For better or worse, humans are full of blood. Enough blood to paint lips and even circus tents - certainly enough blood to drop a Fey Prince dead if they put enough effort into it. Iron, such a tricky and commonplace thing. Certainly enough blood to destroy a mirror.

Maybe that was why Fey Kings were so obsessed with hearts, it was like owning an enemy's hand grenade.

Harry's chest felt achingly, unbearably, empty without his own but Fey Kings should know better than to think simply putting a heart in a treasure box was enough to neutralize their power. Hearts were not trophies to be won in duress or negotiation, as hearts are not things than can be negotiated with. They are too wild. That, Harry had learned.

He could always feel it, the chill of it as it resided in an icy, glass eternity. He needed his heart back to have a chance of escape - he hadn't known that when he traded it. Tom had delighted in telling him after. It didn't matter.

He walked through the paths of the circus, collecting coins and keys and scraps of metal.

Tom's eyes followed, but they didn't see, fixed too hungrily on a prize thought long since conquered.

The mirrors were weaker, Tom had told him, on Circus nights. Closer to the human world, flung open to allow the unsuspecting travellers to enter the immortal court and find their distractions and their doom among the revelry.

He'd only get one shot at this. If he had his heart, it would have betrayed him, pounding desperately against his ribs as he finally approached the hall of mirrors once more. Battle-ready. But he didn't have a heart anymore.

"You dare return to me empty handed?" Tom's voice softened with danger, with outrage. He rose to stand, eyes dark, fingers white-knuckled around his ringmaster's cane like a duelist held their sword.

"Empty handed? No," Harry said. He drew out a bloodied handful of coins from his pocket. "I brought you your favourite game. You have plenty of tributes offered to you without mine - that was never what you kept me for."

Tom stopped in front of him, eyes narrowed. Despite himself he looked intrigued. His gaze moved slowly over the blood smearing Harry's fingers and he wet his lips. "And what's that? I have your heart already, pet. I claimed it in a fair exchange - you cannot accuse me of trickery this time." Tom strode forward, nothing like the charming and playful boy Harry had first met. "Your world is my world. Has seeing humans made you forget that so quickly?"

"It's not enough though, is it? You still want more. Not of them, of me."

Tom stopped.
Harry affected casual and raised his brows.

"If I can get my heart back tonight," he said. "You will release every turned fey and prisoner you are keeping captive in your court."

"And if you cannot?"

"Then I am yours," Harry said. "You can have my soul, my mind, my heart and my body for what they're worth. I won't fight you."

"You imagine your soul is worth an entire fairy ring?" Tom laughed. It was the high, cold laugh that Harry loathed more than anything.

He held his ground, squared his shoulders. "So you fear losing then?"

He needed to get near those mirrors.

"Deal," Tom snapped. Prideful things, fey, and Tom was one the most arrogant of them. The thought of failure barely even occurred to the creature, he was so ready to think he had won already.

Harry drew in a shaky breath.

He stepped forward into the shadow circus in the mirror, a distorted reflection of the dazzling one Harry had left behind. This time, there was nothing of the amazement, of the wonder or the beauty - inside Tom's mirrors the truth of all things were revealed.

Tom stood behind him, leaning against the doorway with a hooded amusement in his eyes.
"Remember, Harry. You have until day break. After that - you're mine."

The only colour in the cold world facing him were the hearts. They shone in the darkness like glowing balls of vibrant light, through frozen bodies. The fairy lights that lit up the circus Harry had seen before. All of the once-humans were petrified where they fell.

Ginny, with her hands in the air in dance.

Another, a kind looking man with the body of half a man and half a beast twisted on the floor as one of the shapeshifters strained for his hand like a blurred photograph.

A truth-teller Harry had seen with bushy hair gouged fingers into her own eyes until the blood stiffened on her cheeks.

Dozens, upon dozens of hearts and bodies all connected by a pulsating spiderweb of darkness entwining around the tents and all leading to the centre of the circus. To the hall of mirrors.

The circus was vast, bigger even than it looked wandering lost through its hundreds of tents. On first glance finding one heart in all of them seemed an impossible task in six hours. It would take more than six hours to even walk through every room.

But he had to do it, for all of these people. He resolved himself. He had six hours, and Tom's smug smile at his back, but he had grown to know the Fey Prince well. He would not simply bury a heart or cast it somewhere commonplace. He prized his trophy collection too highly.

Harry's heart was in the hall of mirrors where he fell - he was certain of it. A two hour's walk away, but perfectly doable. Though perhaps he should try and avoid touching the black links of shadow ensnaring the others, just to be on the safe side. Even looking at them made him feel uneasy. So, three hours taking in the weaving pace around them. Doable.

He wasn't expecting to make a return journey.

Did all fairy rings look like this, at heart? Fey were tricksters, amoral things but they were not inherently dark creatures from every fairytale Harry had ever heard.

He started forwards with determination, struggling not to feel unnerved by the stillness of this world.

"Remember, Harry," Tom called after him. "You can always surrender, just call my name for help and I'll have you safe and sound in my arms in a moment."

Harry would have turned and sneered - but he didn't want to get sidetracked, twisted up in Riddle's words. It would waste precious time.

Soon, the doorway was out of sight and long in the distance.

Harry dropped his pennies and scraps of metal in a trail of breadcrumbs to keep from getting lost. To keep the labyrinth of the circus from shifting around him spitefully, to mark where he had been. The tents changed in the corners of his eyes - but not when there was iron on the floor.

Iron defeats fairies.

When he ran out of metal, he moved to blood. Life trickling to the ground like one of Tom's scarlet ribbons.

He could do this. He ducked under threads of shadow that stirred eagerly at his passing, as if they would pounce and coil around him, consume him, if only they were given the chance.

He had to do this.

By the time he reached the hall of mirrors he felt weak and dizzy with blood loss.

The six shades watched him approach.

"I could sit here and watch you bleed out, Harry Potter," Tom said. "Take your time. You only have another three hours. It would be quite the waste though - is that your plan? The boy who could live in a fairy ring come to die?"

Harry's jaw clenched as he came to a stop before them. They blocked his way and he prepared for the possibility of a fight. There were six of them though, and only one of him. He knew how easily they could overwhelm him alone.

"I could help you, you know," Harry murmured. "Look around you - this cannot possibly be what you want. You rule a world of ghosts."

"But I rule."

Harry swallowed at that, wondered what created Fey Kings and how they ended up alone with no one but turned-humans to puppet. Were there not other fairies? Whole communities in forests and immortal courts beyond this shadow?

He remembered the charming, handsome boy he had met in a park and liked so fondly on their first meeting. Maybe it had been a lie - Tom had been so different then, and his dark eyes had been filled with such a different kind of knowing as his gaze trailed Harry's worn clothes and the glass sharp edges of his ribs jutting out in his skinniness.

"All empires fall, Tom. Even yours. Nothing lasts forever."

"I do." The shades shifted then, the comment seeming a final word on their conversation. "And I could have given you an eternity too, Harry. By my side."

"On my knees at your feet."

The shades lunged then, as mercurial as the real thing. Harry slammed his bloodied palms up and watched them recoil. But it didn't really hurt, without a heart. A small sting rather than a flash of a blade. It wouldn't win a fight. It bought him enough time to send himself crashing into the nearest mirror.

Tom gasped at the shock of it, clutching his chest.
"What are you doing? That is not our game-"

Harry smashed another mirror. His ears rang, skin slicing up under the shards raining down on his bare feet. The nearest figures cracked like ice after a long winter, stirring and wrenching the shadows coils away from their bodies.

Tom's gaze snapped to them, back to Harry, back to the mirrors.

Harry snatched up a shard, holding it out between them as a weapon. Breathing harsh.

"You wouldn't," Tom hissed. "You want to go back to that pitiful existence you had the audacity to call your life? Nobody wanted you. I am the only creature that has ever wanted you. I was your salvation!"

"Turns out," Harry said. "I don't need anyone to be my salvation. Thank you for teaching me that. Now give me my heart, and maybe I can still be yours. Because god knows that they have been cold for so long that their mercy might be a little lacking after what you did to them."

A flicker of fear crossed the shades' faces, the first Harry had ever seen. Then it was blank again. "They cannot defeat me."

He smashed another mirror, and another as Tom pounced to drag him bodily away from the grand tent. But Harry wasn't alone anymore. The freed human-fey turned on their King, hearts throbbing weapons to lay assault on the hall of mirrors.

They had eaten food. They couldn't leave when Riddle wouldn't let them. Sheer spite perhaps, a desperate clutch for crumbling control over his throne.

Harry needed his heart - the deal had been struck, after all. If not for him, then for them.

Tom's howl as mirrors shattered was the worst sound that Harry had ever heard, something raw and achingly, unnervingly human. The shades began to flicker like a bad connection, growing more shadowy as their power lessened under the unwavering attack.

Harry tore away and sprinted through the hall of mirrors.

It was disorientating. He often found his palms hitting glass, instead of a path, and saw his own frightened eyes and pale face looking back at him more than a few times. He ended up keeping one hand against the wall to track his movements.

He ran, breathing heavily, the absence in his chest a vacuum, a siren song that tugged him along – he broke air and staggered to a halt.

"Tom…"

In the centre, upon the ringmaster's chair, sat a boy.

A boy with dark hair and dark eyes that held a different kind of knowing. Sucked dry of colour, skin crystallized by glass with a top hat sitting on his head. Inside his transparent chest rested a heart almost obliterated by shadow. It didn't shine, couldn't penetrate the darkness smothering it as it pulsed weakly against its restraints.

It wasn't Harry's heart. It wasn't a fey's heart either, glassy and perfect, despite its casing.

He saw his own in the treasure box that Tom had always kept him in - radiating light even closed and locked.

How did a Fey King end up with a court of ghosts and no one like him? They didn't. Unless a Fey King had been a human once too.

Harry swallowed, staring at the faded thing as he stepped closer to the throne. He forced himself not to get distracted. He smashed the hated treasure box and plucked his heart out. Warm rushed him so hard and fast that it brought him shuddering to his knees.

He had forgotten what warmth felt like. He'd forgotten what being whole felt like.
He turned again to the boy in the throne, to the six mirrors behind him.

All he needed to do was smash them, and it would all be over.

The tendrils of shadow spread from the trapped and broken heart in Tom's chest into the six mirrors. Even as Harry watched, tendrils of control dissipated away as more and more hearts in the fairy ring were freed from their bonds. Each time they did, the glass boy splintered a little. Chipped a little. Broke a little more.

He needed to focus on the mirrors but he moved closer instead. The light of his heart faded as it settled back in its rightful place.

"I have my heart back - free them now," he told the glass boy. "We had a deal."

The glass shattered and Tom stirred on the chair - but the darkness coiled around his heart didn't let up. It stayed wrapped around him like a monstrous serpent, even as the house of mirrors crashed down around them.

Harry glanced around him. Everywhere, hearts and light sped towards the door.
The last, final six mirrors stayed standing.

Tom blinked, before meeting his gaze.
"Hello Harry," he said. "Are you enjoying yourself?" There was no purr in his voice this time.

"Tell me how to help you."

Tom laughed at the demand. His eyes remained cold, hard, unforgiving.
"If you break those mirrors, you shatter the connection with the human world. You know that. You will be trapped here with me, for all eternity. You won't be able to save yourself."

"Tell me how to help you." Harry begged it now, reaching out a hand to caress the writhing shadow. It hurt his fingers it was so cold, he didn't know how Tom could stand it.

"No."

Harry let his eyes trail over worn clothes, over ribs sticking out a starved body.

"There is nothing here for you to rule anymore," he said through gritted teeth. "Tell me how to help you."

"You are free to go, Harry Potter. You have your heart, you never ate, there is nothing to keep you here. You are free to go, that was our deal. Now run."

The circus would grow again, Harry was sure of it. The doors to the immortal court were flung open and welcoming, to any lost soul desperate enough to wander into an abandoned fairground. To smile back at a handsome, dark-eyed, charming boy.

Harry plucked the ringmaster's hat off Tom's head and set it jauntily on his own, staring Tom down as the boy's eyes widened in shock.

Harry flung himself at the glass and felt his heart shine and shine and shine.

In a field in England there is a fairy ring. A small, perfect circle of grass and wildflowers with a flyer half buried into the dirt.

The Circus of Riddles.
Open Halloween Night Only.

No one has ever heard of such a thing.

But even eternity doesn't last forever.

A/N: It's done! It was a bitch to write, but it is done. I hope you all enjoyed it, and would love some feedback if you did! :)