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Tom's day had started pretty well, all things considered, in the way days start well when they're about to fuck you over violently and repeatedly for the sole reason that you've naively dropped your guard and that life really had been too nice to you for a while.
“Hi, Tom, can I sit there?” Harry Good Days Destroyer Potter asked, already sitting down. “This is the last empty seat.”
The coffee shop was mostly empty, but this seat was, in fact, the only empty seat for someone wanting to ruin Tom's day, the other being the seat Tom was on, but then he was pretty sure he would have cursed Potter right here and now if the little monster had dared sit on his lap.
“Sure,” Tom said, gritting his teeth while very much not pushing any of his things aside to give Harry some space for his. “I thought you were—what was it already? Oh, yes, on the run.”
Harry shrugged, sipping on the overly sweet abomination he called coffee. “No one knows I'm here, I can be here and on the run.”
He then proceeded to draw a Venn diagram on Tom's napkin, showing very nicely that Harry Potter had the worst handwriting in existence.
“I know you're here. The employees know you're here.”
Potter proudly shoved his cup into Tom's face.
The name written on it looked like someone had tried to write James without knowing the English alphabet then had suffered a stroke every two letters before abandoning the whole endeavour midway and adding a few unreadable pen strokes for decoration.
“You know that your actual name is common enough for you to use it, right?”
No answer.
“Right?”
Potter grinned like a loon.
“What did you even ask them to write this time?”
Tom immediately regretted asking when Potter made a sound that might have been James if it were said by some sort of eldritch creature stuck in a blender with a trumpet.
“Did I ever do something to you in a past life for you to hate me so much?” Tom said, because he was a lot of things and a little hypocritical piece of shit was one of them. Sure, he knew that Voldemort was currently trying to hunt down Potter and murdering all of his friends and family—oops, already did that—but it wasn't his fault.
Well, except for the Basilisk Incident, but then Tom thought that it really hadn't been his fault, and that Potter should have known better than to egg on a sixteen year old boy with a god complex.
Not that Tom had lost the god complex, mind you, but now he was actually better at backing up his claim of divinity, which meant that he could kill Potter—twelve or seventeen or however old that trickster creature was currently pretending to be—and was just going choosing not to for the sake of his sanity.
If someone could become a ghost through sheer spite, it was certainly him, and Tom was not risking an eternity with him there, thank you very much.
Maybe, he thought, that's why some people think immortality is a curse.
It sounded nice to Tom, but he also would look for ways to get rid of it if he were there.
Potter, who had, for the last few seconds, been fantastically quiet, chose that moment to answer. “You look like someone I hated in school,” he said, his smile sweet like a cupcake with arsenic in its icing. “Also, you have the same name. Nickname. Whatever, the Tom I knew certainly wasn't named Thomaseus. ”
Tom wasn't, either— well, he was now, kind of, because Fate hated him and curiosity had killed the proverbial cat alongside his perfectly good name—but explaining would mean actually telling Potter who he was and he was not suicidal enough to do that.
If the imp was annoying right now, he didn't want to know what he would do if he knew.
*
One month earlier, 30th of June 1997
*
Tom was not having a very good day.
He wouldn't go as far as to say it was a bad day, since Dumbledore finally, finally had the decency to keel over and give him enough energy to get his body back, but it definitely could have been better.
Now, if the old goat had been obliging enough as to die when he was actually scheduled to—id est, not now— it would even have been a Great Day, uppercase and all, but as things go, it seems like the ancient bastard had decided to fuck Tom over one last time and just died right as Tom was haunting that one Muggle.
It could have been worse, sure, they could have been in public, but Tom had just gotten yeeted into existence in front of someone and one person was one person too much.
No hard feelings—mostly because he didn't have his wand so it wasn't like he could cast a killing curse with those, but also, much to his horror, Tom had to admit he had gotten vaguely attached—but the Muggle had to die. Pronto.
Then he'd finally get clothes. Even more pronto.
So here he was.
Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort, the Dark Lord in the flesh—and not much else, apart from hair, very pretty hair—choking a Muggle with his Muggle necklace in a stupid Muggle flat.
Except he didn't have the decency to die with his mouth shut—where were quick deaths when you needed them?—and he had the gall to talk nonsense.
“Are you an evil Jedi?”
First off, what, secondly, what, thirdly, what the fuck does that even mean and what kind of dying words are these.
Tom wasn't the kind of man to waste a thirdly on a single point.
“A what?” he asked smoothly, because he was Lord fucking Voldemort, and he was always smooth, even when he was completely baffled.
The Muggle answered his nice question with choking noises, which wasn't very polite at all, but, well, he'd die soon anyway, so Tom called back some of his magic, just enough to keep the necklace pressing against his throat.
“Uh,” was the first, very intelligent thing the Muggle said. Maybe Tom shouldn't have followed him around just because he was rich and pretty and easy to possess and—
Nevermind, he had been the perfect victim, just not the perfect person to interrogate. “A Jedi? But bad? There's a word for that, I think?”
“What's a Jedi?”
The Muggle had the nerve to look at him with something akin to pity. “You don't know? Darling, you need to watch Star Wars.”
And that was how Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort, Heir—he really needed to get around to getting his lordship at some point, this was getting embarassing—of Slytherin and Dark Lord Supreme™ found himself on a very pretty couch, watching a movie on the best television the market had to offer.
This—not that he would ever admit it—hadn't been part of the plan.
“So, uh.” The last movie of the trilogy had just ended and now the Muggle was awkwardly shifting on his couch. “It might be a bit late to ask, but who are you?”
A few thoughts registered at the same time in Tom's brain:
Thought one: he'd been watching the same Muggle for almost the entirety of the past year, and annoying or not, he'd gotten vaguely attached to the man, like he'd been somewhat fond of his Knights at some point, just because he was pretty, ridiculously smart when he wasn't being a complete dumbass, and he obeyed Tom—not that he had a choice when Tom possessed him, but he still appreciated the complete lack of fight.
Which meant: he didn't actually want the Muggle dead, not when he was some kind of annoying pet, Tom had the vexing tendency to kill first and miss—not miss, exactly, he wasn't this stupid—dead people later, but now that he'd actually calmed down—having clothes and food helped, a lot— he was feeling a whole lot less murdery.
Moreover: the Muggle had a dead brother named Tommy —short for Thomas, surely—and that was a sign of Fate because Tom did not believe in coincidences.
“I'm your brother,” he said, with all the poise of someone who'd just watched Darth Vader make his big reveal not that long ago and was currently wandlessly and silently laying a respectable quantity of confusion charms.
The Muggle's eyes filled with tears but he was smart enough not to throw himself at Tom, probably because he'd been half-strangled not that long ago. Maybe he could be taught some things, then.
“You're alive?”
Well, he was right here , wasn't he?
“Yes, yes, obviously,”
“I'm so happy that you're back, Thomaseus, and you even have powers!”
Thomas— what now.
“What.”
“Your Jedi powers? Did someone fake your death because they found out about them?”
“Yes, sure, something like that,” Tom answered, waving off the questions. “Now what was that about Thomaseus? ”
“Your name?”
“It's just a nickname, right?”
The Muggle looked away, like a coward.
“Right?”
The silence was heavy and soul-destroying—mostly for Tom, who was already just three quarters of a soul—in the way silences could be when you learned a horrible, horrible truth about yourself.
The last time it had happened, Tom had been fifteen and he'd just realised that yes, he did find Abraxas pretty—not just pretty annoying —and had quite the urge to punch his stupid face with his lips.
“Oh, sweet Merlin.”
The Muggle seemed to take that as his cue to grab Tom's arm and drag him towards the flat door.
“Anyway!” Yes, sure, sweep his fucking name under the anyway rug, who in hell named their child Thomaseus? Even the Muggle had an actual, sensible name, not that Tom remembered it. “Let's go grab a drink downstairs and catch up.”
Oh, yes.
The coffee shop.
Tea or Termination was a weird name, but it did look very nice, like a mix of Hogwarts' different common room and the greenhouse, very relaxing and homey with plants everywhere.
Tom had almost forgotten it was there, right beneath the flat. Maybe he could pretend that everything was Fine™ and that Abraxas had just dragged him here to “see what's so fun about the Muggle world”—nothing, Abraxas, nothing, they had been in the middle of a war— or at least, if that failed, drown his sorrow in tea.
Tea always helped, unless you were in Dumbledore's office and he was making vague threats while watching you sip on his disgustingly sweet lemon tea, then it was horrible and a choking hazard.
“Oh, hi, Achilles!” the girl at the bar chirped when she saw them coming down the stairs, waving at the Muggle before looking curiously at him.
Achilles Holmes.
That was the idiot's name.
How Tom had forgotten that, he had no idea, but then he had just been a little bit occupied with the fact that he suddenly had a body.
“Hi, Sam! Can we get some hot chocolate and, uh—” He froze, turning to Tom. “What do you want?”
Dumbledore doubly dead? All of his horcruxes back in his grasp? His other self gaining some sense?
Tom scowled at the menu. None of these options were there.
“Whatever. Some kind of tea?”
“We have the tea list written down here,” Sam said, pointing to part of the menu helpfully. “If you want something else, we also have matcha? As a latte or without milk.”
Tom had no idea what a matcha or a latte was, but just like Jedis, he now had to know, thank you very much.
“A matcha latte then,” he said, before smiling his best smile—the one that had made him ridiculously popular despite the fact that he was a Slytherin and a head boy to boot—and adding: “Please.”
She blushed, smiling back, and Tom counted that as a victory against his other self.
Take that, soul piece.
It wasn't like he really had a winning smile anymore, considering he looked like a mix between an unfortunately ugly snake and a sad potato of a man.
“What name should I write for you?”
Achilles, the traitor —Tom would find a way to cast a Crucio without a wand, at some point , but for now a stinging hex on the sole of his feet would suffice—spoke before Tom could and absolutely ruined all of his chances at getting rid of the name easily.
“Thomaseus!”
Sam blinked. The other clients blinked. The cash register, somehow, blinked.
Tom suddenly wished that he had never created horcruxes, just caved to peer pressure and become a politician.
“Thomaseus?” someone asked, behind them, and Tom turned around to say something around the line of no, thank you, Tom is just fine, actually, never say that name in front of me again, before aggressively attempting crowd obliviation without a wand, only to come face to face with fucking Harry Potter.
At least, Tom had the joy of seeing the little bastard—Tom did not forgive or forget, sure, his horcrux had set a basilisk on the boy, but being stabbed hurt —look just as surprised as he felt.
“Riddle?”
Tom blinked, doing his best impression of a cash register. “Sorry?”
And Achilles, the wonderful, wonderful man—maybe Tom would not attempt to Crucio him just yet—threw his arm around Tom's shoulder, grinning like the dumbass he was.
“What riddle? That's just his name.”
“Please call me Tom,” he said to Potter, just because seeing his face go from white to vaguely green was very entertaining. “Thomaseus is such a mouthful, you know?”
“Sure, I didn't even know that was a name.”
Tom was pretty sure that it wasn't, in fact, a name, but rude.
“Well, it's one,” Tom replied, you know, like a liar, right as Achilles said, “Mother wanted to go with Theseus, Father preferred Thomas, they asked me to pick but I couldn't choose.”
Oh, the bastard.
Tom pointedly didn't let his annoyance show on his face, though he's pretty sure anyone with half passable legilimency could hear him scream internally.
Potter was, fortunately, as bad at reading minds as he was at dying nicely when asked to.
“And who are you?” Tom asked, holding on to his last shred of dignity with everything he had.
“James,” Potter replied, a little bit too fast. “James. Jamie. Jim. That's me.”
He was the shittiest liar Tom had ever seen, and Tom had had the dubious pleasure of watching Crabbe and Goyle attempt to convince Slughorn that they had, in fact, written their own essays.
“Nice name.”
Not his, but nice still.
Potter rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, looking like he was torn between saying something else to change the subject and punching Tom because he was, well, Tom, but the cashier calling their names—and sounding very confused about Tom's—cut him off.
Finally, Tom was able to glance upon his drink.
It was. Uh. Very green.
Killing curse green, even, the type of colour you expected a potion to take, but one that didn't make you want to drink it very much.
Still, Tom was not a coward, so he blew a bit on the steaming liquid, glanced at it for a few more seconds—wondering whether the Muggles had somehow found him out and we're now trying to murder him—before taking an hesitant sip.
Oh.
“Sweet—” Not Merlin, Potter was right here and Tom was trying to act Muggle. Somewhat. “—Vader .”
That was nice, very nice, in fact, and the way Potter was now choking on whatever his drink was made it taste all the sweeter.
*
1st of July
*
Except that the next time Tom came—id est the next day—to get his newly dubbed Godly Nectar and Potion Of Eternal Happiness, Potter was there. Again.
Looking just as annoying as ever, too, Tom had much preferred him when he was twelve and dying, but then he also preferred not being stabbed, so he wasn't going to try and re-enact that. Yet.
“Tom! Here again?”
Where else? Potter's eyes did work from behind the thick lenses of his glasses, right?
“No,” Tom said, moving to sit at one of the tables. Potter sat in the chair facing him and Tom immediately stood up again. “Anyway!” The anyway rug always worked if you swept things under it hard enough.
Potter, however, seemed intent on holding onto Tom's metaphorical broom.
“I just remembered that I have things to do. Outside. Bye.”
Tom did not run out of the shop, but he came close and immediately ducked into the nearest alley, walking fast until he was certain that Potter hadn't followed him.
The problem being that Tom also had no idea where he was and that his drink was cold.
Warming charms did not, unfortunately, point him to Achilles'—and his, now—flat, but now his drink was at a nice temperature again, which made being lost a little bit more bearable.
Not that he was lost, of course, Lord Voldemort didn't get lost, he was simply taking the scenic route. The very, very, scenic route.
How the fuck had London had changed so much in fifty odd years? Where were the ruins? The bombs? The people running around in fear?
Unlike Hogwarts, where Tom had created a whole system of assigning every single corridor a number—they were visible and came along with a list of instructions, if you were ready to make Tom's purse a bit heavier—to be sure he—and all of his customers—would never lose his way, he just remembered London visually.
His memory of it was perfect, of course, everything he did was—except, maybe, choosing Muggle pets, but surely he could be forgiven since it was his first—but the problem was that London did not look similar to what he remembered.
At all.
Tom did not give up, because Lord Voldemort wasn't a quitter, but he did apparate into his flat's living room after roaming for two hours.
*
15th of July
*
Potter was still in the coffee shop the next day.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
He was always there, didn't he have a life?
“Why are you here?”
Potter looked up, batting his lashes innocently. “To take a hot chocolate and relax?”
“Listen,” Tom started. Potter gave him a little nod and a smile, as if saying I'm listening. “I know that for some reason, you don't like me or my face, but you don't have to come every day to torment me.”
He really, really, didn't have to.
“I don't see what you mean.” Tom resisted the petty urge to rip off his glasses because then he actually wouldn't see anything and maybe, maybe, he'd stop bothering Tom. “I'm not sure what you think, but I've been coming here since I was fifteen, you can ask the staff.”
Tom was not asking the staff anything except for another cup of matcha latte. The fact that they were friendly with his 'brother' and thought they could be friendly with him too was bad enough as it was.
“What about the fact that you always sit at my table?”
Tom could come back to the flat with his drink, he could, but the coffee shop was nice, reminding him of Hogwarts, and if he went back up then he'd have to deal with Achilles, professional trust fund baby, who spent far too much time in his flat, doing who knows what.
(You-Know-Who knew. Achilles was either painting or writing “that one brilliant mathematics professor from Cambridge named James, you should talk to him, Tom, you'd like him” or doing any of the innumerable inane things he did, just because he had the time and money to. His freedom was why Tom had started following him as a wraith, sure, but at least before he'd go out semi-regularly, now he pretty much stayed in the flat when he knew Tom was there, the bastard.)
It didn't change the fact that Potter would always , invariab ly, come to sit up at his table if Tom were there, uncaring if the second chair was missing or if Tom had covered the rest of the table in books, and then just drink , glancing at Tom every now and then like he was waiting for him to start a conversation.
“What on Earth do you want from me?”
Potter grinned, his green eyes twinkling strangely—evilly, the little bastard looked absolutely evil, that's what it was—behind his glasses. “Nothing bad, don't worry your head over it, pretty boy.”
The pretty boy valiantly resisted his killing urges in a way he thought even Dumbledore would have been proud of and tried not to vomit at the thought.
*
1st of September
*
So, Potter had gone into hiding, he'd started visiting less, which had been great for Tom's mental health until the moment he'd realised he was incredibly bored, and life had gone on as well as it could when you were a Dark Lord in hiding waiting for an opportunity to get your power back.
Still, barely two months? Really? That was his maximum when it came to hiding his magic from Potter?
Of course, the fact that Tom was a wizard was always going to come out, at some point or another, he'd snap and strangle someone—Potter—or vanish another someone to a ring of Saturn—still Potter—or, apparently, use a levitation charm to keep his matcha latte from spilling all over the floor.
Potter stared at him, at his cup, then back at Tom.
“Well, that explains the Jedi comment,” he said, before taking a bite of the cherry shortbread he'd bought, like it was a perfectly normal thing to say.
“You know what a Jedi is?”
“Why wouldn't I?”
“You're Harry Potter,” Tom whisper-yelled.
“Yes, and I trust you won't tell anyone?” Potter what now. “Honestly, you've had plenty of opportunities to call—hmm… company before and you haven't, so you're probably as trustworthy as they come.” Tom really, really wasn't. “Anyway, I live with Muggles and I have ears, of course I know what Jedis are.”
Well, fuck him too.
Tom should kill him just for that statement alone.
He wouldn't, though, not because he couldn't—though the lack of wand was certainly a disadvantage against another wizard who knew he had magic—but simply because he was Better Than That.
Killing teens was something his soul shard did—he was honestly starting to understand why—and Tom wasn't going to stoop so low. Yet.
“I guess,” Tom replied sullenly, because it wasn't like he could tell anyone, not if he wanted to keep the coffee shop running or his freedom.
Not that he cared about the coffee shop, but their matcha latte was the best he'd had in London and he'd murder his soul piece if he took that from him.
“By the way, do you happen to be related to a Tom Riddle?” Potter asked, out of fucking with nowhere. That was direct. “You look rather similar to him.”
Understatement of the century.
Tom frowned, doing his best impression of Abraxas when he didn't want to answer a question—pretty and reasonably brainless—before answering.
“Not that I know of? How old is he supposed to be?”
“Uh.” And he could see Potter mentally making the calculation for a few seconds. “Seventy-ish?”
“You think I look like a seventy-year-old man?” Tom asked with a pleasant, almost sweet smile.
Potter was smart enough to see Death when it stared at him from Tom's dark eyes. “Similar! Similar! And I saw a picture of him when he was sixteen, alright?”
“Well. No idea. Maybe some kind of grandfather? Or great-uncle? You should ask Achilles, I suppose, he'll probably know.”
He would know exactly what Tom wanted him to know, at least, he just wouldn't remember one of his grandfathers having ever been in the picture and boom, mystery solved, he was now his own love child. Love grandchild? Whatever.
“And, uh, you didn't go to Hogwarts, did you? I think I would have recognised you.”
“Is that supposed to be the name of a location?” Tom asked, twisting his face in a passable imitation of Walburga being shown a Muggle pen for the first time. “Hogwarts? Really?”
“It's a school of witchcraft and wizardry,” Potter supplied helpfully. “Where you learn magic? You know you're a wizard, right?”
“Sure? I didn't go to a school though, that old man faked my death and kidnapped me when I was younger,” Tom lied, mixing his drink with his straw, as if the question brought bad memories back up. “I came back as soon as he died, though.”
“So, you didn't have a formal education? I didn't know that was something you could do.”
Tom shrugged, and Potter, for once somewhat mollified, had the decency to shut up.
That was a great afternoon.
*
26th of September
*
Then Potter had gone even more into hiding—apparently? It was hard to tell when he still showed up to the coffee shop—with his friends to escape from the Ministry and Tom's life had gotten more complicated still.
He knew that Potter wasn't just running from his other self, it was obvious, if only because Dumbledore had known about the horcruxes and he wouldn't have let his own protégé remain ignorant, not with Lord Voldemort still alive, which meant that Potter was most likely looking for his horcruxes.
That wasn't great.
Sure, if things worked out like they had before with his diary, he'd still get the soul pieces by sole virtue of being the largest one, but what would happen afterwards?
After Tom eliminated his other self and Potter?
He would be whole again, which was better than his soul being lost forever, but he'd have to make his horcruxes again, and both the process and the search for objects he liked enough had been tortuous enough for him not to want a repeat performance.
Ever.
Splitting your soul wasn't the kind of thing you usually took as a hobby.
Plus, it would mean that he would have to work with only half of his soul—if he only made one horcrux—and diary Tom had proved that this wasn't such a great idea since he'd been beaten by a twelve year old and a glorified chicken.
No. Nah. Nope.
No more of that, thank you very much, which meant that Tom needed to get to his horcruxes before Potter destroyed them. Somehow. While having no idea where they could be.
He had thoughts about what his sixteen and seventeen year old selves would have chosen, but seeing as his other self had gradually lost his rationality with every horcrux, he was pretty sure he'd gone off the rails at some point or another.
Probably when he'd started murdering half of the wizarding population, that sounded about right.
Still, Potter had just gotten there, looking remarkably tired for such a spawn of chaos, and he hadn't even said anything to Tom apart from a mumbled hi.
“Potter.”
That only made him look up from his drink, but at least that was a reaction.
“I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help you,” Tom said, doing his best not to choke on the words. “With the whole running from the lord of darkness guy?”
Potter blinked, looking genuinely surprised, and then he grinned, bright and warm. “I can't think of anything right now, but I'll ask my friends! There are definitely things to do.”
Cool, great, except Tom wanted to help with one (1) thing and he was pretty sure it didn't involve Potter's entourage.
“I could come with you?” he offered with carefully crafted shyness and hesitancy. “I get it if you don't trust me, though, but your friends might be more open to me helping if they at least know who I am.”
Potter nodded. “That could work, actually, I could bring them here tomorrow to talk—the shop will be closed, right? 'Mione will probably insist on warding it as much as possible so it'll be better if no one else is there.”
Tomorrow.
“That works.”
Now all Tom needed to do was steer Potter's little friends into liking him.
*
27th of September
*
The whole endeavour turned out to be almost ridiculously easy.
They both—Weasley and Granger, Tom knew their names from the diary, but it wasn't like he had bothered remembering them—had been quite annoyed at Potter for coming to the coffee shop every time he said he was going on a little walk to clear his head, but once Tom provided drinks and snacks he had bought before and preserved, they were easily placated.
“So, uh, who are you, exactly?” Weasley asked, munching on a scone but looking at Tom with surprisingly sharp eyes.
Not book smart—not like Granger or Tom himself—but emotionally intelligent, then?
“Thomaseus Holmes, but please call me Tom. My brother owns the shop, but he's a Muggle.”
“You weren't at Hogwarts,” Granger said next, doing a much worse job at hiding her suspicion than Weasley had.
“Homeschooled, if you can call being kidnapped that.”
“Kidnapped?”
“Things happen,” Tom said, shrugging like he was talking about bad weather. “It's a long story.”
Very long, in fact, mostly because Tom loved planning—it was not daydreaming when it could be useful—and he had great inspiration—Dumbledore—to make up tales about an unhinged old man bullying a small child.
“Can we hear it later?”
Tom decided that Weasley was his new favourite person—sorry, Abraxas, but then the bastard had the nerve to die before Tom told him to—if he actually listened to him ramble about his fake kidnapping and his hatred of Not-Dumbledore.
“Of course,” Tom replied easily, sipping on his thermos of matcha latte.
This thing really had no right to taste this good; he'd need to add some expansion runes to his thermos if he ever had to leave the coffee shop.
“And you want to help?”
“If you'll allow me. I didn't want to get pulled back into the wizarding world since the memories associated with it really aren't great, but as annoying as Potter is, I don't want him to die.” Yet. Die yet. But well, it still technically wasn't a complete lie.
“I told you he loved me! I've been coming here for months, he knew who I was and he never ratted me out!”
Tom choked on his latte and started coughing. “I don't even like you, shut up.”
Granger and Weasley exchanged the Knowing Look of Whatever The Fuck They Thought They Saw™ and Tom resisted the urge to rip out their stupid eyes.
“Well, maybe you could come with us for a while?”
“Where are you staying?”
“Depends? Mostly forests.”
Forests?
“What.”
“To avoid attention.”
“You know that most wizards would never look into the Muggle part of London, right?” They all looked completely baffled. “Potter. You come here nearly every day. You did come here every day before going on the run. You do realise that this is only possible because of that, right?”
And because Tom had layered as many runes as he could pretty much everywhere , but he wasn't about to mention that.
“It sounded necessary?”
“My flat is warded against most things, you could stay there,” Tom offhandedly offered.
Then he realised what he had just said.
Fuck.
He did not want to live with three teenagers, especially not Potter.
“But then, I suppose this wouldn't be secure enough, forget I even offered—”
“That sounds like a great idea, actually,” Potter grinned, like the absolute master of evil he was. “As Tom said, I've been coming here for a very long while and I've yet to be found out, it's safe.”
Tom mentally screamed, sobbed and threw up.
Outwardly, he put on his patented headboy smile and quietly died inside.
“Well, that's settled then, perfect!”
*
17th of December
*
Potter was wearing Tom's locket under Tom's fucking jumper.
Potter was wearing Tom's fucking soul under Tom's stupid reindeer jumper.
“That's a funny looking necklace you have there,” he said casually.
“Oh, yeah, I guess. It's your grandpa's.”
“Whomst?” Tom asked intelligently.
Then he remembered the fact that his cover story included him being his own grandchild and he mentally cursed himself.
“Jussst joking.” Potter's smile was just a little too sharp, his s sounding far too sibilant. “Anyway—” the anyway rug struck again, backhanding Tom across the face. “—do you happen to know how to cast Fiendfyre?”
On one hand, lying would allow him to look less dark than he really was, on the other… it could finally be the opportunity Tom had been waiting for, and sometimes you just had to take risks to get any returns on your investments.
“If I have a wand, sure.”
Potter reared back, the smile slipping off his face. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Tom replied, idly cleaning his nails. Not that he had to clean them since they were already spotless, but appearances mattered.
“Really?”
“Why would I lie?”
Potter blinked. “I honestly have no idea, but, wow. I thought this would be more complicated. Can you cast it right now if I lend you my wand?”
“Not in my flat , no. Well, I could but I wouldn't. Plus, your wand would need to be compatible with me and—” Tom froze, casting a suspicious glance at Potter like he had just realised what he was asking. “Wait, why do you even need that kind of fire for?”
And that was how Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort and Dark Lord Supreme™, ended up sitting in his very Muggle living room, listening to Harry Potter badly explain the concept of horcruxes.
What had his life come to?
*
In the end it was easy, ridiculously easy. Tom took Potter's wand, acted like he was surprised that it worked at all even though he had known— remembered— that it would, and cast a weak Fiendfyre while focusing the rest of his magic on an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors.
First: an immaterial copy appeared right over the horcrux, masking the fact that Tom had made the real one invisible and Accio-ed it—it was a lot more cooperative when it knew it would end up into its creator's hands—into his pocket.
Second: he set the fire onto the fake, making the metal writhe and scream , adding a humanoid-shaped black smoke trying to leave and getting destroyed for effect.
Third: profit, because his horcrux was in his pocket.
“I think I love you, Thomaseus,” Potter told him, staring at the melted locket with eyes wide with wonder.
“It's Tom, Potter,” he replied, handing back the wand—and very much ignoring the feeling of loss its absence brought—focusing on the comforting weight of his horcrux against his thigh.
“Only if you call me Harry, otherwise I'm sticking to Thomaseus.”
Tom sighed.
Sometimes you won some and lost some, Harry it was.
It was probably the elation at having recovered his horcrux that made the celebration party—featuring a confused but supportive Achilles—actually enjoyable, and certainly not Po— Harry taking his hand and insisting they dance to a dumb Muggle song.
*
24th of December
*
“Why do you want to go to Godric's whatever already?” Tom asked idly, carefully adding runes on his thermos.
At this point, he wasn't sure this could be called expansion runes anymore, that sounded too small for the void he had created inside the small 50mL container.
He hadn't tested it yet, mostly because he wasn't done and because the runes were messing with the insulation and so he'd have to fix that if he wanted his latte to be warm, but he was pretty sure that, at this point, he had enough litres to feed the whole of Hogwarts' student body a few times over.
Tom was never the type of man to stop at acceptable.
“We're thinking that Bathilda Bagshot might have the Sword of Gryffindor, so we need to talk to her,” Granger— Hermione, she insisted—replied, not focusing on the conversation much more than Tom since she was currently looking at the few notes Tom had written about his use of runes to do basically everything when she had asked.
Also because she was leaning against Weasley while he watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but then Tom had Harry's head on his lap and he was focusing just fine.
Mostly.
“Oh, nice. Why do we need the sword already?”
There was a moment of utter silence as even the Nazi inside the television paused to ponder his words. Well, the Nazi was just taking a breath to continue his monologue, but he was quiet too, at least.
“I was going to say that we need it to destroy the horcruxes, but we really don't, do we?”
Not really, no, not when they were willing to let Tom fool them into thinking he was destroying them.
“Oh,” Potter just said, without even moving his head. “Yeah, we probably don't need it then.”
“It's the Sword of Gryffindor though, we can't just give up on it.” Weasley's argument would work a bit better if he had least tried to sound convinced. If he stopped to watch the movie too, perhaps. “It doesn't feel right.”
“Well, we'll get it once the war is over, problem solved.”
*
Tom was not, in fact, waiting for the end of the war—or the end of the day—to get the sword.
That was his sword—
Well, maybe it wasn't really, but it would be soon enough, and Tom, as the heir—he made a note to get his lordship at Gringotts—of Slytherin probably was the one with the most rights to another founder's heirloom.
Plus, he would finally finish his collection, since he was pretty sure that the sword wasn't a horcrux already, not with how easily Harry had been able to wield it to kill his beautiful basilisk—
And, sure, his collection wouldn't be officially complete until he got his hands on the cup and the diadem again, but he had to get those anyway.
So that was it.
He was getting his sword back, thank you very much; the only problem was that if Bathilda Bagshot was waiting for Harry Potter, she most likely wouldn't be very amenable to Tom, especially since he was Tom Marvolo Riddle, so he decided to fix that by just lightly stealing Harry's identity.
It wasn't as much identity theft as identity borrowing, really.
Plus, with Harry and his friends under a light sleeping charm back at the flat, it would hardly bother him.
Great. Fantastic.
Only problem being that Batty Bathilda was weird.
Like, somehow speaks in parseltongue, weird .
Tom hadn't expected that when he'd knocked at her door and been ushered inside, and the thing was, Tom was pretty sure Voldemort didn't have kids after separating himself from Tom, so there weren't many options.
Bagshot was being possessed.
“Alright, let's cut to the chase,” Tom hissed the moment the door closed behind them, dropping the charms changing his face. He would have cancelled the rest too, but he had borrowed Harry's clothes, and he was pretty sure Harry would notice if they suddenly went missing. “Which horcrux are you?”
And Bagshot's face folded away, showing the rotten flesh beneath to reveal the snake wearing her like a skin suit, ew, ew, ew.
“Master? You smell like Master, are you another part of his soul?”
What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, Tom loved snakes, he really did, but who made an animal, an horcrux?
What would happen when it died? Would the horcrux be the corpse as a whole? Some bone? Or would his soul go back to him?
Tom very much Didn't Want To Know.
“He's another part of my soul,” Tom corrected.
The snake perked up, if such a thing was possible when one were a snake, and then it practically threw itself at Tom, curling around him.
“Master! Am I doing well on my mission?”
Maybe? Probably, if the snake has a part of Tom's soul?
How was he even supposed to tell when he didn't know what the assignment was?
“Of course, uh—”
“Nagini,” the snake supplied, like it was normal for its— her, Tom realised—Master to forget her name.
Maybe Voldemort really was insane enough for it to be a normal occurrence?
“Yes, you're doing just great, Nagini, you'll have to continue keeping company to your other Master for now, though, alright?”
She didn't look very adverse to that, but then Tom was almost certain that at least half of her diet consisted of humans, so that might be why.
“Should I pass on a message? He's been looking for the others to make sure they're fine.”
The other horcruxes , Tom understood.
“Could you not tell him about me at all?”
Nagini oscillated from right to left, hesitant, before she seemed to decide that Tom, as the holder of the biggest soul piece, was obviously first in the hierarchy.
“Alright ,” she said, presenting her head to be petted before slithering out of the house to—
To what?
Tom wondered for a few seconds until Lord Voldemort just fucking popped into existence next to the snake.
Did they have some kind of telepathic bond?
Did that mean Voldemort had seen the whole conversation?
Did that mean Tom also had a telepathic bond with the snake?
First, obviously.
Second, obviously not as he had yet to run into the house to get Tom, or to notice him staring even.
Third, probably?
The locket—now glamoured and safely around his neck—warmed up against his skin, but it wasn't like Tom knew how one went about reconnecting with the errand parts of his soul.
With thoughts whirling inside his mind, Tom waited until Voldemort left to apparate back into his flat, tuck Harry's wand and clothes where he had taken them, and sprawl on the couch to wait for the others to wake up.
Unsurprisingly—considering that they had all drank the potion at the same time—they left their rooms within a few minutes of each other.
“Were we asleep for so long?” Hermione asked, staring at the clock and seemingly reconsidering all of the decisions that had led her to drinking with them the previous night.
“I had time to meet a snake so I'd say that, yes.”
Three people blinked at him and Tom happily continued to read his book.
“You met a snake?” Weasley asked, looking more curious than afraid. “Oh, wait, you can talk to them like Harry, I forgot about that bit. Neat, it might be helpful to do scouting and having a pet that can understand you sounds terrific.”
Tom froze, his fingers hovering over the page he had been about to flip.
“Harry can talk to snakes?”
Harry nodded, like it made any sense for a Potter to speak parseltongue.
“Yup, something I got from Mr. V.”
Alright, alright, but people didn't just get your hereditary traits because they didn't die when you tried to kill them. It just didn't happen. Sure, Harry was the first and only person to survive a killing curse, but magic tended to like to follow the same rules no matter what spell you used, if the end result was the same.
Thought one: it made no sense.
Thought two: it didn't happen just because of the killing curse, but because of a combination of conditions that either Tom, Harry or both had checked.
Thought three: when you have eliminated all which is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, and the only way Tom had ever shared parseltongue with someone—or some things— had been by possessing people or turning objects in horcruxes.
Harry wasn't being possessed.
Harry was a horcrux.
Oh.
“What was the snake's name, by the way? Do snakes even have names?”
What a stupid question.
“Snake,” Tom replied, lost in thoughts.
What a stupid answer.
“Snake?”
It was at that moment, with Hermione staring at him with open incredulity, Harry and Weasley snickering, and Nagini looking utterly unimpressed for a snake from inside his mind, that Tom realised he had fucked up.
“Yes, Snake,” he repeated, because mistakes were only mistakes if you admitted to them, otherwise they were misunderstood strokes of genius. “Got any problems with that?”
Everyone smartly stayed silent, and no one asked after Snake again when Tom told her that she had a family and that she would be staying with them.
Tom only realised two days later that he still didn't have the Sword of Gryffindor.
*
15th of March, 1998
*
Tom's thermos was done .
Finally.
Sure, it could hold more matcha latte than he could ever drink in a lifetime, but with the conservation runes, it would stay good, and the warming runes ensured it would stay the perfect temperature.
Or—
Well, in theory.
Practice hadn't seemed to appreciate the expansion runes, or maybe it was the runes that turned the solid metal into a malleable texture whenever Tom tapped the bottom of it?
It had seemed like a good idea, alright, a nice little fidget thermos monstrosity that he could just keep inside his pocket, but now he had to cast an overpowered cooling charm every time he wanted to drink, which was slightly annoying.
“Want to give it a taste?” Tom asked Harry, stopping his mistreatment of his thermos—he'd frozen its current shape so that it had the shape of his fingers and he thought it was funny to see Harry try to fit the imprint with his smaller hand—to hand it over.
“Sure?”
Tom cast the charm and Harry grimaced, slicking his lips like his tongue felt weird, which it probably did.
“What was that for?”
“Cooling charm. Don't worry about it.”
For some reason, Harry did seem to worry about it, until he took a sip at least. “It's good! Still very warm, though, are you sure you cast your spell right?”
Oh, ye of little faith.
Tom took the thermos back and let a few green drops fall on the chair.
The latte fell through the wood and the poor piece of furniture burst into flames.
“Uh.”
“My runes don't like each other very much,” Tom said sadly.
And apparently reparos didn't like chairs on fire that much either.
Fuck.
*
1st of May, 1998
*
Tom was breaking into Gringotts.
Or—
Well, not really, because Bellatrix had allowed the Heir of Slytherin to access her vault to make sure that the Ministry wouldn't try anything if they were stupid enough to snoop into the reports sent to them every now and then, but Tom, by virtue of being Voldemort, was the Heir of Slytherin.
This was definitely one of the stupidest things he'd ever done, though, right after making horcruxes without reading the fine print at the bottom of the page and kissing Abraxas when they'd been sixteen and drunk.
Mind you, both of these had turned out pretty well for Tom so he was certain—more or less—that this would work out too, but that didn't mean he liked it.
“Good morning,” Tom said, to the goblin teller in front of him. “I'd like to see the Lestrange vault, please. Also, once we're done with that, could I know what I have to do to take my lordship?”
This was bound to be a productive day at least.
*
“Tom! How did it go?” Harry asked, welcoming him back with— ugh —a hug that Tom absolutely did not lean into.
Not in front of Achilles; he didn't want to be teased to death, actually.
“I have it.”
And, wow , both his lordship ring—that he kept hidden—and the cup were kind of ugly.
The Founders didn't have any taste—the Sorting Hat, if nothing else, made that completely obvious—but Tom forgave them because they had made Hogwarts.
“Can we destroy it right now? I think everyone would feel better if it was gone,” Ron said, looking at the cup like it was about to jump and bite him.
The cup practically purred at the thought.
Bad cup.
“Fine with me, I just need a wand.”
Harry handed him his and Tom ended the night with another horcrux 'destroyed' and a transfigured coin deep inside his pocket, warm against his thigh.
*
2nd of May, 1998
*
Honestly, Tom hadn't thought that infiltrating Hogwarts would be this ridiculously easy.
Really? One secret passage leading inside the Room of Requirement and that was it?
Even getting inside one of the houses' common rooms was harder, for Merlin's sake!
Tom hoped that the passage had been added after the Founders' time, because otherwise it was a pretty bad design choice to make a castle with thick walls and strong doors only to add a fun little tunnel to get you directly inside without any hardship.
Sure, not everyone knew about the Room of Requirement, but Lord fucking Voldemort had known about it and hidden part of his soul there .
Speaking of the soul piece, Tom really didn't appreciate having to save it from actual Fiendfyre because a dumb kid—what else could you expect from a Crabbe—had thought it would be a good idea to burn all of them alive.
Really, really, didn't appreciate.
“Give me your wand,” he told Harry, holding out his hand.
Harry looked at him like he was crazy and tugged his arm, trying to get him to take a broom.
“We need to run or we're all going to die,” he hissed back.
“Harry. Harry. You trust me, don't you?” Tom knew he did, the idiot, but then Tom supposed that he actually trusted Potter with his back as well. “Then give me your wand.”
This time Harry obeyed without a word, the fear disappearing from his eyes, entirely replaced by trust and determination.
It was almost adorable, really, Tom would be lying to say that he didn't love this kind of complete faith, so he held the wand high, let the magic gather inside of him, and set it loose.
A less known characteristic of Fiendfyre was that while only the caster—if they didn't lose control of it, like Crabbe had—could extinguish the fire when the spell was cast, anyone casting a stronger Fiendfyre could swallow it.
It was exactly what happened this time, Tom's enormous basilisk rearing back and striking the shapes in the fire before the fire creature could get to them, devouring them whole.
Well, that was fast.
“What the fuck,” a boy who looked like Abraxas' less pretty cousin said intelligently.
“Oh, shut up, Malfoy,” Harry replied, glaring at the blond.
Malfoy, alright.
Was this little brat Abraxas' son? Had he failed that much when educating him?
Tom squinted at the boy, but seeing his features—and the timing, can't forget about the timing—Tom was pretty sure that this was a grandson.
Alright, maybe mini Malfoy's father had fucked up his education then, but Abraxas really should have done his job better if he was serious about providing Tom with good Knights.
But then again, being a Death Eater really didn't sound that glamorous, now did it?
How the mighty—and the pretty, where was Abraxas' grace— had fallen.
“That was a dark spell. Your little friend cast a dark spell,” mini Malfoy insisted.
“So?”
A well placed so? could be very hard to answer, and mini Malfoy was obviously struggling, so Tom took pity on him.
“I did cast a dark spell, but, to be honest, it was mostly because your friend was casting it incorrectly.” Tom turned to Goyle. “You, my unfortunate looking man, are a shame to the house of Slytherin and whoever dares to claim you as family. Plainly put, you suck.”
Tom tossed the—fake—diadem on the ground, pointing Harry's wand at it. “This is how you're supposed to do it when you have a small target.”
The fire devoured the fake and Tom added the usual drama that came with destroying a horcrux—probably? It wasn't like he had really witnessed the diary being destroyed, he'd been in too much pain to watch— and smiled.
“See, easy.”
Mini Malfoy and his goons looked very close to passing out, the cowards.
*
Seeing a man die wasn't a very romantic sight, Tom thought as he watched Snape dramatically pretend that Nagini had actually bitten him with his boyf— Harry.
With his Harry.
But well, at least he was following Tom's instructions—though he had no idea what was up with whole tear thing?—well enough, even if he had made Harry run up to Dumbledore's office for some obscure reason.
*
“Can you Fiendfyre my scar?” Harry asked as soon as he came out of the pensieve.
“What,” Tom replied, which he thought was a perfectly valid answer to his question actually.
“Can you Fiendfyre my scar?”
“Oh, I heard that, don't worry, I meant what the fuck.”
“I'm a horcrux,” Harry admitted quietly, so quietly that Tom wasn't even sure he had actually spoken. “Dumbledore seemed convinced that it meant I had to die, but maybe if you just torch my scar a little, it'll be enough?” He leaned his head against Tom's shoulder, his breathing coming in ragged gasps. “I don't mind a big ugly scar if I'm alive to stare at it, you know? I don't want to die.”
That was good because Tom surprisingly wanted him to stay alive as well. Forever, if possible.
“I'm not casting a Fiendfyre at your face.”
“Tom, please,” Harry insisted, moving back to stare at Tom, his pretty matcha green eyes looking at him in desperation. “I know it's dangerous and that you're afraid of messing up, but I'll be the last horcrux once Nagini is dealt with, so it's either that or going to Voldemort and letting him kill me.”
“You're not.”
Harry stilled, confused.
“I'm not what?”
“The last horcrux,” Tom replied, gently cupping Harry's face between his cold, cold hands. “You're not the last horcrux, Harry, and neither is Nagini. His soul will still be separated in six pieces once Voldemort dies.”
“We destroyed the others.”
“I did,” Tom corrected. “Except, well, I didn't.”
“Why?” Harry asked him, not were you always on his side or did he promise you anything or anything stupid like that, just why.
“Oh, Harry, love—” Or as close to love Tom could get, but it still mattered, it still meant something. “—I couldn't destroy my own soul, now could I? Voldemort is a failure, he split his soul too much to keep his sanity, but you know me. Would you call me insane?”
Harry had the nerve to hesitate.
“Come on! I'm not really sorry about setting a basilisk on you so I won't lie to you and apologise, but have I ever harmed you? Or harmed my Muggle? I don't like his kind but I'm reasonable enough not to murder all of them, unlike that soul shard.”
“I'd still like that apology actually, but—uh. I guess I'd appreciate the honesty more if you hadn't been lying to me.”
Oops?
“Can we talk about it after I kill Voldemort?”
Harry blinked.
“Alright. Good luck with that? Break a leg?” he grimaced. “I'm not sure what the appropriate thing to say is when your dark lord of a boyfriend is going to murder part of him.”
Boyfriend!!
Not that Tom was happy about it or anything silly like that, of course not, he was just noting it, just like he was just making sure Harry knew who he belonged to by kissing him, nothing affectionate involved.
*
The thing was, Voldemort had been expecting Harry, sure, but he was also too surprised by Tom's appearance to start hurling killing curses and asking for Harry to give himself up.
Voldemort stared at Tom.
Tom stared back.
“I didn't think you'd be this ugly, honestly,” Tom said, but his soul shard didn't even have the decency to look furious, simply continuing to stare.
“What are you doing here?”
“I'm afraid I've become quite unfortunately fond of the dumbass you're trying to kill.”
Tom had the distinct impression that Voldemort would be raising a brow if he had any, his lack of reaction screaming which one .
“Potter,” Tom provided helpfully.
His older self's face immediately twisted in disbelief and mild disgust, which, alright , valid, Tom didn't know what he saw in Harry either apart from the fact that he was his horcrux, but it was still rude.
“Potter?”
“Don't worry, I'm surprised too.” Also mildly still pissed at himself, but this wasn't really the moment to think about it. “Anyway, sorry for murdering you, grandpa.”
“Grandpa?”
At this point, Voldemort looked genuinely offended. Also, mildly confused, but as Tom himself would have done—if better—he was aggressively smothering it beneath his annoyance.
“Can we get onto the duel part already?”
Voldemort, who obviously wasn't such a bad man since he was so willing to comply, immediately whipped out his wand and started firing spells at him.
“Expelliarmus!”
At least his soul piece had the sense not to go with killing curses, but the disarming charm might not have been the best thing to cast considering that Tom didn't have a wand.
He was holding a wand shaped object, of course, and waving it around with gusto as he cast his wandless spells, but it was mostly because he'd forgotten to ask Harry for his and at this point trying to Accio it or any other wand in the vicinity would be awkward.
So Tom's 'wand' flew out of his hand and Lord Voldemort was sprayed in the face by matcha latte as hot as the surface of a small sun—Tom had calculated that it was pretty close to five thousands degrees Celsius, which was more than enough to burn skin and pretty much everything else that made up Voldemort.
That looked more painful on a human being than on a chair, uh.
At least everyone was too busy staring at the melting man—it was hard to tell at this point—on the floor to see the soul shard go back to Tom.
Snape—who had been smart enough to hide inside the crowd under multiple glamours to hide both his appearance and the snake around his shoulders—leaned down.
“Is that…” He looked at the green liquid currently sizzling on the floor before sniffing experimentally. “Matcha and milk?”
“Yup,” Tom said, popping the 'p' like the Dark Lord Supreme™ he was, doing his best to shove back years of being Voldemort in a tiny, locked part of his mind for him to examine later.
“You killed the Dark Lord with a drink,” Snape said slowly, as if it didn't make sense even though he had been right there and had clearly seen what had happened.
“He killed himself with my poor thermos, it's not my fault he didn't use the cooling spell on himself.”
Involuntary manslaughter and all that, sure , Tom had been about to cast wandless cutting curses at Voldemort's neck, but no one really needed to know that.
“Anyway!” The good ol' trusty anyway rug. It always worked for murders, Tom would know. “I killed the Dark Lord, can I hear a 'wahoo'?”
The resulting cheer was mostly confused, but, well, better than nothing he supposed.