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i. tom riddle and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
"—no bloody sleep, with your cat mewling all night long—"
"I don't have a cat, Mr. Walerby," Tom says, with an incredible amount of patience. Mr. Walerby, being old and senile and possibly amnesiac, steamrolls right over that, waggling a finger in Tom's face.
"—and don't think I don't know about the girls, Terry," he says, disapproving.
"It's Tom," Tom says idly, though at this point it was neither here nor there. Mr. Walerby will die before he remembers his name. And Tom doesn't even want to start talking about the girls, because there are not any, but Mr. Walerby saw Abraxas leaving Tom's flat late one night and since then, he's been convinced that Tom's running some sort of brothel ring from his one-bedroom. Tom can't really blame him, Abraxas's hair is rather long, he dresses strangely even by Wizarding standards and his features are somewhat, well, pointy.
"You need to clean up your act, young man," Mr. Walerby drones on. "Why, in my day—"
He goes on to describe how everyone was virginal, the water tasted better, the vegetables were sturdier and the streets were without cat. It's the kind of thing Tom doesn't need right now, is all, but Mr. Walerby is his landlord and Tom's slightly afraid that using even the mildest compliance charm on him will kill him and then Tom will have to deal with someone new.
"—there it is, the infernal creature!"
Tom zones back in and realises that there's a kitten wrapped around his foot. It's a tiny, awkward thing, with patchy fur and quivering whiskers, looking up at Tom with pitifully wide eyes. Tom sighs.
"This is not my cat, Mr. Walerby," he says, shaking it off his shoe. It makes a small whimpering noise and Tom rolls his eyes. "I'm aware that we aren't allowed pets in the apart—"
He's cut off by a door banging loudly against the wall, and then the appearance of a boy Tom's never seen before. He's dark-haired and scrawny, bright green eyes panicked as he looks around. He spots the kitten and with an overly relieved sigh, scoops it up with both hands. Then he stands back up and blinks at Tom, for a long, long moment.
"Er," he says, finally, before turning to Mr. Walerby. "Hi, Mr. Walerby!"
"Hello, Harry, my boy," Mr. Walerby says, very warmly. Tom stares. "How are you? Settled in alright?"
"For sure!" Harry replies, smiling. Dear Lord, Tom thinks. Harry's one of those people. "I hope Cru didn't give you any trouble."
"Cru," Tom repeats, flatly.
Harry has actual hearts in his eyes as he answers. "Screwdriver. She's my cat."
Tom cannot deign that with a reply.
"Why, she's simply a beauty," Mr. Walerby says, adjusting his spectacles to look at the fucking cat. Harry probably picked her from some cardboard box on the street. Mr. Walerby strokes its fur, and the cat rubs its nose in his hand. He looks delighted. Tom can't help but roll his eyes again. "Lovely."
Mr. Walerby straightens up, gives Harry a smile and then glares at Tom.
"Make sure your cat doesn't keep us awake all night again, Terry," he says, and trots back inside his apartment.
Tom, very bravely, takes a breath and doesn't kill anyone.
Harry holds a hand out. It's covered in cat hair. Tom raises an eyebrow.
"I'm Harry Parker!" he babbles, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I just moved in here last evening and I was hoping to meet a few neighbours today! Maybe you could tell me what all the nice places around here are and—well. It's a real pleasure to meet you."
There are no nice places here. And Tom doubts that Harry wants to meet the girls who use shady charms to grow terrible quality weed on the second floor balcony or the ladies who aggressively cheat in bingo or the guy who owned the bookshop down the street that got shut down a week back because they were selling adult magazines to kids.
"Tom Riddle," he replies, and ignoring the hand, walks from under the awning towards Knockturn Alley. He needs to collect a few orders before he goes to work.
(x)
Borgin's in a good mood when Tom comes in, which never bodes well for Tom.
"Remember how you said you need help in sorting out the older stock?"
Tom does not remember that. He has a bad feeling about this, even before Borgin smiles and points to the inside of the store.
"Parker, come out here!" Borgin says, and Tom grits his teeth into a painful smile as Harry fucking Parker comes bouncing out. To his credit, he does look surprised to see Tom, too. But… excitedly so. The horror. "This is Riddle. He's gonna be showing you your way 'round the place."
Apparently he is. Parker beams at him.
ii. harry accidentally summons a kreacher creature
Harry can’t find his house anymore.
See, this kind of thing is why he still sometimes wishes he’d just stuck it out with the Dursleys. Well, not really, but the whole affair is a crying shame. You’d think that with him being the literal owner of the house, it wouldn’t just disappear on him. Except it’s certainly not where it was earlier. Six storeys and one miserable house elf, all gone.
“Kreacher,” Harry says, vaguely snapping his fingers. “Kreacher.”
No crack follows.
“Kreacher, please,” Harry sits down on the stoop, which earlier also had a door attached to it, instead of just being, you know, a stoop. “I’m so hungry, I just want a sandwich. Kreacher.”
He sighs. And that’s when he notices the dude across the street. He has black robes and a mask on, not unlike the silver death eater masks. Harry cannot even bother with this anymore. He takes his wand out and trains it at him. The man doesn’t do anything at all. Then he takes like a slow, floating step towards Harry. Harry notices then that under his robes, the man’s feet aren’t quite… there . Harry stands up. The man – if he is one – drifts closer, just slightly. He’s got no wand, and he’s not really doing much, Harry doesn’t quite know how to react.
“That is so creepy, man, come on,” he tries. “Man…thing? Whatever you are.”
The man-thing removes his mask to reveal absolutely nothing. His face is not really there at all. Harry starts shooting, because what the fuck, right, and the void-man-thing starts screeching, this high-pitched horrible noise, like a hundred cats dragging their nails down a chalkboard at once. The thing comes closer and closer, unaffected by the spells and Harry can’t believe that today was supposed to be his day off work and he was supposed to be in bed, while Kreacher got him ginger ale and those pinwheel sandwiches he makes and –
The thing passes through Harry and everything goes black.
iii. harry fucks around
When he wakes up, and gets his bearings, he realises that – well. His life just isn’t so hot, is all.
iv. and finds out. he also gets a minimum wage retail job
So what if Harry’s stuck fifty years in the past with no clue how to get back to his own time and so what if Harry's got virtually no money and so what if there's an actual war going on in the world and so what if Harry just realised that Tom Riddle is well and alive and more evil than ever. So what.
So what is that Harry wants to cry a little bit. A lot, even. He opts for looking at himself in the mirror in the washroom in the Leaky Cauldron, whispering man up, Potter! and when that doesn't work, he tries: what would Hermione do? which does actually seem to work a little bit.
After a bunch of drinks and some elaborate scribbling on the chalkboard at the shop, he comes to the conclusion that he can do this. He’s gonna do it. He always does it, that’s his whole thing.
Because you know what, it’s fine. Harry’s got a plan.
v. tom commits no crime even though he really wants to. he is so brave
Parker is a disaster. He drops everything he picks up and sometimes he doesn't even need to pick something up to drop it. Why someone like him would want to work at an antiques store is beyond Tom. He explains everything to Parker and ignores every stupid question he has, which is most of them.
For his lunch break, Tom usually makes himself a cup of coffee and a sandwich and reads something. Today, he finds himself dismayed and lowering his book, after a solid ten minutes of trying to ignore Parker, who's staring at him very hopefully.
“Do you maybe wanna go for lunch somewhere?” Parker asks, once he has Tom’s reluctant attention. “If you know some good restaurants nearby.”
Tom objectively knows good restaurants in Diagon. He also knows his budget.
“How about no,” he counters, which makes Parker quite literally wilt. His shoulders droop and he makes a really, really sad face. “You can use my coffee, if you want,” he offers, because really, Parker looks like he'll jump off the roof if Tom doesn't say something right about now.
Parker twitches back up a little. He goes to the table and makes himself a coffee with some wondrous amounts of sugar and cream.
Takes a sip and beams at Tom.
That's when Tom realises he's gonna have to do something about Parker.
The next time they're close by and Parker is turned away from Tom, he waves his wand, discreetly, and whispers a quick Imperius Curse.
Parker straightens up. Tom feels relieved. Now he can tell Parker to keep quiet and do his job, leave Tom alone, really, anything at all to make himself less like himself and —
“Did you feel like a weird sorta breeze right now?” Parker asks, frowning. Tom blinks, mouth falling open a little. He shakes his head, mute. Okay. Maybe that didn't — catch. Or something. Tom tries again. And again. And again. He gets scared for a moment that he's losing his touch. He goes outside, and tries it on a bunch of people.
It works perfectly.
He does it on Parker again and realises, finally, that Parker is impervious to an Unforgivable curse.
And this, Tom thinks, makes him a lot more interesting than he was earlier. Nobody's like this for no reason. It was a cover. Parker is pretending to make himself seem harmless. Of course. Everything made sense again.
“Hey, Parker,” Tom says, as they're closing up. “Wanna go to the pub?”
Parker brightens up like the sun and pushing his glasses up his nose, nods excitedly. This does make Tom want to reconsider, but he's Tom Riddle and fuck if he's ever not gone through with a decision he's made.
(x)
When Tom asked Parker to go to the pub, what he did not consider was that he would have to actually go with Parker to the pub.
On the other hand, it's extremely easy to get Parker drunk and talking, which makes this a one night job. Thank God.
“—and that's how I met Mr. Walerby,” Parker says, grinning toothily. “He's great, isn't he?”
“Yes,” Tom lies, which is just the amount of encouragement Parker seems to need.
“Yeah!” he says, and lifts his empty glass in a toast and tries to drain it again. “You know who else is great? Mr. Borgin!”
“Yes,” Tom lies again. He's so good at this.
“But I can't tell you why I work with Mr. Borgin,” Harry says, morosely looking at his empty glass. Tom hurries to order another round. “That's a secret.”
“But we're friends now,” Tom says, in the fondest tone he can manage. When Parker looks unsure, he adds, “Aren’t we, Harry?”
“Oh, fine,” Harry says, a little grumpily, like Tom’s worn him down. He cheers up as another full glass appears in front of him.
Tom smiles. Harry pauses.
“Can I call you Tommy?”
Tom orders himself a drink too.
vi. harry gaslight, gatekeep, girlbosses his way out of this one
"So,” Harry says, comfortably, “here's the thing. I'm looking for something. It's took me years to track it down, all the way to Borgin and Burkes."
Riddle raises an eyebrow.
"Slytherin’s locket," Harry says, plainly, and watches Tom Riddle freeze. "My mother's locket. It’s like this big silver thing, and usually, I don’t really like silver because you know, werewolves and–"
Riddle sputters a little. "Pardon?"
“Well, in the past, silver’s often been used for–”
“No,” Riddle visibly stifles his reaction. “About your mother. You were saying?”
"Oh, my mother," Harry says, in a very reasonable tone, tamping down the smugness he feels inside. "Her name was Merope Gaunt.'' Riddle blinks again, a bit dumbly. Harry explains what Tom already knows, "She was the last of the Gaunts. They're said to be descended from Salazar Slytherin. And my Mother, well, she died during childbirth. She had to sell the locket for some money." Tom's narrowing his eyes like he suspects something now. "Borgin bought it off her, and I'm going to buy it now."
Harry watches Tom's fingers twitch towards his wand and continues smiling obliviously.
"I thought you'd be more surprised to learn about a magical artefact like that," Harry says, adopting a puzzled tone. "You did go to Hogwarts, didn't you?"
"I—" Riddle clears his throat. "Yes. I was a little — taken aback. I'm sorry, where did you say you grew up, again?"
Harry winces exaggeratedly. "I hate this question," he says. "I was born in a children's home. But I was adopted when I was a month old, by this really horrible couple. They actually wanted a dog to keep their kid company, but the woman was allergic to dogs, so–"
"That's," Riddle shakes his head slightly, "That's impossible."
“Being allergic to dogs is super common, actually, although now that you say it, it’s possible she was just scared of them–”
“No,” Riddle says, gritting his teeth. “I meant. The locket. It’s not.” He takes another composing breath. “It’s not possible.”
"I'm sorry?" Harry says, politely, like it's truly his life's story.
“I–” Tom pauses, looking truly speechless. Harry sees him searching for an explanation. “As far as I knew, all the descendents of the founders were dead.”
“Yeah,” Harry says, in a knowing tone, and not a word more, just to be irritating.
“Yeah,” Tom echoes, looking lost. “Right. But. Where did you study? Learn magic?”
“Oh, here and there,” Harry says, with a little wave of his hand.
Riddle doesn’t speak for the rest of the hour they’re sitting there.
vii. tom is in a less than optimal situation
Tom heads straight to Abraxas’s from the pub.
“That’s not possible,” Abraxas says, immediately. Thank you, exactly! It wasn’t possible. It —
“Unless, you know,” Abraxas scratches his chin: reconsiders and then shrugs. “Unless it is.”
“Oh, what use are you,” Tom says, disgusted.
“Look, get me a hair or a nail or something, I’ll get it checked,” Abraxas says, huffing. “I’m just saying, it’s not completely unimaginable. Does he look like you?”
“I — what — no!” Tom says, except that Parker does have dark hair and they have a somewhat similar complexion and — no. “He’s, he’s short! ”
Abraxas makes a sympathetic noise, which makes Tom realise that he doesn’t understand anything at all.
“Although,” Abraxas says, after a while, thoughtfully, “If he’s really your, you know, I’d be careful if I were you. He’s hiding atleast a little crazy in him.”
(x)
The next day is worse.
Tom had scoured the shop for a hair or something, and found absolutely nothing. He’d tried using spells again, to subtly pluck a hair or two from Parker’s head and those spells aren’t working either. He’s wondering if he should just grab Parker and pull at his hair, while idly unravelling the curse on a comb. Parker’s working in the other corner, humming an annoyingly cheery tune.
“My wand’s a holly with phoenix feather, you'd better break that one open,” Parker says, floating a small box over to Tom. Tom takes it, looks it over for a minute. Parker's right, the magic on the lock wouldn't go well with holly or cypress, especially not in combination with a —
Wait. Tom stares at him. Did he just say — ?
You have a very special wand indeed, Mr. Riddle. The phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather, just one more. That particular wand is still with me, holly and eleven inches, a beautiful twin to yours.
It was not fucking possible.
“Is something wrong?” Harry asks, innocently. Tom can't believe his actual eyes at the audacity. There's absolutely no way Harry doesn't know. He's got to be messing with Tom. There's nobody who's so, who can be so —
Tom’s brain is firmly rejecting the idea. Tom is a singular identity. There is — there is one of him. This is all wrong. This isn’t conceivably possible. Unless it had been conceived already (about twenty years back) which was beginning to look more and more likely.
“Oh, look, there's a frog here!” Harry's backside coos, from where he's now bent over some boxes. “Aw, look at him, he's so tiny. Tom, come here, look at the little thing!”
Tom forces himself to take a breath. There has got to be something wrong. He sighs and goes to look at the frog.
(x)
Tom cannot sleep. If he could just get Harry fucking Parker out of his head, he —
He jerks upright. His mother wasn't the only one who saw him being born.
(x)
First thing next morning, Tom apparates to Wool’s.
(x)
Apparently, Mrs. Cole went on a week long sabbatical. A year back.
“She’ll be back soon, I'm sure,” Martha says, smiling so tightly that Tom’s concerned she's gonna pull something.
“Nah, she won't,” Amy Benson says, lazily, kicking her legs up on Martha’s desk, swinging back in a chair. It had been a bit jarring seeing her. She's a lot taller than the last time Tom had seen her, face strangely bony, striking almost. She also, perhaps taking advantage of Mrs. Cole not being here, smells like thirty packs of cigarettes.
“She's been in fairly…regular correspondence,” Martha forges on, surreptitiously trying to glare at Benson’s feet on the table, who proceeds to ignore her.
“She’s never mailed, though in her defence, she probably can't write,” Benson mutters.
“The kids have all missed her, I've been telling them how she's going to be back anyday now!”
“Lord, like they don't have enough abandonment issues already.”
Martha turns her increasingly worrying smile to Benson.
“Did you say something, dear?” she asks, loudly. Benson just smiles.
“Just about how much Mrs. Cole must be missing us right back,” she says, with a fake little laugh. When Martha turns back to Tom, Benson adds, “if she finds out Riddle’s looking for her though, she's really fucking never gonna come back.”
Well. She's not entirely wrong.
(x)
“Riddle,” Benson calls, as they walk out, in what he'd call her gentle tone, if she even has one.
An hour later, Tom finds himself on a mildew-stained couch with Benson, hands clutched around something that tastes like rubbing alcohol. After rambling on for a lot longer than he'd planned to, Tom finishes the whole tiny-cat-green-eyes-imposter-imposter-I’m-going-insane story and Benson bursts into laughter.
“Don't laugh at me,” Tom orders, but it comes out more petulantly than he wants it to. It's been a while since he's drank. He looks down at his glass and realises it was a bottle. Who made this swill, Jesus.
“It's like my worst fucking nightmare,” Benson is saying, still laughing uncontrollably. “What's worse than Tom Riddle? Trick question! Two Tom Riddles!”
“Good God,” Tom says, suddenly feeling a very strong desire to throw up on the upholstery.
(x)
Tom comes back to his apartment around noon and stumbles into bed.
When he wakes up, it takes him several painful minutes to find the hangover potion. When his head clears up, he realises he's been so stupid and that there is another very, very obvious way to confirm.
(x)
Tom knocks on the door, as loudly as he can. He knocks like he's got rent to collect from a stoner. The snake in his hands hisses out her disapproval.
Parker opens the door, his hair all over the place, looking bewildered. This is when Tom realises it’s about five in the morning.
“Wha—”
“Talk to her,” Tom demands, holding the snake up.
Parker yawns right in the snake’s face and the snake turns back to look at Tom in an unmistakable are you sure about this one. Tom grimaces.
“If you're a descendant of Slytherin, you should be able to talk to snakes,” Tom insists. “Talk to her.”
“What should we talk about?” Parker asks, because he's stupid.
“I don't care,” Tom says, patiently.
“Oh,” Parker says, blinking. He frowns. “Just talk to her yourself then…?”
“Introduce yourself,” Tom takes a breath, because as a shopboy in the dingiest shop in the dingiest alley in London, he's only got a certain infinite level of patience, not more than that. “Just do it. Say anything.”
Parker sighs. Opens his mouth.
And — does.
“Hi there, I'm Harry,” he smiles at the snake, who looks back at Tom, somewhat uncertain and somewhat charmed. Harry sounds like he's shy. Tom didn't even know it was possible to sound like that in Parseltongue, because the only times he's heard it before is through snakes or when he's speaking it, neither of which are great times to hear the aforementioned quality in speech. “What's your name?”
Distantly, he realises how big this is. Harry Parker or Riddle, really, is his twin brother. Tom has a — twin. A brother. Tom has a fucking twin.
Somewhere, Mrs. Cole is laughing. Unless she’s dead, like Benson said, he supposes, in which case she is probably not.
viii. tom does not have the time or the courage to unpack all of this. regardless:
The confirmation that Parker is his twin comes with the horrific implications of it. His brother is a — Hufflepuff. Good lord. He often wears a shirt that says tree hugger. This just would not do. And the boy was talented. He could untangle complex curses while whining about coffee, he could resist Tom’s curses, whether knowingly or unknowingly was unimportant. He had potential.
It was obviously on Tom now to make Harry realise it.
(x)
He thinks and thinks and comes to the conclusion that what Parker would really benefit from was accompanying him on the trip that Tom was intending to go on alone.
(x)
Tom now knows why Abraxas whines about his family. Family is intolerable.
“Albania?” Harry asks, sounding scandalised. “At this time of the year?!”
Tom has not yet told him they’re twins. At this rate, he’s never gonna get a chance to do it, because he’s going to have to kill him before that.
“Let’s go somewhere warmer instead,” Harry decides, and it’s only about ten minutes later that Tom realises that he hadn’t even invited Harry along yet.
(x)
There are terrible screeching sounds coming from Harry’s apartment that night.
It starts with Harry shouting, which is what wakes Tom up.
“—NOT YOU AGAIN, YOU FUCKING DEMENTOR PIECE OF—”
The walls are very thin, is all.
Tom rushes up the steps, breaks the lock and runs inside.
“Harry?” Tom calls. Everything goes quiet for a moment, before the screeching starts up again. Then, there’s a loud thud and crash and silence again.
Tom locates Harry in his bedroom, leaning against his wardrobe. Screwdriver is sitting on the bed, mewling contently.
“What’s going on?” Tom asks, narrowing his eyes. “I heard…noises.”
There’s a faint sound from inside the wardrobe. Tom looks at the floor, there’s a silver mask lying near Harry’s feet. When Harry sees him looking at it, he laughs nervously and kicks it under his bed.
“Nothing!” Harry says, loudly, over another thud from the wardrobe. “Just a minor, uh, minor issue, nothing to worry about!” He pushes the wardrobe door as it tries opening.
“Alright, then,” Tom says, after a pause.
There is almost definitely a person in there, Tom thinks, as he walks out, extremely relieved. Harry really is his brother.
(x)
Admittedly, Harry’s made them a very nice travel plan. And Tom has had a shocking amount of terrible customers today, he’s not at his best. He agrees to leave Albania for later. It’s time, he thinks, feeling rather enthusiastic, to kill Borgin and take the locket.
Except Harry wants it too, which could be a problem.
There’s an easy fix, of course. But Tom doesn’t want to kill Harry. So, he caves and tells Harry they’re twins. Besides, he figures, Harry most probably killed someone a couple of days before. He can handle quite a few of Tom's secrets.
There’s waterworks. There’s dramatic declarations of brotherly loyalty. There’s a monologue or two. Tom has no fucking clue how to make it stop, he wishes several times that he’d just killed Harry instead.
“This is why you’re working here too?” Harry asks, sniffling. “It’s — it’s your locket too!” He dissolves into another set of sobs. Tom continues dusting the top shelf.
The hysterics take about an hour to stop. And then:
“What’s your plan after this?” Harry asks. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring up at Tom. Tom does not have an answer, he’d planned to leave Tom Riddle behind, spend years exploring, learning magic that people feared or had forgotten, come back as Dark Lord Voldemort, etc., etc. It wasn’t quite turning out that way. “I’ve always wanted to teach, you know?”
Of course he has. Such is Tom’s life.
“Me also, I suppose,” Tom says, shrugging, which makes Harry cry again about how similar they were! and how they should get a job together somewhere. Dear God, no.
“Hogwarts?” Harry suggests, timidly.
Tom opens his mouth to say how Harry barely has any qualifications and whatnot but then he thinks about Dumbledore getting to know that Tom Riddle has a twin and then trying to figure out why Harry was so…well, the way he was, and clamps it shut. Tom could always help Harry realise his potential at Hogwarts. That was where Tom had done it, after all. Harry pens a letter to Dippet, and the owl returns with a response stating a wish to arrange an interview after this term ended, in a month or so.
Harry charms Borgin into giving them the locket. He does not, however, let Tom kill him. If Tom were a lesser man, he would whinge more about it, and call Harry out for being a hypocrite. As it is, he lets it go. They go back to their apartment and pack.
Harry hugs Mr. Walerby goodbye.
(x)
They take a Portkey to Curaçao in the morning.