Short Stories and Oneshots

You'd Look Better in a Tiara

Author: GhostIsReading

Platform: AO3

Type: Harry Potter

Harry is in his fifth year during Umbridge's reign of terror and finds refuge in the Room of Requirement. He had discovered a tiara by chance. It changes his life.

~

Harry was angry. He was almost constantly angry this year, but could you blame him? He was being called a liar and a lunatic. Not to mention Umbitch and her stupid Blood Quill. She had once more kept him late in detention and he honestly didn't want to return to the common room where Hermione and Ron would fuss at him. Telling him to stop antagonizing her or to tell someone. Hah! As if he hasn't tried that! Not to mention he wasn't the only victim of her evil quill and if she kept her attention on him then she was less likely to go after another first year. Harry had tried telling McGonagall and was just told to keep his head down!

He was pacing and grumbling to himself on the seventh floor opposite an ugly tapestry of a ballet dancing troll when a door suddenly appeared, shocking him out of his current rage. He blinked surprised at the door before shrugging, he honestly had nothing to lose at this point and if he died from opening a suspicious door in Hogwarts then so be it.

Once he was inside the room he could see piles and piles of junk. They were more like mountains, and they reached the high ceiling and seemed to span for miles. It was amazing! With his mood now much higher than it was earlier, Harry stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Screw going back to the common room, where he didn't want to go anyway, he was going to sort through some of this stuff. Who knows, he could end up finding some really cool stuff.

So he wandered around for a bit, poking at some things and avoiding others. He was careful not to take anything that would cause the mountains of stuff to fall over, the last thing he wanted was to be buried alive in a room that he would never be found in. He also tried not to get his blood on anything. He hadn't bothered wrapping his wound and so it was bleeding quite freely but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Then he found a really old, discolored tiara near a chipped bust of an ugly warlock. Now, Harry didn't normally care about such things but there was something about that tiara that drew him in. Before he even noticed he was picking it up and smearing some of his blood on the sapphire gem that sat at the center of its design.

As soon as his blood touched the gemstone, a black cloud appeared and formed into a man. If anyone was to ask, Harry would deny screaming rather loudly at the sight. He promptly threw the tiara away from himself, but it was too late. The black cloud was forming a stable shape and it was almost like a ghost.

"Rude." The spectral form smirked.

Harry just stared. It was Voldemort, or well, Tom Riddle. He was older than he was in the Chamber of Secrets but wasn't the snake face of today. He was speechless.

"Hello." The spectral form of Tom Riddle greeted him as if its counterparts hadn't tried to kill him several times. It was at that point that Harry snapped.

"Just one year!" He yelled, throwing his hands up. "I would just like one year where someone isn't out to kill me, where I'm not vilified by the students and the Defence teacher isn't shit. It clearly isn't enough that I am dealing with a snake faced Voldemort and now I have somehow discovered another memory version of him as well?!" He ranted, not paying attention to said memory. "I have enough problems outside of Hogwarts with my abusive relatives and Hogwarts itself isn't the safe haven that I thought it would be."

"Abuse?" Tom Riddle Memory No. 2 echoed.

"Oh yes, not that anyone would believe it! After all I'm the so-called Boy Who Lived and therefore I must obviously be spoiled to bits at home. Hah! Like hell. I didn't even know that magic existed until a giant literally knocked down my door. Oh my relatives tried their best to beat it out of me but obviously failed. Then when I finally think I'm free from them, I discover that I'm a freak of a different kind. Survived an unsurvivable curse and the murderer of my family. Not that said murderer was actually dead like most thought, oh no he was riding on the back of the head of my first year DADA teacher!"