It emitted a pale, radiant glow, the shimmer of time-magic unfurling. The thing inhabiting Malfoy had one foot already in its light, ready to vanish into history at any moment. No wonder he looked so smug.
"You planned this all along… You never intended to come back to life, did you?" Ian's tone was sharp, his face hardening as he stepped closer.
Yes.
He saw it now.
The diary's soul had never been aligned with the piece within Harry. It had never cared about resurrection. That was all a performance, deliberate distractions, feigned desperation.
Failed ambushes?
Sudden betrayals?
All theatre.
Who knows a soul better than its own reflection?
The diary's fragment knew the other half would pursue resurrection like a moth to flame. So it created this whole charade, manipulating the one in Harry into drawing Ian's attention, forcing him to focus on a visible threat… while the real danger remained hidden.
It had never wanted to face Hogwarts' three strongest defenders. So it waited until two were absent.
Then it used "itself" to draw Ian away, giving it a window to act.
Everything had led to this moment.
That was Ian's deduction.
And the confirmation came in Malfoy's expression.
"Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. That's why I never wanted to fight you. You're dangerous, flawless. I had to ensure you couldn't interfere."
There was no denial in his voice. Only admiration. And fear.
The diary's soul had gambled on its counterpart drawing all eyes. And it had won.
The final fragment of Voldemort's soul likely never realised the truth, not even at the moment of its destruction. But the young Tom Riddle, through his meticulous schemes, had already proven that in his early years, Voldemort possessed a frightening clarity of mind and cunning.
"You're trying to cross time, to return to the past?" Ian glanced at the runes and configurations etched into the body of the great clock, puzzled as to why the diary's soul would go to such extraordinary lengths for this arcane ritual.
"Malfoy" appeared to sense Ian's confusion.
"That other me, the one born at the brink of Voldemort's death, he was a fool," he said disdainfully. "He believed he could resurrect himself in this era, slip past Death's notice, and begin anew."
"I can scarcely believe that's what I become. Death is omnipresent; you might evade it once, but it comes again. And again."
"We carry the Dark Mark, Voldemort's legacy. We cannot escape the consequences of that pact. To imagine oneself reborn, fully separate, truly free… It's just self-delusion." Standing before the great clock, "Malfoy" chuckled darkly, ridiculing the version of himself that had clung to such hope.
"What pact? What exactly happened to you all?"
Ian's voice held a deliberate calm, stalling for time while he tried to piece together what arcane contract had driven each Horcrux to turn against its original master.
But "Malfoy" merely smiled and shrugged. "That no longer matters."
He turned back to the magical device. "I'm going to reset everything from the beginning. Undo it at the source. Voldemort's future will never come to pass, and I--" his lips curled with something halfway between glee and scorn-- "--I will prove that I can live more fully than he ever did."
With that, "Malfoy" gave Ian a taunting wave.
"Farewell, little wizard… or perhaps, there won't be a 'farewell' at all." Then, without another word, he stepped into the swirling light of the time portal. Ian instinctively raised his wand, but the boy was already being swallowed by the shimmer, his form dissolving into a whirl of silvery-blue magic, on the verge of vanishing into a different age.
And then, the great clock began to spin.
The gears accelerated with a thunderous grind.
The runes carved into its brass face shimmered with pulsing light. Ian felt the ancient stone beneath his boots tremble, and an eerie energy filled the chamber. It raised every hair on his body.
Ka-cha ka-cha ka-cha~
The clock's inner workings let out a shrill, mocking screech, as though ridiculing Ian's moment of hesitation. The glowing portal dimmed, but Ian's expression sharpened.
"This is my construct! You think I'll let you hitch a ride for free?" He gritted his teeth. "Not likely."
It wasn't his first time travelling through the fabric of time.
Without hesitation, Ian leapt into the fading portal light.
In a flash, he was caught in a swirling vortex, light spun around him like enchanted threads, shifting colour and shape as they passed, whispering of ages long gone and still to come.
Wind screamed in his ears, the wind of time itself, rushing past. Ian's body felt unbound, weightless, like he was no longer tethered to the material world. Ancient carriages wheeled past him, overtaken by thundering horseless ones. He glimpsed wizards in robes from centuries past, phantoms of history drifting through the current.
"It's still just as awful as I remember," he muttered, as a cacophony of noises flooded his ears, steam hissing, carriage bells jingling, unfamiliar magical echoes he could not place.
"How far back is this taking me?"
Ian frowned. When he had previously entered the time stream to visit the younger Dumbledore, the journey hadn't taken nearly this long. Now, it felt endless, as though the tunnel itself were holding him captive.
Half an hour.
An hour.
More?
He could no longer tell.
Still, no exit.
"Did Tom trap me?" The thought came unbidden, but Ian shook his head. "No. He's sixteen. No way his enchantments could outmatch mine."
He'd taken precautions before entering the portal.
"Unless… he tricked me again." Ian's thoughts darkened. "His destination wasn't the past I assumed, "
It was becoming clear. The diary's soul had laid a clever snare. If Ian hesitated and activated the portal later, it would only send him to a false past, letting Riddle slip away.
Classic Tom.
While Ian pondered, a sound interrupted him, a faint, ethereal melody drifting through the time stream. The voice was pure, crystalline, and hauntingly beautiful. Yet there was sorrow in every note, like a lament from beyond the grave.
It struck Ian like a blade.
The song tugged at something deep within him, muddling his thoughts and loosening his grip on the moment. And then, without warning, a force yanked him downward.
Hard.
He plummeted through the stream like a ragged kite whose string had snapped. His senses blurred, sight, sound, and touch bleeding together in an endless haze.
Time passed, how much, he could not guess.
Eventually, the light dimmed.
Shapes reformed and the world slowly came back into focus. When Ian opened his eyes again, he was no longer in Hogwarts.
A pale yellow light shimmered in the distance, casting long shadows over a landscape soaked in darkness. The air was heavy with dampness and the scent of mildew, laced with a more disturbing hint of rot.
The stone walls around him were carved with runes and sigils, timeworn yet still faintly glowing. The passage of years had weathered them into something ghostly and grotesque.
Some resembled twisted human forms.
Others, fragments of ancient scripts long forgotten.
"Ah--?!"
A soft gasp echoed below.
Ian stepped out from the remnants of the portal, standing atop a high dais. He peered down, and there, on the stone floor, knelt a young girl in a coarse grey dress.
She stared up at him with wide, near-vacant eyes. On the girl's forehead was a dark red symbol that matched one of the patterns on the wall, resembling a bird's claw.
"Where is this?" Ian asked, somewhat dazed.
As he spoke, the delicate object in the girl's hand fell to the ground with a crash. It was as if she had been struck by some unprecedented shock; her lips trembled as she suddenly jumped up and turned to run toward the door.
"He's awake! He's awake!!!" The girl shouted in Old English, her voice filled with fear and a quivering tone.
"What the hell, wait! I'm just a kid too; we have a common language!" Ian instinctively reached out as he spoke in Old English, but the girl had already disappeared outside the door.
He heard a cacophony of footsteps outside, along with rising cries of alarm.
"This is just ridiculous!"
Ian took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He noticed that on the stone altar in the center, there were some objects, including bronze vessels and several pieces of bone inscribed with runes.
"That devious Tom! What era has he brought me to?" The noise outside grew closer, and Ian heard many footsteps approaching the stone room.
He pulled out his wand.
On high alert.
(End of chapter)
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