Those chill December days were the best of Tom's life. They answered to know one, and nothing. They lounged in one another's company and basked in the glow of new and passionate love, and though he had not found the words to say it, Tom was more hopeful for the future than he had ever been before.
But there were still paths he needed to cross before things were set. He had made plans, and plans were meant to be kept. It had taken exacting and careful thought, but when he woke on the morning of the 30th he was ready for what was to come.
Assuming that mixed within his lessons of pure-blood courting etiquette, Alphard had also let slip when Tom's birthday was, he had planned accordingly. Where he had once thought to set out on the 31, celebrate the day of his birth by meeting his father and creating yet another link to immortality, it was far to risky now. If Harry had anything planned for that day he could not simply get out of it. They had no deadlines, nothing hanging over their heads that he could use to slip away.
And the thought of lying to his beloved left a rather unpleasant taste in his mouth.
Instead he had devised a brilliant solution. Sometime after dinner the night before Tom had received a missive from his summertime employer, Mr Borgin, asking for Tom's urgent help the next day. If he could possibly pop into the shop for an hour or two in the morning Mr Borgin would be in his debt.
Harry had wanted to come with him. Of course. They could not stay outside of the castle, but little day trips, for Tom, at least, were permitted. Harry wasn't yet seventeen and could not go off on his own. But Tom managed to talk him into staying and working on essay he had yet finish for potions.
It had all fallen perfectly into plan, and so, with careful attention to his appearance, which would not be out of place if he were gong to work, Tom prepared himself for what he must do.
~~~
Harry cursed under his breath as he slid, once again on the stairs. Someone had left the windows leading up from dungeons to the library open, and thus creating perfect patches of ice hidden for unsuspecting feet.
This wouldn't be a problem except that he had left his notes in Tom's room the night before. He could probably push through without them, but he'd had a great line in there about nightshade that had made Tom roll his eyes, and Gemma laugh, and he just knew that Slughorn would love it...yet he couldn't quite remember the specifics.
And so, Harry trudged his way back through the halls, cold and miserable, and trying to not think of Tom. Which just made him feel colder and more miserable. It was only for the morning. He could be alone for a few hours. It wasn't but a few months ago that all he wanted was to be alone. He had pined for some quite, to have no one watching him, nothing to do, no demands on his head.
Now he wanted Tom. He's arms, his warms, his company. He was sweet in a way that Harry had never though possible. For anyone, let alone someone who had once grown up to be the worst dark lord of all time.
He didn't want to pat himself on the back when things were still so fresh between them, but Harry was pretty sure he had already set in motion a time where hundreds of people didn't end up dying because of Lord Voldemort.
He was, perhaps, just a bit proud of himself.
Tom's room opened for him instantly, though the lock was still in place. He hadn't asked, yet he was rather certain that Tom had keyed Harry's magical signature into the rooms locks while he was sleeping one morning. Either way, he no longer needed Tom there to access the room.
They had grown comfortable in the last few weeks. Harry's things were now scattered about Tom's once perfect space. Here and there were one of his stockings or a discarded robe that he had yet to be placed back in the wardrobe or left in the hamper for the house elves to wash. Harry's comb rested on the table near fireplace, where he liked to sit in the evenings getting ready for bed. Harry's school books were neatly lined up next to Tom's on a shelf, and Harry's homework and notes were sat in a messy heap on the desk. In his haste to get the notes and be back in the library, Harry accidentally knocked several other stacks of paper off the desk to sweep across the floor.
With a pained sigh he fell to his hands and knees to coral all the many papers and folders that Tom used back into some semblance of the order they were in. Tom liked to keep things in folders and files, and it was very much something that Hermione would approve of, which made Harry's chest tight when he saw it. But as much as he enjoyed Tom's attention to detail, some of his filing was odd and he hadn't really tried to figure it out.
Something that was more annoying now, that he had knocked several folders down and scattered their contents to the wind.
Did Ancient Runes notes go in the folder marked M-A or A-P? And these notes on antidotes for a poison from some kind of feathered asian raptor didn't seem to belong anywhere.
He had just manged to round up all of the homework and notes for DADA and was feeling rather accomplished when he spotted something a little odd under the desk.
This folder, though opened, seemed to have stayed intact, but what was rather strange was the photo within. Right there, staring up at nothing was a picture of Tom...or so it looked.
The man in the photo was older, though not by any means old. He had a few fine lines around his eyes, and the begining of grey at his temples. And this picture of an older Tom Riddle wasn't moving.
A muggle photo.
...A muggle man.
This was...Tom's father. The man from the locket. The man from...
Suddenly it was dark, and cold, and fear was clawing it's way up Harry's throat as he looked up to the stone he had been tied to. The words Tom Riddle etched for a blazing moment across his eyes. There were dates under it, and some saying underneath that Harry had been unable to see fully. Try as he might he could never seem to remember what the dates were specifically.
The cold didn't lift as his vision cleared, it grew. A sick certainty taking root in the pit of his stomach as he turned the page, another photo of an older muggle couple is attached to a document that seemed to be their whole lives laid bare. Everything from their address to their bank statements and what they studied in schools, to charities they supported.
There was only one reason Harry could think of as to why Tom would have it, and the answer only brought more dread. Perhaps Tom did go to Borgin and Burke's that morning. There could have been something that he was needed for, and the owners would know that Tom was on a break from school. It could add up.
Harry could send an Owl, something silly for Tom to get at the shop, maybe asking if he'd seen Harry's History homework, or something. He could wait for a reply that possibly wouldn't come. Or.
It was likely that Tom aparated wherever he went, and if it wasn't to Knockturn Alley then Harry wasn't sure how he was supposed find him. He had been to Little Hangelton before, not by choice and he had no clue how to get back. He couldn't aparate yet...and waiting around for Tom to return and just hoping he hadn't been doing what Harry feared was not an option.
He looked around at the mess of scattered papers helplessly, wishing beyond hope that there was something there that could aid him in...
He whipped his head back to the folder on Tom's family. Everything he needed was there, right in black in white. The Address! All he needed was a floo...
There were a few floos that stayed open for use in the school, or there had been...or no...there would be. Eventually, and might now. But which one could he use now?
There was really only one answer to that question, so he pulled himself up off the floor and raced out of Tom's room to the common room. There was an oft neglected door hidden just to the side of the study area that no one ever approached. No one ever really looked at it. There was no need. Their head of house had never, as of yet, used the door to his private office to gain entry into their dorms. But it was there. Just waiting.
Fortune must have been on his side as he entered the empty room, the only soul around being Gemma on her little perch. Her head tilted to the side as she followed his movements across the room and to the door to Slughorn's office.
"Is bad manners," her hiss was just loud enough to carry through the silent air.
Harry paused with his hand on the door, "what is?"
"To go into a room without permission," she hissed haughtily, lefting the front of her body up and off the perch, a mimicry of standing upright.
He supposed that she was right, there, he didn't have permission, and perhaps she had heard someone, maybe even Slughorn himself, say that one needed permission to go in. Which he didn't have. What he did have was a time frame that was quickly growing smaller and smaller.
"I have to," he said hastily, "it's for Tom!"
She perked up at that, "Tom?" She always did like Tom.
"Yes, Tom's in trouble and the only way I can help him is through here!" Both things were true enough, and it wasn't. It odd that even in times of panic he could still feel good about not lying to an oddly maternal snake.
"Well if it's for Tom, to help him, then I suppose it's okay," she curled down closer to the perch, "the password is pineapple."
"Oh...thanks." Password? He looked to the door, then back to Gemma. "Would you like to come?"
"Where are going? Is it cold?"
"Yes, well, it's snowing out, but-"
"Then no," Gemma said flatly before she slipped right off of the perch and onto her heated rock where she curled into a ball as though to hight light her point.
"Okay, then," Harry turned back to the door, and feeling a little foolish, uttered a soft, "pineapple," at the glistening wood.
The door swung forward into the office on the silent hinges...well...that was lucky.
He pushed the door open slowly at first, careful of any movement in the room. But there was none. Slughorn had made sure everyone knew he would not be around for the holidays, at least until the Yule Ball. Yet there had sill been a part of Harry ready to be scolded for breaking and entering.
Techincaly a snake gave him the password and thus he was not 'breaking'. A distinction that probably wouldn't get hm far with anyone if he were caught.
He had never been in Slughorn's office before, but he would know who it belonged to even if he hadn't sought it out. Every piece of furniture was made of heavy dark wood and polished to high sheen, and anything that could be upholstered in rich leather, was. There were shelved of books and shelves of potions in all shades, colors, sizes, and variants of luminosity. And yet another shelf that seemed to be dedicated just to different types of alcohol. All of which he took in with a cursory look before swiftly crossing over to the cold hearth to search the myriad of bottles and small clay pots thereon for floo powder.
He finally found the shimmery green powder inside a squat ceramic penguin who's head popped off and acted as a lid, that he might have over looked if it hadn't been put back on lopsided.
With a tap of his wand a fire was lit, he consulted the bit of paper in his hend with the address before taking a deep breath and tossing the powder in the fire.
The flames blazed an acidic green.
~~~
It was quaint. The sort of picturesque scene that one would find on a holiday card, or printed in one of those magazines that muggles seemed enjoy that featured pictures of the upper class' lifestyle in ways that were meant as a boast about their wealth, as well as to make them seem attainable to others. He had seen a few in the matrons private room at the orphanage. It had confused him as a child, and now, standing before this tidy manor house that rested on a gentle hill overlooking a sleepy, snow blanketed village, all Tom could fill was rage.
As soon as his feet had touched the ice packed road and he had been enveloped in the bitter cold, the world around him falling into muted shades of green and grey from the gloom, the only emotion that he could find was pure, violent, anger.
There was a man behind those walls with his face. A man who was responsible for all the hardships of Tom's life. A man who shared his name, and his blood, and yet had still let Tom's mother die and Tom be taken in, not just worthless muggles, but by complete strangers.
He was Slytherin's Heir. He was the most power wizard of his age. He would be the most power Lord of all time. He should have been raised in a manner befitting his station, with recognition and all the knowledge of magic at his fingers from childhood. How far would he be now if he had not needed to catch up with his pure-blood or magically raised peers of lesser lineage?
Tom couldn't go back in time...he had looked into it. He couldn't start over, which meant he had no choice but to press on. And so, press on he shall. He would end this day having put a massive burden of his past behind him. He would enter the new year of his life one step closer to assure he would not meet the same mortal fate of his mother. He would be more powerful, and ready for when he was to take the wizarding world in hand and shape into something better.
The world was muted around him. The wind was soft, the village still sleeping, the only sound for what felt like miles was the soft crunch of snow under Tom's shoes as he climbed the small hill to the manor doors.
There were gold embellishments on the door and surrounding windows. They somehow managed to be stark and sharply bright in the low light of the rising sun, yet dark and muted to Tom's eye. When he closed his eyes the lion doorknocker still sat before his lids.
Entering the house was beyond easy, muggles were truly so weak and vulnerable. This whole village could be dead before the sun had fully risen and no one would know for hours...days even. No one would ever know why or how. But Tom wasn't there to speculate on how easy it would be to conquer a world of muggles.
He had a smaller goal in mind right then.
Warmth swept over him as he walked through the door, though it did nothing to overcome the chill from his bones. There was a different gloom to the inside of the manor, one of half lit gaslights casting shadows from other rooms. It was clear this was not a path that the residents would be taking at this hours, and thus this part of their house showed only the bare bones of life.
Tom stalked down a hall carpeted in red and gold patterned persian rugs that appeared as shades of violet in the shadows, the walls were festooned with ancient oil paintings of people who occasionally shared some feature with Tom. The slope of his nose, the same sharp cheekbones or chiseled jaw. There was a painting of a young man who wore his hair in the exact same why Tom had his now.
At least they would know him when they saw him. There was something very pleasing about that. They would see and they would know, and Tom would have to do very little for them to know how much they had wronged him.
The hall forked off into three different directions, Tom took the left one, following the faint murmurs of voices and the tail tale clinking of cutlery on china plates.
The first person to see him was a servant girl as he walked into room. It was much less grand than he was expecting, a small room with single round table around which sat his father and grandparents, set for a small breakfast with the food and beverages laid out on a side board against a far wall. The little hearth by the table was blazing and crackling, providing a steadier, warmer light than the few gas lamps on the walls provided.
The girl, when she saw him, gasped and dropped a silver coffee pot. It hit the side of the lace covered table, splattering herself and who would be Tom's grandfather, with coffee before falling solidly onto the rug. No doubt ruining it as well.
"Francesca!" Mary Riddle scolded the poor girl, whipping her napkin from her lap to try and blot the scolding liquid from her husband's person. "Whatever has gotten into you?"
But the girl did not speak. Her dark eyes round in her pale face had not left Tom's since he'd entered, it didn't take long for the others to follow her gaze, to death standing in their doorway.
The faces of his grandparents were blank, frightened, then quizzical. Was it possible they had no knowledge of him? He turned instead to his father, there he found only fear.
"Good morning, father," Tom said evenly, "I do hope I am no intruding."
His father's mouth opened for a moment before snapping closed, yet it seemed the elder Thomas had no such problem finding his voice. "Father? Father! What- who is this, Tom?"
Tom laughed softly, "Forgive my rudeness, grandfather, let me introduce myself, I am Tom Marvolo Riddle jr," he gave both his grandparents his most winning, brightest smile, "I've been dying to meet you."
Something in his expression must have showed, fore all three of them sat back straighter in their chairs, the scent of their fear filling Tom's senses along with the spilled coffee and quickly cooling breakfast fare. The little scullery girl, Francesca had scuttled off to hide under the buffet during Tom's introduction, and sat curled in a gently rocking ball.
"Tom?" Mary said in stunned alarm, though which Tom she was referring to was unknown.
Finally Tom snr seemed to find some form of back bone, he rose a shaking hand to point at Tom, "you! You! That woman!"
Tom grit his teeth, seething, "if you are referring to my mother."
"The witch!" Tom snr's voice was hoarse, but he still managed to roar admirably.
"Correct, she was a witch. Whom you left for dead along with your unborn child," Tom recounted the events as they stood. His mother had died giving birth to him and Tom Riddle the first had not been anywhere around, "now that we're all caught up," Tom said, taking a few more steps into the room, placing himself before his family, he raised his wand to his father's chest, "it's time to repay the favor."
Power coursed through him. He knew the spell, the theory behind it. He felt the rage, the want, the need for the deed to be done. But Tom had never killed for his own gain before. This wasn't an accident left for him by a beloved pet. This was hardly even about revenge. This was pleasure. A setting to rights. For the first time Tom would kill to rid the world of a useless, evil hearted muggle,. The thought alone left him light headed and giddy.
"I will give you this opportunity," he said, heart racing with excitement, "to-"
His grand gesture of kindness to his undeserving father, to say his last words, to make some statement of remorse to Tom for his life and the part he played in it, was interrupted by the hearth sparking violently an instant before the flames turned green and spat out a red robed body right onto the tiles.
Just like that, Tom's world stopped. He was dizzy for an entirely new reason. He knew the small figure that was now coughing on the floor, he hadn't even registered that he had moved until he was taking Harry in his arms. He was warm and shaking, covered in soot and seemed be having a hard time gaining his breath. Tom took care of what he could. With a absent wave of his hand Harry's blood red robes were cleaned.
At the small fete of magic, Mary Riddle fell faint and slumped onto the table.
Thomas yelled, "Mary!" while Tom snr called out to his mother, and little Francesca released a pitiful wail from her hiding spot under the tureen of eggs.
Tom paid them no mind as he helped Harry rise from the floor, doing what little he could to help clear his lungs. "Harry," Tom scolded gently, "you didn't take a breath inside the floo, did you?" Had no one ever taught him to do it properly?
Harry coughed once more before taking a deep breath, he gave Tom a small, wobbly smile, "at least I ended up in the right place this time."
"You got sent to the wrong location?!..Harry, you have to be careful, the floo network is dangerous if misused."
"Tell me about it," Harry gave another forceful cough to get the last of the ash from his lungs, then his gaze swept over the rest of the room, "er...sorry for the intrusion."
Tom opened his mouth to inform Harry that he need to paste on pleasantries for this...this filth, but again he was too slow to react.
"Intrusion!" Tom snr yelled, rising from the table to face both Harry and Tom, his whole body still shaking as he gripped the caved back of his chair for support, knuckles starkly white against the dark wood.
"You're like her. The both of you. More...more witches!"
"Well, no...wizards, actually," Harry fumbled a little, he ran a hand through his now completely tousled hair. "Not that it matters...it's all the same really. So...yes?"
"You don't need to justify yourself to them, Harry."
"Well, we are sorta crashing their breakfast."
"Crash is right!" This from Thomas who was kneeling by the table, ineffectively fanning his wife with a linen napkin.
"It would be best if you two...freaks, would go back to where you came from," Tom snr said, having lost a little of his fear from the support of his chair.
Tom's fists clinched, he was halfway to reaching for his wand when something gripped his arm. Tightly. It took a long, shameful, moment for him to place the small pale hand as Harry's, even longer still before he could bring himself to meet saddened green eyes.
"It's okay," Harry said, voice low and soothing, "I know..I...it's not the first time I've had to deal with muggles who hate magic for no reason."
"No reason!" Harry's voice must not have been low enough, Tom snr's fear was quickly shifting to anger, his eyes blazed in the low light. He suddenly looked much older than his forty years that they file had claimed. "I assure you I have a very good reason, after what that woman, that demon, did to me!
"For years she tried to worm her way into the manor and into my bed, and at every turn I had to fend her off. For a while she was gone and I thought she must have finally moved off for good...then one day she was back, and suddenly she..." he drifted off, his eyes going hazy and far away, it was a while before he gained the ability to speak once more, when he did his voice was much softer...far more tired. "I don't know what she did, but suddenly I loved her. Or I thought I did. It felt so real. So right. I moved us to another village for a time and we..."
He shook his head almost violently. "Then it was over. She came to me one morning and said she was with child, explained what she had done, and at first it didn't matter. It was Merope, and I loved her. Then it was gone. Whatever it was she had done to make me love her, it was simply..."
There was a roaring, dull but insistent in Tom's ears. It wasn't possible. The man was a liar!
"A potion?" Harry mused to himself, "I can't think of a spell that would have a lasting effect like that."
"It doesn't matter what you call it, it was torture!" Tom snr bellowed, chest heaving.
Tom's world was reeling, tilting one way and then another. His mother had tortured a muggle? Poisoned him in some way so that he would...marry her, impregnate her? He still hated the man before him. He still knew that Tom was his son and had never reached out to him, let him live a horrid, squalid life.
But he had not abandoned his wife.
He had ran from his....from his...rapist.
Tom shuddered, equal parts horror and revulsion.
Harry curled closer to him, lending Tom his warmth and his strength, making the world around him a little bit brighter, "we should go," he whispered, just for Tom.
He looked down at Harry. His Harry. His love. All his anger from before, his righteous rage, his need for revenge, was simply gone. A wobbly bubble that was well and truly popped. He nodded numbly, unsure of his voice at that time. Ignoring the others in the room, Tom wrapped Harry in his arms and led him back through the dark house.
"Should we...should we obliviate them, or...something?" Harry asked once they were outside. He had forgotten his cloak when he'd left...wherever he'd come from to find Tom. And wasn't that just another conversation that Tom was not ready to have yet? How did Harry know to come there, looking for him?
He took his cloak off and wrapped it snuggly around Harry, "I think they'll be fine...He's known about magic for at least eighteen years...I don't think they'll tell anyone."
Harry nodded, "I guess we need to head back?"
"There was...my uncle. My mother's brother," Tom said dully. He had meant to kick both sides of his family out in one day. Start fresh. He just...wasn't sure he had another meeting in him. He sighed deeply, "Morfin Gaunt, but..."
"You don't have to go, Tom. They don't," he took a deep breath, "family is not always what we want them to be."
Tom smiled, but it was hard, "yeah."
They headed down the hill together, Harry wrapped in his cloak, pressed his side, silent and steady. A much needed anchor in the choppy seas of Tom's life. At the bottom of hill he gave a thought to Morfin Gaunt. The last of the Gaunts, who had squandered their fortune, born magically weak, and were nearly gone.
There was nothing there for him. Everything Tom needed was already there, in his arms.
He wasn't ready to return to Hogwarts though. His mind was too full, he needed time to think.
There was a fountain just off the main street of Hogmead. Far enough away from the shops that no one would see them, close enough that if someone did they would just think he and Harry were out for a day shopping.
The fountain was magicked so that the water was warm and flowing even as the world around them was coated in a fresh layer of ice and snow.
Tom colasped on the rim of the fountain, his head falling into his hands. It wasn't as though he thought he might have been wrong...exactly. It was that, it didn't feel right, all the sudden. He wasn't used to being confused. Tom Riddle did not get confused! He was presented with problems and he fixed them. End of story. There wasn't anything that could befall him without Tom coming out on top, better and stronger for it.
"Tom?"
Oh, and now the shame was back.
It hadn't occured to him that he might feel this way if Harry had found out about his plans. He had, of course, tried to keep them a secret. He wasn't going to tell Harry. At least, not until he had convinced Harry to seek immortality with him. That was not something he had realized about The Plan, until now. There was no future for him that did not have Harry in it, and thus, Harry needed to be assured eternal life as he himself was.
He lowered his hands, though he still could not bring himself to meet Harry's eyes. "How did you know to be there?" He asked one of the easier questions.
Harry was standing before him, hands clasped infront of his chest, "I knocked some papers off your desk...trying to find my notes and I saw, this file. I knew...I thought..."
Tom looked up, Harry wasn't clasping his hands, he was running his fingers over the bracelet Tom had given him with twists of his fingers. "You knew." He said softly. It was not a question.
Harry from the future knew, that today, Tom might be headed to Little Hangleton to see his father.
To...end his father's life.
He opened his mouth, just a second away from telling Harry what he knew. That Harry was from the future. It wasn't a conversation he knew Harry wanted, but then, they would be in very similar boats. He almost said it, I know you are from the future.
Before he got the chance lightning stuck the fountain.
It was a clear day, it was too cold for rain and there wasn't a cloud in sight either way. But it hit again, forcing Tom from his perch as rock chipped away from the fountain head. With swiftness that belied his sluggish thoughts, Tom was up and standing between Harry and whatever was happening, his wand at the ready as the wind picked up around them, whipping ice and snow to sting against his face and unprotected hands.
The figurehead, a unicorn with water flowing from it's gilded horn, was nothing but a inferno of electricity. The air popped and compressed, pushing on Tom's ears. Behind him Harry clung to his back, trying to pull Tom further away from the anomaly.
At it's centre a dark mass began to coalesce, growing bigger and bigger, all sharp edges and too many curves. Then it fell, from the point of the unicorn's horn and right into the fountain. There was a giant splash, something that sounded much like a freight train, and the anomaly simply stopped.
Harry edged his way around Tom, though he still clung close, and Tom wasn't about to let him off alone. Together they drew closer to the wriggling, pulsating mass of black that now struggled in the fountain. His first thought was some hideous, demented dark creature. He wanted to keep Harry away from it as long as he could.
Then, the mass spoke.
"Get your elbow out of my kidney, Fred!"
Beside him, Harry stiffened.
"That's my elbow."
"That can't be your elbow, George" this voice, different than the first two, was a female, "you aren't anywhere near him."
"I don't know how any of you know what parts are yours or not," that voice was very much like the second one, but Tom, curious as he was about this talking mass, was more worried about Harry.
He was shaking at Tom's said, his white knuckled grip of Tom's arm bordering on painful.
"Harry?" he asked softly, now sure that they were seeing the effects of a portkey gone wrong. It really couldn't be anything else.
"Harry?" one of the male voice from the fountain exclaimed and suddenly the writhing mass of wet black broke apart and four figures began pulling themselves from the fountain. Three males with garish red hair and a third much smaller female who's dark curly hair was defying even the water to remain a springy halo around her head.
She was the first to pull herself from the water, her eyes bright and round, and focused on Harry. She took several forceful strides forwards, hands on her hips and said in a voice that had even Tom's back straightening.
"Harry James Potter what on earth do you think you're doing!"