Thanks to those who still leave comments. It amazes me a that people still read these things when I'm hardly active anymore. It's made me think recently that maybe I'd like to start writing again now that I've graduated. With a busy life and mental health struggles, I've barely written in recent years, but maybe I should try again. I feel really out of practice whenever I try.

I think I might post some chapters of old things I had written. Maybe it'll help me remember the enjoyment and satisfaction I used to get from writing.

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Harry Potter wanted to impress Tom Riddle. It was an innocent, straightforward desire that stemmed from darker origins. The soothing and irremovable exterior, however, made fighting it difficult, especially when Tom smiled so sweetly and not like Voldemort at all.

A little voice whispered, this is your enemy, tell him nothing. But the stronger, more pleasant part dominated his conscious. It had an impossibly powerful pull, enticing him with thoughts that, perhaps, if you love him enough, he'll never be your enemy at all.

The problem was, Harry didn't want to break the spell. This spell gave him his best chance. That little voice whispered that Tom Riddle was incapable of love, but the forgiving part of him, the part of him that had a "saving-people thing," desperately wanted to save this man and everyone who this man would harm.

"Amortentia doesn't really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room - oh yes. When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love."

Slughorn had been right when he'd proclaimed love potions as the most dangerous creations of all, because they could enslave the strongest of wills. An Imperius Curse could fool the mind, but a love potion fooled the body itself. It wasn't something he could face head-on like a Gryffindor; no, it regulated the chemicals which controlled his mind, and his subconscious whispered such pretty words. You can save him, it hissed. A mentality that so regularly trapped even un-drugged victims in cycles of abuse, encaptured Harry with its terrible and tempting lure. It was a challenging mindset to overcome naturally, and with the potion it was impossible, physically smothering any sliver of doubt.

Tom Riddle was a brilliant potion maker, and his Mollis Caritate worked perfectly. Harry became obsessed with saving him, with loving him, with saving him with his love.

"So, when the prophecy says that I'll have 'power the Dark Lord knows not,' it just means — love?"

The worst part was that of Tom Riddle's beauty. Attractiveness increased the longevity of love potions, and Tom bewitched the soul, especially given Tom's not-infrequent attempts at deliberate seduction. He looked just like his father, and his father had been handsome enough to capture the obsessive and unhealthy attentions of a pure-blooded witch, regardless of his personality and muggleness. She had used a love potion on him, taken away his free will, and enslaved him to herself, her infatuation all the more dangerous because it had not been magically compelled at all.

Maybe it was this thought that finally snapped him out of his pleasant and drugged delusions.

It resembled waking from a particularly lovely dream, a gradual one to which he clung at the fuzzy edges. It had almost worn off sooner, broken by reminders of shouldn'ts, a duel and a bow to his most hated enemy. A graveyard, a classroom, a graveyard, a classroom.

He'd been so close to reality, but then Tom had kissed him, and kept kissing and coaxing him until Harry had slipped under again.

"If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed."

He hadn't wanted to wake up. It had felt so nice. He had felt like himself, in the dream, because the most insidious part of dreams was that until waking, one never knew that they existed outside reality. Dreams were always so much harder to wake up from than nightmares. He didn't want to wake up-

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

He drifted in and out of awareness, memories of his past flickering up at inconvenient times. Dumbledore's voice echoed when he wandered outside of Tom's influence, and when he spoke to Tom, sometimes he remembered a chamber, a diary, and a burning pain. A memory of a Romilda Vane tugged at his conscious, reminding him that a love potion had almost led to Ron's demise.

But he was conscious. He remembered his research into Tom's past perfectly well, he remembered mourning those who Tom had killed, but those hadn't happened yet. Instead the potion made him focus on his brief sympathy for the boy who'd been abandoned by his mother, a woman who had felt she had no reason to stay alive, not even for her son. Harry's mother had thought he was worth dying for, but Tom's mother hadn't found her son worth living for. He knew how hard it must have been for Tom to willingly share his past when Harry had asked. It was so easy to believe that Tom had changed, that the future had changed...

"Dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right."

Dumbledore was wrong! He was wrong, wrong, wrong-

"It is my belief that the truth is generally preferable to lies."

He was so wrong, because lies were so much more pleasant than the truth. But dreams didn't last forever, and Harry couldn't keep pushing down the voice of doubt, of truth, as the potion grew weaker and weaker.

"Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it."

Harry woke up.

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The italics in this chapter are all direct quotes. First Slughorn, then Harry himself, Tom, and finally drifting into Dumbledore's voice. It was a progression that intended to loosely follow the story... Slughorn led the first class, Harry loses to the potion, Tom tries to keep him under its influence, and then Dumbledore brings the unpleasant truth.

I hope everyone is doing well and is staying safe during the pandemic. Please take care!