Unofficial Portkey Archive

I am not J.K. Rowling, nor am I associated with Scholastic or anybody else who makes money off of Harry Potter. I do this only for the love of story-telling, not for profit. Yeah, I know this isn't Off Balance. I hope you like it anyway.

With that out of the way, please do enjoy.

Chapter 1: The Boy in the Tower, Part 1

December 31, 1944

"Tom?" The soft rapping of knuckles against the old wooden door made it creak open slightly. Taking the dim flicker of light coming from inside the room as an unspoken invitation, Dumbledore let himself in, his long blue robes almost brushing against the cold grey cobblestones as he walked. Tom Marvolo Riddle sat at his writing desk, scribbling intently on a piece of parchment. He did not look up as Dumbledore entered the room. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."

Riddle's head shot up suddenly, his eyes wide. "Professor Dumbledore," he replied in startled recognition. "I…I wasn't expecting you." When his Transfiguration professor frowned, Tom continued, "So soon. I wasn't expecting you so soon."

The frown deepened. "It's nearly midnight." Dumbledore crossed the room to stand by Riddle's side. "I would have arrived here sooner, but a pair of sixth-year Hufflepuffs thought it would be amusing to transfigure themselves into an elderly man with a scythe and an overly large infant." Dumbledore thought the matter over with a playful twinkle in his eye. "I suppose it was, at that."

Tom Riddle quickly removed all of the parchment from his desk and stashed it in a nearby drawer. "I was just finishing up my Charms assignment from yesterday. I have everything ready for you now, sir."

Dumbledore let out a sigh. "Tom, are you certain that you wouldn't rather have a student bring you your assignments? There's a Gryffindor in your year who's taking all of the same classes you are, you know." Dumbledore lowered his voice. "She's said to be quite pretty. I've heard her ask about you many times. Her name is…"

"If it's all the same to you, sir," Riddle interrupted haughtily, "I would prefer that you continue to bring me my class assignments."

Dumbledore gave the young man a sad look. "I don't know how much longer I can do that, Tom. I know how isolated you've been from the things that are happening in the wizarding world, but…the war against Grindelwald is getting worse. Much worse. I may be called upon to…Well, to leave the castle for extended periods of time."

Tom Riddle simply nodded. "I'll have to make other arrangements then." An idea struck him suddenly. "Perhaps Headmaster Dippet himself could…"

"Headmaster Dippet is quite busy," Dumbledore answered him solemnly. "Is there some reason that you do not want another student to enter this tower?"

"Of course not, sir," Riddle answered instantly.

Dumbledore's blue eyes met Riddle's for a fleeting moment. "Very well," the elder wizard went on. "I have your assignments here. I am requiring all of my seventh-year students to hand in two feet on the primary steps needed to become an animagus by next Wednesday. Professor Flitwick will be giving an exam in two days time on the last three chapters of The Autobiography of Germanicus Smythee. Also, I'm told you can skip the notes from Professor Binns' class, as they're exactly the same as yesterday. It seems that he bored everyone to sleep with his lecture on the wizarding world's role in the Hundred Years' War and had to go over everything that he covered in the previous class all over again."

Tom Marvolo Riddle's face remained impassive. "Is this everything, sir?"

"No." Riddle looked startled again, and began to scowl at Dumbledore, a suspicious glare set in his eye. "It's New Year's Eve, Tom. Every student in the castle is celebrating but you. Since you did not participate in the festivities surrounding Halloween or Christmas, I was hoping that you might join us."

"Is participation mandatory, sir?" Tom Riddle asked coldly.

Dumbledore's face tightened. "Of course not."

Riddle removed a blank piece of parchment from the drawer and began writing on it. "Then I choose to remain here. I have quite a lot of work to do."

"Alright," Dumbledore conceded, turning away from him to stand in front of the door. "You may do as you wish. I would like to point out, however, that I was once chosen to live here too. Yet I still took the time to get out once in a while and enjoy myself. You are never a prisoner in this tower, unless you choose to make yourself one. Remember that." Riddle did not react as Dumbledore opened the door to exit. "Oh and Tom? One other thing." Tom Marvolo Riddle looked up at Professor Dumbledore with only mild interest. "Happy birthday."

***

Harry, Ron and Hermione each withdrew their heads from the pensieve in turn, looking a little dazed as they did so. Minerva McGonagall, Hogwarts' new Headmistress, gave them all a fond look before returning to her usual prim demeanor. She was sitting behind her new desk in her new office, looking as though she would just as soon have never been given them. "I'm afraid that that was the last memory Albus left for you."

Harry couldn't help but look surprised. "Are you sure? Couldn't he have hidden some of them, to make sure that they didn't fall into the wrong hands?"

McGonagall's lips formed a thin line. "I'm certain that you've now seen all of them. Albus wanted you to have as many of his memories as he thought might prove useful to you."

"More like 'prove boring to you'," Ron said with a yawn and stretch. "I could use a good kip right about now."

Hermione glared at him scathingly. "No one made you come along, you know." She turned away from Ron to look proudly back at the pensieve. "I found it fascinating."

"I just wish that there had been something solid to go on," Harry moaned, sitting down in a nearby armchair in defeat. "An object that meant something to Riddle or a location where he might have hidden one or…" He stopped himself abruptly, unwilling to say more about the horcruxes in front of McGonagall.

"Maybe we missed something," Hermione thought aloud. "We could watch some of them again, just to be sure."

A pained looked crossed Ron's face. "Can we at least skip the ones where he's having breakfast? Dumbledore was a great wizard and everything, but watching him eat porridge and toast is right boring."

Hermione frowned. "Professor, I don't think I recognized the tower where Tom Riddle was staying in the last memory. Is it somewhere on Hogwarts' grounds?"

One of the Headmistress' eyebrows rose. "I don't think I quite understand what you're asking me, Miss Granger," McGonagall replied tersely.

"It would have been in his seventh year at Hogwarts," Hermione casually informed her. "Apparently Dumbledore used to visit him there to give him his school assignments."

McGonagall's face now conveyed shock. "Albus left you a memory of that?!? But he's strictly forbidden from ever…" She stopped herself and chuckled bitterly. "Well, I suppose there's no way they could punish him for it now."

Harry, who had been staring off into space, clearly lost in his own thoughts, leaned forward and turned his attention to the Headmistress. "What exactly was Dumbledore showing us, Professor?"

Minerva McGonagall remained silent for a moment. She seemed to be coming to a decision. "The Board of Governors could remove me for telling you this. You must swear that you won't breathe a word of it to anyone else."

"We won't tell anyone," Ron answered for them, his previously disinterested expression having vanished in a heartbeat. "We swear." Harry and Hermione both nodded quickly in agreement.

"Centuries ago," McGonagall began, "when the muggles of England and France were at war, Beauxbatons sent Hogwarts a gift. A peace offering, if you will. It was a divination tower."

Harry smirked. "Didn't Hogwarts already have one of those?"

"It did," McGonagall answered him quickly, "but not like this one. It took the most gifted witches and wizards on the continent several decades to build it. The tower was designed to give anyone who stayed inside it visions of their own future. Something of a sneak peek of what's to come." The Headmistress folded her hands in her lap. "Naturally, it was one of the most sought after items in the magical world."

Hermione looked skeptical. "If the tower was so valuable, why didn't Beauxbatons keep it for themselves? Why would they send it to England?"

"Wizarding France was eager to keep English witches and wizards out of the war," McGonagall explained patiently. "England had quite the august reputation. Many of the people in power in wizarding England at that time had been taught by the founders of Hogwarts themselves, and Merlin wasn't far from anyone's mind."

"Don't mind her, Professor," Ron advised jokingly. "She's just grouchy because none of this is in Hogwarts: a History." Hermione made a sour face at him before turning her rapt attention back to the Headmistress.

"No," McGonagall replied, shaking her head slowly, "it isn't. Nor will it ever be. It is one of Hogwarts' best kept secrets." She stood quickly and began walking toward the large window near the corner of the room. "The tower is invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by any charm or curse known to wizardkind. Everyone who knows about it is strictly forbidden to speak of it to those who don't."

"Does this tower have a name?" Hermione asked curiously.

McGonagall turned around to face her. "For a time, it was known as the Seers' Tower. However, about twenty-five years ago, American muggles built a structure with an incredibly similar name."

Ron looked puzzled. "What would muggles need with a Seers' Tower?" Neither Harry nor Hermione bothered to answer his question.

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat and continued speaking. "Its original name of 'la tour de France' was abandoned for similar reasons. Some have called it the Oracular Tower. Others have given it the more fearsome name 'Tower of Nightmares'."

"Why would they call it the 'Tower of Nightmares'?" Harry inquired quizzically.

McGonagall shot Harry a pointed look. "The future is not always a wondrous thing to behold, Mr. Potter. Dreams are often shattered, love can be lost, and things hoped for can become things that will never be."

"Or you might end up married to someone ugly," Ron threw in. When Hermione gave him a cross look, he simply shrugged his shoulders. "What? That's given me nightmares before."

"May we see the Tower, Professor?" Hermione asked, temporarily ignoring her irritation with Ron.

"I can show you where it is," McGonagall answered her honestly, "but I cannot take you inside of it. Only the tower itself chooses who may enter."

"How does it do that?" Harry asked.

"On the cornerstone, at the base of the tower, is a rather lengthy list of names. They are the names of everyone who has stayed in the tower over the last six centuries. But," the Headmistress explained, "the names were not etched there after their stay, but before. No one quite knows how they come to be there and there does not seem to be a pattern behind who the tower chooses, save that it always names seventh-year students who are exceptionally gifted."

"Wait a moment," Harry interjected. "If nobody can enter the tower except those who were chosen, why did Dumbledore ask Riddle if he wouldn't rather have a student bring him his assignments? Wouldn't that be impossible?"

Hermione gave Harry a look that said she was surprised that he had been paying that much attention in the pensieve. "I was just about to ask that same question."

McGonagall returned to her seat and removed her eyeglasses. "In what might pass for compassion, the tower does allow each resident one visitor. An emissary, you might say. Primarily that person's job is to bring the student in the tower their daily homework and lecture notes. It also usually falls on the emissary to keep the tower's lone resident sane. The dearth of human contact can do strange things to a person's mind." Her expression turned suddenly grim. "More than one of the tower's inhabitants have gone mad. And, of course, you know how You-Know-Who turned out."

"But Dumbledore turned out alright," Harry countered defensively.

McGonagall considered that for a moment. "Yes, I suppose that's true." Her demeanor brightened somewhat. "In any event, no one was chosen to enter the tower after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

Harry could almost see the wheels in Hermione's mind turn. "So…no one's even been inside the tower since Voldemort left Hogwarts?" Both Ron and Professor McGonagall flinched at the use of the dark wizard's name.

"Yes, that's correct," McGonagall answered with a nod, although she seemed oblivious as to where Hermione was going with this.

Harry, however, had picked up on it instantly. "Would it have been possible for him to leave something behind? To have hidden something inside the tower?"

The Headmistress shrugged her shoulders. "I suppose it's possible."

Ron scratched his chin. "So if You-Know-Who was up there all alone…and nobody's been in the tower for over fifty years…it would have been the perfect place for him to hide a hor…" He stopped himself just before he inadvertently blurted out the word 'horcrux'. Harry and Hermione both fixed him with their best angry glares.

Within seconds, there was one more such glare headed in his direction. "Mr. Weasley," Headmistress McGonagall fumed, "I will thank you not to use that sort of language in my presence while you are still a student at this school." She stood to smooth the creases from her robes, a stern look set on her face. "You may rest assured, however, that whatever pursuits You-Know-Who may have undertaken during his stay in that tower, the opposite sex was not one of them."

Harry, Hermione and Ron shared a knowing look with each other. Over the summer, they had searched all of the places where Voldemort might logically have hidden his horcruxes. The orphanage where he had spent his formative years, the Riddle House and even the old shack in Little Hangleton that Marvolo and Merope Gaunt once called home. They had found three of the remaining horcruxes in each place and one, Slytherin's locket, among the belongings of the thieving Mundungus Fletcher. All of them had now been destroyed. If Voldemort had indeed made seven horcruxes, only one remained. Its location had been a mystery that, up until now, the three of them had been completely unable to solve. This Oracular Tower was as likely an answer as any.

Harry spoke for the group when he asked, "Headmistress McGonagall, would you mind taking us to the tower?"

***

Within moments, the three of them were following a reluctant Minerva McGonagall as she led the way to the old divination tower. According to McGonagall, it lay just beyond the Quidditch pitch, near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. As Ron and Hermione argued over the morality of using one's knowledge of the future to place wagers on Quidditch matches, Harry's mind wandered freely. A part of him longed to know his future; to find out if he would survive the final battle with Voldemort, and if he did, how he had done it. That same part of him was also rather curious about whether he might end up married to a certain redhead who had been his girlfriend of late.

'Ginny.' Her name conjured images of flowers and sunshine, Quidditch matches and laughter, the joy of snogging and the promise of snogging to come. Even though he had technically broken things off with her at Dumbledore's funeral, he had already asked her to come with him on their next trip to Hogsmeade (which would be heavily chaperoned, in light of the events of last year). He hadn't called it a date, but he couldn't help but hope that it might be.

As Ron and Hermione's argument became heated, Harry jogged briskly to join Headmistress McGonagall. "Headmistress," he began politely, "what exactly will we see when we arrive at the tower?"

"Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley and yourself will see nothing," McGonagall informed him briskly. "I will see one of the most gorgeous pieces of Gothic architecture ever built by wizardkind."

"Oh," Harry replied, unable to completely conceal the disappointment from his voice. "Well, you are the Headmistress of the school. I guess it would make sense for there to be some way you could see it."

"Indeed," she agreed instantly. "However, I have been able to see the Oracular Tower since I was a girl of eighteen." Harry's eyes widened in surprise. "I was chosen to replace Albus as You-Know-Who's emissary." She chuckled mirthlessly. "It seems as though that's how I've spent my entire life. Replacing Albus. And I fear I've never done an adequate job."

Harry shrugged. "I don't know that anyone really could. But you seem to have done as well as anyone might have."

"Do not flatter me, Mr. Potter," McGonagall warned him. "It won't get you anywhere." Despite her firm tone, Harry could swear he saw the hint of a smile forming on her lips. "There it is," she announced, pointing at a spot a few hundred meters off that was not far from Hagrid's hut. "In the distance, just in front of those particularly tall…"

"I see it," Harry interrupted her in astonishment. The stone tower rose three hundred meters in the air where it was crowned by a spire of alabaster. "I must have walked this path a dozen times and I've never…" He shook his head in befuddlement. "How is this possible?"

The Headmistress seemed lost in her own thoughts. "That's what Albus used to call it, you know. 'The Tower of Possibilities'." After Harry stared at her for a moment, she seemed to regain her faculties. "Mr. Potter," McGonagall instructed firmly, "go on ahead and examine the cornerstone carefully. Tell me what you see."

Harry sprinted across the remaining distance, only to crouch before the base of the tower. Finding the cornerstone with the list of names, he began reading them in order, until he found the very bottom. "'Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Tom Marvolo Riddle'." As his fingers ran along the surface of the stone, they brushed away dirt, revealing another name below Riddle's. "'Harry James Potter'."

Not particularly surprising, was it? Anyway, to be continued in the next chapter.

ITL

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