Scheming

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"So Voldemort's sent Professor Quirrell to find the Stone for him."

Tom glared at him a bit. "We don't know for sure that it's Quirrell, Harry. We cannot afford to make leaps like that."

Harry pouted. "Well, what do we do, then?"

Tom raised an eyebrow, making it clear that he wasn't going to answer for him.

"Well, we need proof, I suppose, that Professor Quirrell works for Voldemort."

"And how can we acquire said proof without exposing ourselves?"

"Well, I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to wait until Quirrell...or whoever it is...tries to steal it, and then meet him there, and introduce myself."

"...introduce yourself?"

"Well, yes, that's what one does when one wants to make a friend, isn't it?"

"...make a friend?"

"Well, yes, that's what this is all about, isn't it? We want to make friends with Voldemort 1.0, right?"

Tom sighed, looking a bit exasperated. "Yes, Harry, we want to 'make friends' with Voldemort."

"1.0."

"What?"

"He's Voldemort Version 1.0, and you're Voldemort Version 2.0, otherwise known as Tom."

"...indeed."

"So, what would you normally be doing around this time?" Harry asked curiously.

He and Ron were sitting in the Great Hall, enjoying treats on Christmas Eve night. It was about a half hour before curfew, and they were alone, seeming very small in that cavernous room. Every time they shifted in their seats, or took a bite and chewed, echoes reverberated off the vast stone walls around them, reminding them that they were present and awake, and quite alone.

"Well, you know, the usual."

"No, I don't know."

"You don't know what?"

"I don't know what the usual is. I've never celebrated Christmas before."

Ron stared at him, baffled. "You've...never celebrated Christmas before?"

Harry shook his head.

"Blimey, mate, that's sort of messed up, isn't it?"

"I guess so. So what is it you usually do on Christmas Eve?"

"Well," Ron began contemplatively, "Usually we have a nice dinner, you know, with ham and mashed potatoes and carrots and typical family dinner foods and whatnot...everyone's home then, so it's usually quite loud – everyone wants to know everything about what everyone else's been doing. And after that is desert – only meal of the year where there's more sweets than actual dinner. Mum loves Christmas, and she and Ginny start baking weeks ahead of time. There's usually cookies everywhere by the end of it...lots of gingerbread and shortbread. Honestly, it's a bit ridiculous – by the end of it, none of us want to taste another teaspoon of sugar again! That is, until New Years...

"Anyway, after eating, we usually just hang about by the tree, take turns telling stories in front of the fire, and everyone gets to open one present, and we all take turns guessing what it is, and whoever gets the most wrong has to run outside with no shoes on, and then..."

Seeing Harry's eyes beginning to glisten, Ron sobered a bit. "It's all rather dull, actually."

Harry smiled sadly. "No, it doesn't sound dull at all. Really, it sounds brilliant, all of it. I hope that...had things been different..." He took a deep breath. "I think I'd have liked to have a Christmas just like that."

Ron looked away, not quite sure what to say to that.

With no Dursleys to cook for and wait on, Harry slept in until Tom made his presence known on Christmas morning.

The Slytherin dormitories were rather like his old cupboard in that they had no windows – well, they had windows, but the sun was never more than a distant, muffled light drenched in the green waters of the lake above, seeming very quiet and far away. It wasn't quite bright enough in the mornings to force him to wake soon after sunrise. He'd gotten into a routine, of course, at Hogwarts; he went to bed at the same time every night, and had no trouble waking up in the mornings. But last night...well, he wasn't quite sure when exactly he fell asleep, because he'd done so with a book in his hands. Despite the fact that waking up to pain was never pleasant, Harry was thankful Tom had wakened him before he drooled on A Beginner's Guide to Spell Crafting too much.

There was no one around, but Harry went through the motions of dressing himself in his uniform just as he did every morning – Ron had taken to teasing him about wearing his school uniform over Christmas break, but what he didn't realize is that Harry might even prefer a pink frilly dress to Dudley's old cast-offs. They reminded him just a bit too much of Number 4 Privet Drive, a perfectly horrible place for perfectly horrible people, who were under the impression that being horrible was somehow normal. Ever did he endeavour to forget the whole thing.

Upon entering the Common Room, he was surprised to see that, resting under the small decorated evergreen that sat in the corner, was a small package that had not been there the night before. Curiously, he took the package in his hands, and upon seeing a small card with his name on it sitting on top, he began to unwrap it.

His attempts to unwrap it were clumsy – he'd never unwrapped a present before – but when he finally managed it, something thin, fluid, and silvery-grey slipped through his fingers and went slithering to the floor.

Harry picked what appeared to be a glimmering, silver cloth off the floor, staring at it with wonder in his eyes. It was perhaps the softest and smoothest thing he'd ever held in his hands, like water woven into silk.

Wrapping the material around himself, Harry looked down to see how it looked on him, but, suddenly, he wasn't there anymore. Eyes widening, he dashed to the mirror in the corner, and gaped at what he saw. Sure enough, his own face stared back at him, but only his face – the rest of him had completely vanished.

An invisiblility cloak, Tom supplied helpfully.