricted section and not the breakfast table, and decided to ask her how she got it later.

"No. The only people I've seen today are Harry and you."

She frowned, slamming the book shut. "Wonderful. I get to go find the idiot and drag him to breakfast. With my luck he's in out playing with plants. 'Just because they have teeth doesn't make them dangerous'." She grimaced, then stood and started to back out of her seat when she sat back down. "Right. Greenhouses. I've forgotten where they are."

"Off to the side of the Quidditch pitch. The more dangerous plants are in the third one from the left, on the outside," Tom replied, taking another bite of the sandwich.

She smiled pleasantly, blankly, then shook her head. "Can't believe you already know you're way around. You've been here what? A day?" Shaking her head again, she stood and walked away.

"Bugger," Tom muttered as soon as she was out of earshot. "That was so very daft of me."

He kept making those little mistakes, horribly out-of-character mistakes like not listening to the conversations around him, or answering questions automatically, or muttering about his stupidity aloud in the presence of someone who disliked him greatly. Then there were those 'gut' feelings, which if he had ever had before he'd ignored them for a more observant approach. What was wrong with him?

Hmm, you've been effectively sent fifty years into the future, where you have achieved a good portion of your goals, but are currently sitting near a boy who most seriously wants you dead, under the watchful gaze of a man you've hated for years, and, to top it off, you're connected to said boy through one of the few curses you've actually fouled up. What isn't wrong with you at this point, hmm? He really needed to stop thinking of himself as a different person. That most definitely needed to be the first order of business. Then deal with the fact he was a different person, yes. Everything else, including the damn boy, could be dealt with after that. Like the sudden, irrational desire to actually make certain the boy was eating and sleeping correctly. He wasn't the child's mother, teacher, or friend; let them deal with those issues. It isn't my problem. It's none of my business. I don't care. Don't care at all. If he developed an impromptu and unwanted humanitarian streak it would be all the boy's fault , all Harry's fault, and he would be very, very angry about it.

He was about to take another bite of the sandwich when he realized there wasn't any sandwich left and he already felt too full. Harry still hadn't eaten anything.

"You should eat. You'll make yourself sick," Tom commented, pushing the plate of bread and bacon towards him.

"The only thing making me sick is you," Harry sneered back, then stood. "If you're done eating, we should be going to that meeting with Dumbledore."

Tom sighed. The anger had returned. With his luck Harry Potter would turn out to be one of the moodiest adolescents ever. He really didn't feel like dealing with this, or with Dumbledore for that matter. Still, he stood and followed Harry out of the Great Hall, walking next to him as they headed up towards Dumbledore's office. The only positive thing was Harry didn't purposely try to put more distance between them.