Tom Riddle/Harry Potter. Written for @tomarrymortevents purge xl: I regret it.
Tom’s robes are wet. Not entirely soaked through, thankfully, but enough to be tedious. A simple drying charm would be enough to solve the issue, but whomever started this mess has taken his wand away. He has not been offered a change of clothing either—just unceremoniously dumped into this room without explanation.
The room remains egregiously dark with a perpetual chill, not unlike the Hogwarts dungeons during the coldest months. Tom has been given a single uncomfortable chair—no food, water, or place to lay his head. Yet, for as long as it feels he has been trapped here, no hunger, thirst, or need for rest has arisen.
The only sound is the constant ticking of clocks. Thousands of them, all out of sync, stretched across every stone wall surrounding him. More than once, Tom has attempted to count them all, only for his thoughts to stutter and make him lose his place.
Where there should be numbers, there are instead unrecognisable symbols. The hands move forwards and backwards, slowing down and speeding up again seemingly without cause. Tom has yet to discover any logic to their operation, despite how long he has spent studying them.
Studying them is the only way he can occupy his time. Otherwise, his thoughts drift to the discomfort of damp fabric clinging to his skin, then further still—towards darker paths filled with fear and regret.
He wonders if regret is the right word.
Perhaps it is better to watch the clocks.
He’s fairly confident he must be in the Department of Mysteries. Since first learning of a place holding such enticing secrets, Tom has longed to see it for himself. However, this situation was not what he had in mind—to be trapped without explanation.
One moment, he had been seeking shelter from a sudden rainfall, and the next he had found himself here.
Try as he might, he cannot understand why he has been made a prisoner here. There was the unpleasantness with the basilisk—the accidental death of the mudblood. But Tom had handled that situation quite cleverly by shifting the blame on to Hagrid’s shoulders. Now only Dumbledore harbours any suspicion towards him, not that he has any proof.
Besides, if that were the reason Tom had been apprehended, would he not have been taken to the Auror Office? Or even Azkaban?
“I have rights,” Tom says clearly. “You cannot continue to hold me here indefinitely.”
Just like every other time Tom has made similar statements, there is no response.
He slumps down in the chair as the clocks around him tick on and on.
Harry watches for a moment longer, cataloguing the hopelessness in Tom’s posture, the utter defeat in his eyes. He scribbles another set of observations onto the already-crowded parchment in front of him.
None of this data has yet formed into anything remotely satisfying. So, like a man possessed, Harry continues to introduce new variables.
He flicks his wand at the screen in front of him, and it shifts. The seventeen-year-old Tom Riddle is replaced by one a decade younger, dressed in the drab grey uniform of the orphanage.
The boy’s face is twisted, tears of frustration swimming in his eyes as he attempts to wrench one of the clocks off the wall. He steps back, a look of calculation still present beneath his agitation. Then he rears his head back and slams it into the face of one.
The moment Harry sees the blood blooming from Tom’s temple, he directs his wand at the screen. He chants softly as he slowly moves his wand in a weaving motion. The shattered glass flies back into place. The blood seeping from Tom’s wound is drawn back inside him, the gash sealing shut. Tom presses his small hand against the now-smooth skin, a bewildered expression crossing his features.
“Will you let me out?” Tom asks. “I promise I’ll be good and say my prayers from now on.”
Harry lets out a huff, his chest constricting involuntarily at the desperation leaking through Tom’s plea.
But even this young, Tom has a way of making lies sound sweet.
Harry summarizes the incident in his notes before moving on. The screen in front of him shifts to display another Tom.
This one is sixteen and so sick with fever after creating his first Horcrux that he seems to pay no mind to the clocks at all.
Then there is Tom at twenty-five.
Pacing and murmuring to himself, dressed in a crisp black suit.
An infant Tom, swaddled and crying.
A heavily pregnant Merope Riddle, one hand laying protectively over her stomach.
Plucked from thousands of timelines. Preserved in specialised rooms.
Harry watches them day after day beneath the endless ticking, hoping that eventually he will witness something profound enough to be the answer he has been searching for.
When he started all of this, he had felt certain there had to be a precise moment in time where Tom Riddle was most malleable. Most capable of being redeemed.
That version of Tom could then be replicated across thousands of controlled scenarios until the exact method of obtaining redemption could be carried out successfully.
But Harry is still stuck in the first stage—collecting Toms, trapping them, observing them.
Meanwhile, in the outside world, the consequences of Harry’s experimentation have begun to make themselves known. The large crack in the centre of the Ministry’s atrium is the most recent and dramatic occurrence, but before that there had been other incidents—days repeating, people suddenly no longer existing, a man from the Middle Ages appearing in his kitchen and nearly running him through with a sword.
Soon enough, Harry knows, the Department of Mysteries will discover the full extent of his unauthorised experiments. He doubts they will understand the necessity of it all.
After all, he no longer understands why he began this task. He would even say that he regrets all of it. That he could dismantle all the rooms, free the Toms within them, and desperately hope that it is enough to heal all the damage he has caused.
But there is no stopping what has already begun.
And there is still a chance, however small, that this could all be worth it. That is what prevents the guilt from swallowing him fully.
The screen shifts once more.
This Tom is ten years old. He’s curled on the floor, hands clasped over his ears in a vain attempt to block out the ticking. His swollen lips are parted, moving faintly, but his voice has given out and his words are inaudible.
Harry has a feeling he must be apologising. Most of them do.
But after all this time, he still cannot tell the difference between true remorse and another desperate attempt at survival.
Briefly, Harry recalls another child—similarly confined and horribly frightened.
He glances back down at his parchment, the cramped letters scrawled across it blurring. Forcefully, he shakes away the thought before it can settle.
Harry Potter is not the subject of this study. He doesn't get to be redeemed.
He scrawls down a note before moving on.
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