Riddled Truth

Author: Slashy Snitch
Beta: Sable_Silverrain
Title: Riddled Truth
Summary: The Butterfly Effect, Harry called it. When Draco took the Dark Lord's weapon for his own, he really didn't think it would change reality. Everything seems perfect until he meets the one person who could shatter the new reality with only one lie.
Pairing Positions: Dom!Draco, Sub!Harry.
Notes: Set in the second semester of second year, beginning in 1993. Many aspects are strictly canon until AU streak in later chapters.

A/N: I know what you're thinking: "Slashy Snitch, you never update! Your stories go months without being touched, why should I read this and be let down yet again?" Well, I'm here to say that you won't be let down. I've not posted this story yet because I wanted to get ahead of the game. I have chapters ahead of this finished and ready for posting. I'll only post when I have more chapters. Also, I write/post based on reviews. Want me to post? Review and tell me so! This is major encouragement. No flames please, but creative criticism is appreciated!

Chapter One.

14 February, 1993

All day long, the dwarfs kept barging into their classes to deliver valentines, to the annoyance of the teachers, and late that afternoon as the Gryffindors were walking upstairs for Charms, one of the dwarfs caught up with Harry.

“Oy, you! ‘Arry Potter!” shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry.

Hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years, which happened to include Ginny Weasley, Harry tried to escape. The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people’s shins, and reached him before he’d gone two paces.

“I’ve got a musical message to deliver to ‘Arry Potter in person,” he said, twanging his harp in a threatening sort of way.

“Not here,” Harry hissed, trying to escape.

“Stay still!” grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Harry’s bag and pulling him back.

“Let me go!” Harry snarled, tugging.

With a loud ripping noise, his bag split in two. His books, wand, parchment, and quill spilled onto the floor and his ink bottle smashed over everything. Harry scrambled around, trying to pick it all up before the dwarf started singing, causing something of a holdup in the corridor.

“What’s going on here?” came the cold, drawling voice of Draco Malfoy. Harry started stuffing everything feverishly into his ripped bag, desperate to get away before Malfoy could hear his musical valentine.

“What’s all this commotion?” said another familiar voice as Percy Weasley arrived.

Losing his head, Harry tried to make a run for it, but the dwarf seized him around the knees and brought him crashing to the floor.

“Right,” he said, sitting on Harry’s ankles. “Here is your singing valentine: ‘His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, his hair is as dark as a blackboard. I wish he was mine, he’s really divine, the hero who conquered the Dark Lord.’”

Harry would have given all the gold in Gringotts to evaporate on the spot. Trying valiantly to laugh along with everyone else, he got up, his feet numb from the weight of the dwarf, as Percy Weasley did his best to disperse the crowd, some of whom were crying with mirth.

“Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now.” He said, shooing some of the younger students away. “And you, Malfoy-” Harry, glancing over, saw Malfoy stood and snatch up something. Leering, he showed it to Crabbe and Goyle, and Harry realized that he’d got Riddle’s diary.

“Give it back,” said Harry quietly.

“Wonder what Potter’s written in this?” said Malfoy, who obviously hadn’t noticed the year on the cover and thought he had Harry’s own diary. A hush fell over the onlookers. Ginny was staring from the diary to Harry, looking terrified.

“Hand it over, Malfoy,” said Percy sternly.

“When I’ve had a look,” said Malfoy, waving the diary tauntingly at Harry.

Percy said, “As a school prefect –” but Harry had lost his temper.

He pulled out his wand and shouted, “Expelliarmus!” and just as Snape had disarmed Lockhart, so Malfoy found the diary shooting out of his hand into the air. Ron, grinning broadly, caught it.

“Harry!” said Percy loudly. “No magic in the corridors. I’ll have to report this, you know!”

But Harry didn’t care, he was one-up on Malfoy, and that was worth five points from Gryffindor any day. Malfoy was looking furious, and as Ginny passed him to enter her classroom, he yelled spitefully after her, “I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!”

Ginny covered her face with her hands and ran into class. Snarling, Ron pulled out his wand, too, but Harry pulled him away. Ron didn’t need to spend the whole of Charms belching slugs.

Ron continued up the stairs toward Charms, mumbling about Malfoy the entire way up. Harry turned to follow him, being stopped by a voice coming from the base of the stairs. “Harry, a moment,” said Dumbledore, Harry saw when he turned around. He nodded to Ron to let him go on ahead and Harry walked down the stairs again, items still in his torn bag, to Dumbledore.

“I’m sorry for using magic in the corridors, Professor,” he said quickly, looking over as he saw Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle retreating toward the Dungeons.

“That’s not what I wanted to speak with you about. Please follow me,” said Dumbledore. The elder wizard lead Harry to his office on the third floor in silence. Harry’s better instinct told him to watch his back, but he ignored it for being with Dumbledore. He didn’t hear the strange voices, at any rate, so he didn’t figure there was much of a threat. When they arrived to the painting on the third floor, the silence was broken. “Pumpkin Pasty,” Dumbledore said.

The door portrait opened and a gargoyle began rotating, allowing them to ride the staircase up to the base, where Harry followed him into the office area. Just like last time, the Sorting Hat was perched on the shelf and Fawkes was on his stand, watching Harry almost curiously.

“Is everything okay, Professor?” Harry asked, examining Fawkes as the bird analyzed him as well. “It’s not another student, is it? Another petrified –”

Dumbledore held up his hand. “No, no, nothing of the sort.” He assured, gesturing for Harry to sit. He sat. “Lemon drop?”

Harry made a somewhat sour-expression. “No, thank you,” muttered the raven-haired Gryffindor.

Shrugging, Dumbledore popped the small Muggle candy into his mouth, enjoyed it for a moment, then began more seriously. “Harry, I believe there’s something in the castle bewitched,” said the elder wizard. “Not enchanted, as you’re thinking, but an evil sort of doing. Bewitching an object, or even a person, is a sort of manipulation. And I have reason to suspect that the item in question is causing the petrifying.”

Brows furrowed, Harry looked up at Dumbledore. “I don’t understand.” He stated simply, looking down again. “How could a bewitched item –”

“How can a bewitched item cause petrifying?” Dumbledore finished, looking at Harry over his half-mooned spectacles. “Very good question Harry, but I’m not sure. I want you to find the item. If what I’m thinking is true, one bewitched item will lead to another, and if the first ends up in the wrong hands, I’m afraid nothing good can come from it.”

“The wrong hands?” Harry asked, looking up again.

“I’m sure it won’t, of course. All students are but that: mere students.” Dumbledore said cheerily, eyes alight once more. “If you note anything suspicious, please don’t hesitate to come let me know, hm?”

Standing, Harry looked over at the Sorting Hat and nodded, stilling thinking about what it’d told him earlier about doing well in Slytherin. It was, still, wrong about it. “Of course, Professor.” He said, walking out of the office and heading down the gargoyle. He had to get back to the Common room to tell Ron and Hermione.

-=0=-

They walked in silence, he noticed as he trailed along quietly and secretively behind Dumbledore and Potter. He didn’t like the old bat, or Potter for that matter, but he knew one of them knew about the Chamber of Secrets or Slytherin’s Heir. And if Draco could get information on either, he could tell his father and be rewarded.

“Pumpkin Pasty,” said Dumbledore.

Draco waited for them both to get half way up the rotating staircase before he, too, jumped on and stayed hidden. The portrait closed by him as Potter and Dumbledore walked into the office. Draco waited a few moments, then walked up the staircase and stayed hidden behind the wall, listening intently to what they were saying.

As he listened, Draco sneered at how daft Potter sounded about the petrifying of the students. At one point he thought he could change him, make him almost as good as a Pureblood, but now he was sure Potter was ruined. But it was Dumbledore’s words that he listened to more closely; he needed all the information he could obtain about the bewitched item to write to his father about.

“…and if the first ends up in the wrong hands, I’m afraid nothing good can come from it.” Dumbledore said. Draco furrowed his brows. He knew the conversation was drawing to a close, and quickly he sped down the staircase as quietly as he could when he heard Potter stand from his seat.

Getting out of the portrait, Draco fixed his robes and headed back down toward the dungeons, passing Ravenclaws and Gryffindors that looked at him oddly as they climbed the stairs toward their own Common room. He didn’t make eye contact with them, instead walking as quickly as possible.

He only sped up once he reached the dungeons from the Entrance Hall. Goyle was standing there and had begun to ask him where he was, but Draco muttered a ‘Shove off, Goyle’ and walked straight into the Common room, mumbling all the while.

“Draco, we have Quidditch Practice tomorrow,” he heard Marcus Flint say.

Draco, completely ignoring him, walked into the second year dorms and grabbed a roll of parchment and an ink bottle from Blaise Zabini’s bedside, then wax and a quill from his own. He sat at the desk near his four-poster, beginning a letter that Lucius would surely be happy to receive.

-=0=-

21 May, 1993

The time had come to choose their subjects for the third year, a matter that Hermione, at least, took very seriously.

“It could affect our whole future,” she told Harry and Ron as they pored over lists of new subjects, marking them with checks. After four months and no attack on any other Muggleborns (Harry had been told by Riddle’s Diary that Hagrid had done the attacks, but with the stopping of them now, he wasn’t so sure Hagrid was to blame), the thought of the next year’s classes was something new and much more welcome in some cases.

“I just want to give up Potions,” said Harry.

“We can’t,” said Ron gloomily. “We keep all our old subjects, or I’d have ditched Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“But that’s very important!” said Hermione, shocked.

“Not the way Lockhart teaches it,” said Ron. “I haven’t learned anything from him except not to set pixies loose.”

Neville Longbottom had been sent letters from all the witches and wizards in his family, all giving him different advice on what to choose. Confused and worried, he sat reading the subject lists with his tongue poking out, asking people whether they thought Arithmancy sounded more difficult than the study of Ancient Runes.

Dean Thomas, who, like Harry, had grown up with Muggles, ended up closing his eyes and jabbing his wand at the list, then picking the subjects it landed on. Hermione took nobody’s advice, but signed up for everything.

Harry smiled grimly to himself at the thought of what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would say if he tried to discuss his career in wizardry with them. Not that he didn’t get any guidance: Percy Weasley was eager to share his experience.

“Depends where you want to go, Harry.” He said. “It’s never too early to think about the future, so I’d recommend Divination. People say Muggle Studies is a soft option, but I personally think wizards should have a thorough understanding of the non-magical community particularly if they’re thinking of working in close contact with them – look at my father, he has to deal with Muggle business all the time.”

Harry, right then, wanted to point out to Percy that he’d met his father, as he knew, and knew somewhat what Mr. Weasley did. He didn’t get the chance, however, because Percy went on.

“My brother, Charlie, was always more of an outdoor type, so he went for Care of Magical Creatures. Play to your strengths, Harry.”

But the only thing Harry felt he was really good at was Quidditch. In the end, he chose the same new subjects as Ron, feeling that if he was lousy at them, at least he’d have someone friendly to help him.

Gryffindor’s next Quidditch match would be against Hufflepuff. Wood was insisting on team practices every night after dinner, so that Harry barely had time for anything but Quidditch and homework. However, the training sessions were getting better, or at least drier, and the evening before Saturday’s match he went up to his dormitory to drop off his broomstick, feeling Gryffindor’s chances for the Quidditch cup had never been better.

But his cheerful mood didn’t last long. At the top of the stairs to the dormitory, he met Neville, who was looking frantic. “Harry – I don’t know who did it – I just found –” Watching Harry fearfully, Neville pushed open the door.

The contents of Harry’s trunk had been thrown everywhere. His cloak lay ripped on the floor. The bedclothes had been pulled off his four-poster and the drawer had been pulled out of his bedside cabinet, the contents strewn over the mattress.

Harry walked over to the bed, open-mouthed, treading on a few loose pages of Travels with Trolls. As he and Neville pulled the blankets back onto his bed, Ron, Dean, and Seamus came in.

Dean swore loudly. “What happened, Harry?”

“No idea,” said Harry.

But Ron was examining Harry’s robes. All the pockets were hanging out. “Someone’s been looking for something,” said Ron. “Is there anything missing?”

Harry started to pick up all his things and throw them into his trunk. It was only as he threw the last of the Lockhart books back into it that he realized what wasn’t there. “Riddle’s diary’s gone,” he said in an undertone to Ron.

“What?”

Harry jerked his head toward the dormitory door and Ron followed him out. They hurried down to the Gryffindor Common room, which was half-empty, and joined Hermione, who was sitting alone, reading a book called Ancient Runes Made Easy.

She looked aghast at the news. “But – only a Gryffindor could have stolen – nobody else knows our password –”

“Exactly,” said Harry.

-=0=-

Imperious had brought him the latest letter from his father at breakfast that morning, and after leaving early, Draco read the letter in the comfort of the Slytherin common room. It was the letter he was waiting for. His father finally explained everything Draco needed to know to put the pieces together.

One thing that his father had said in the letter, shoved indirectly between the normal sentences stating how to be calculating and discreet, was the truth about a certain book. His father told him that Tom Riddle’s diary was in the school. It wasn’t lost on Draco who Riddle was, but realizing that his diary, the bewitched item that Dumbledore had been talking about was in the castle, a lot of things made sense.

And so did what Voldemort was looking for. That made sense to him then. Later that day, he did what his father told him and waited for Ginny Weasley to retrieve the diary from Potter once again.

Draco, berating himself for not running with it three months ago, went to the fifth floor near an abandoned classroom to wait for when Ginny Weasley would come down from the seventh floor, surely to go somewhere to hide with the diary.

Surely enough, at about four thirty in the evening, Draco saw her coming down the corridor, a book clutched tightly in her hands against her chest. His wand was removed instantly from the pocket of his robe. “Petrificus Totalus!” he exclaimed, watching her body fall rigidly on the floor. Watching his cover, Draco slipped out from the shadows, pried her hands from the diary, and slipped it into his robes.

He waited until he was about a flight down the stairs, then ended the spell on her and quickly made the rest of the way back down to the Entrance Hall to meet Crabbe and Goyle. Together, they walked through the dungeon corridors. All Draco could think about was writing in the diary to get information on the next task.

His father had told him how to work the diary, but having Lucius come to Hogwarts or even sending the diary through owl post was risky, so Draco knew he would be the one to move the process along. The stones to the common room came into view, so Draco took his wand out and tapped certain stones, making them shift away and allow him into the room.

This time, he bothered with no one. He went to the dormitory, telling Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott to leave, and sat down at the desk once more. The boys left, knowing Draco meant business, leaving Draco to grab his quill and ink and open the book to a random page.

‘Hello, Tom Riddle. I am Draco Malfoy.’ He wrote, watching the ink disappear on the paper. Lucius had told him it would.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Draco Malfoy.’ Riddle wrote back.

Draco dipped his quill in ink, scrawling the next sentence then. ‘I know what you want.’

He was surprised to see an answer so quickly. ‘Do you have it?’

‘I can bring it to you, if you show me where it is.’ Draco wrote after Riddle’s question disappeared.

No answer came right away. Draco stared down at the parchment in the book, wondering what to do. He’d said exactly what Lucius had told him to. After a few moments, Draco dipped his quill again, but stopped when he saw Riddle’s answer appear on the paper. ‘Your father taught you well.’


-=0=-

A/N: Review! I'll answer any and all questions in the next chapter!

Slashy Snitch