[saintnoxia]

[𝙽𝙾𝚇𝙸𝙰] ◞  𝑭𝑬𝑴𝑴𝑬    pocwriter.   ( 24 )   tom   riddle   /   reader   centric   fics.   i   am   not   responsible   for   your   media   consumption   so   read   at   your   own   risk.   seldomly   writes   smut,   take   that   as   you   will!   more   on   character   introspection.   relationship   dynamics.   alternative   universes &   canon ones. experimental writing. dark heavy themes ahead.

⟶ 𝙼𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙴𝚁𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃.   𝙰𝚂𝙺.  𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿.   i   do   not   support   jkrowling   and   her   fucked   up   beliefs.   please   do   not   feed   my   writing   to   ai.   do not copy   or   modify   anything   written   on   this   blog.   do   not   like,   do   not   read.   i   will   also   not   be   taking   any   requests   as   i   don't   want   to   feel   pressured   writing   since   this   is   just   a   hobby   for   me,   but   feel   free   to   send   your   thoughts   through   ask!   :)

[saintnoxia]

𝟎𝟎𝟑:   𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐁𝐁𝐋𝐄   .  .  .   the  beauty  of  forgotten  love. pairings:  tom  riddle  x  fem!reader. words:  557. warnings:  growing  up  together  at  wool's.  muggle  reader.  pre  hogwarts  years.  pretend  they're  both  teenagers  in  this.  bittersweet  love.  simply  two  broken  souls  trying  to  cling  to  each  other  as  much  as  they  can.  you  love  him  and  you'll  never  be  in  the  same  room  again.

The thing about truth is, it doesn't care about want. You remembered late night conversations in the closet, back at the old Wool's Orphanage where martyrdom held more significance than any semblance of happiness. Tom, with his depression-woven skin, pale cheeks, and sadder eyes. The kind of eyes that sees. Knowing. The ghosts clawing through his gaze, and grenades creeped underneath open pores and rare imperfections.

The two of you fit together like puzzle pieces forced into conventional shapes. In that small space, was the only place where individuality was not taken away from your grips. You knew then, that you cannot go another day without choking back—I love you.

I feel it in my shoulders when I breathe, you would think. Tom, my Tom. He asked you why your hands ever so tremble whenever you'd sleep beside him because you had a nightmare, and there's this uneasiness lingering in the air, and all you had to do was say something to make it go away. But you thought it turned out to be the other way around. Tom's fingers softly tracing the creases of your forehead, almost furrowing but eyes softened when his gaze fell upon yours.

I don't think we'll ever see each other again after this, he said. It has come to seem there is no perfect ending. Then you replied, that's true. Because you believed it was. There is no other version of this story. Tom Riddle was going away, somewhere far you couldn't reach. And perhaps, you shouldn't have agreed so heartedly, or so quickly, is what you had come to regret. Not the truth, you should never regret the truth, but the expression. It was all you could muster up from the dryness of your throat, swallowed back feelings—or none at all.

And you hold him, the idea of Tom, in your chest with devotion; every day a little brighter when you see each other, every night a little tender when the world is quiet and asleep, only then, you're alone together.

I love you, you wanted to say out loud—for it to seem real, for Tom to really feel like you do. It's a painful thought, to know that you would choose not to leave because that's not the kind of person you were, and it aches to know he'd rather stay by your side and endure it all, that he accepts to be no more than a confidant with a swollen affection for someone that continually was a poison to everyone she surrounds.

You'd press your cheek against his cold skin, desperately clinging for some semblance of existence, a human body being real and next to you felt like an empty home. You shelter Tom's softness yet roughened edges, embracing to grasp the concept of love though quietly telling you to give up holiness in favor of ardency to warm up your being.

How do you stop the hurt, the physical craving for a limb that ceased growing a long time ago, a limb ripped apart from you the second longing manifestly settled itself onto your skin.

Tom will never hear about it but you'll disappear in the middle of the war, and he will have to carry a little bit of you in his bones, then you'll carry a lot of him to your grave.

[saintnoxia]

𝟎𝟎𝟕:   𝐎𝐍𝐄  𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓   .  .  .  everything  in  its  right  place. summary:  you  have  been  numb  for  years,  tom  has  been  empty  since  forever.  together,  you  can  both  pretend  you  are  warm. pairings:  tom  riddle  x  fem!reader. words:  7.1k. warnings:  alternative  universe,  modern  setting.  serial  killer!tom  riddle.  dark  comedy.  love  at  first  sight,  yes  really.  kidnapping.  stockholm  syndrome,  sort  of.  graphic  violence  and  death.  mentions  of  dismemberment.  unhealthy  dynamics.  emotional  manipulation.  unreliable  narrators.  alternating  povs,  but  it's  tom  most  of  the  time.  reader  is  also  fucked  up  in  the  head.  i  try  to  be  mild  but  still  mind  the  tags.  tom's  anatomical  obsession.  morally  ambiguous  reader.  you  both  need  therapy  but  we  know  who  needs  it  more.  author  notes:  hello  my  loves,  i  am  so  sorry  for  being  gone  so  let  me  make  it  up  to  you  with  this.  (can  you  tell  the  state  of  my  mental  health  when  i  made  this)  i  wrote  the  fic  in  between  my  internship  and  thesis  writing  all  the  while  coping  with  a  breakup  so  it's  a  bit  messy,  forgive  me.  i  am  all  over  the  place.  i've  seen  your  messages  and  will  answer  to  them  soon.  thank  you  for  the  lovely  support  on  my  previous  fic!  despite  life  kept  getting  in  the  way,  i'll  try  to  be  more  online  here.  any  typos  &  errors,  send  them  out  to  me.  as  always,  enjoy  reading  :)  how  i  have  missed  you.

Tom Riddle has always preferred things in parts. Not in the sentimental sense, no. Tom has no patience for the way people break themselves into stories, into memories born from nostalgia, into neat little explanations for why they are the way they are. He finds that kind of dissection imprecise. Sloppy. A child's attempt at order.

His father would have likely called him vile, had the man lived long enough to form any decent thought about the son he'd abandoned. But Tom didn't dwell on the ghost of Thomas Riddle Sr., just as he didn't dwell on the grey, lime washed walls of the home he escaped from. Those memories were sewn at the edges of long forgotten childhood degeneracy.

If his mother, Merope, that cunt, had possessed the dignity to raise him properly, she might have tried to offer him something soft, perhaps sentimentality—love? Tom would have found a way to excise that, too. He had no use for softness. Softness was for the weak, the yielding, his victims.

The true silver lining of his isolation was the void of a space it left in his psyche—a room inside his head where he filled with the topography of the human form. He knew the exact tension required to snap a radius, the resistance of the periosteum, and the way the sciatic nerve threaded through the pelvis like a violin string. Music to his ears.

There was a profound, almost tranquility to the work. A small release and reset. All the chaos of life running wild through history made simple—in one perfect moment. Everything neat, and everything tidy. It centers him in ways he can't really explain. It's replenishing. Unbecoming. Break yourself apart for him to see near the flesh, where blood flows right through.

He works slowly. That's the difference between him and the rest of them—the frenzied, sweating things that leave behind ruin and call it necessity. Tom doesn't rush. He has learned, over time, that haste introduces error, and error is intolerable, so Tom Riddle takes his time.

The body on the table (it was called an Anthony, and the man was unimportant as he was dead) has already been reduced to something far more honest. No longer a person, no longer a vessel for monotonous thoughts and louder, uglier wants. It was a composition. A study in tendon and bone, in the dormant machinery that exists beneath the lie of skin.

His finger began racing the edge of the severed femur, marveling at the sheer yet unbothered weight of it. Why was the internal design so much more elegant than the external life? Tom envied the ribs their curve, the lungs their delicate webbing; they were masterpieces, while the man who had owned them had been nothing but a collection of mediocre impulses. Its lack of hunger for Tom had never known a life where he isn't one.

Tom also wondered if his own insides was this pristine or if he was as cluttered on the inside as the world he sought to prune.

And this is what it gives him; the voices have gone quiet, though not gone. They never leave him entirely, but they recede, a sensation of a curtain pulled tight over a screaming mouth, muting what still exists behind it. In their absence, Tom can think—can breathe—can exist without the constant insistence of a presence lodged too deep to be reached or removed. How it never last.

He paused, glanced down at his work with something that might resemble satisfaction—if one were inclined to misinterpret him. His cuts are clean, had always been, and then Tom adjusted the angle of the limb, studying the way the joint settles, the way gravity takes hold once the resistance is gone, and that treacherous voice in the back of his head is back, knocking against the insides of his brain, whispering, screaming, asking him to sink his teeth into the flesh. Tom ignored those thoughts away as he reveled.

The human body, stripped of its pretenses, is remarkably obedient.

His gaze lingered a moment longer before he reached for the cloth at his side, wiped his hands with methodical care. There was blood beneath his nails, along the creases of his skin, but it didn't bother him as it was simply residue. A byproduct of the process. It will be removed in due time—like everything else.

Now what he needed to do was to dispose the dismembered parts. Tom wasn't stupid, nothing about this phase interested him, but it was necessary. He had learned carelessness was what separated men like him from the ones who ended up caught, and pitied in headlines he would never read.

It was a solitary existence, but a clean one. Tom enjoyed the perspicuity of it, he enjoyed the fact that no one had ever truly seen him, because there was nothing to see—only a void shaped like a man, dressed in a suit. Cool air pressed against his skin, slipping beneath the collar of his coat, and the night had welcomed him like it always did.

He parked his car away from the road, the engine cutting out with a soft purr. Tom stepped out onto the uneven ground, damp soil soft beneath polished shoes, dragging what remained of Anthony. His task was halfway done when the world broke its silence, its sound was a metrical clack-clack-clack.

Heels. Rubber-soled, cheap, and hurried.

Tom's spine went rigid. His internal clock, usually so flawless, faltered. It was 2:30 AM. The 402 bus was supposed to be delayed by construction on 5th Street. The shortcut should have been empty. He stood paralyzed for a fraction of a second, his brain whirring through the innards of your inevitable death before he had even fully turned his head.

And then he did turn, and the world for both of you stopped.

You stood few feet away from him and Anthony, of course—frozen like a deer in the path of a high speed train. You were clutching a brown paper bag, the top of a celery stalk poking out, your eyes were wide with a jarring recognition of the wrongness in front of you.

Tom felt a flare of genuine, human irritation. A witness. How tedious.

But Tom didn't lunged, yet. To do so would be to acknowledge the panic that was currently clawing at the base of his throat, trying to disrupt his composure. Instead, he stood up slowly, the plastic handle of the bag still gripped in his right hand, the weight of Anthony's torso pulling his shoulder into an anatomical line.

"Long way from home?" Tom had broke the silence, he was banking on the sheer absurdity of the moment to paralyze you. If he acted like a man doing something normal, perhaps your brain would shutter long enough for him to close the gap between you, and then he'd wrap his fingers around your throat and suffocate you.

"The 402," you whispered, the words barely catching on your teeth. Your gaze dropped to his shoes—the expensive leather now caked in the wet filth of the soil, and then to the heavy bag at his feet.

Tom watched your pupils dilate, he could practically see the electrical signals firing across your synapses, the realization that the luggage he was dragging was far too yielding to be anything but flesh. Tom felt that familiar itch behind his eyes again, the one that demanded he take you apart just to see where the fear was stored.

"The 402 was delayed," Tom corrected smoothly, taking a measured step forward. His movements were deceptively casual. "Construction on 5th. Most people would have taken the long way around… You're quite brave, aren't you? Walking through here alone with your groceries."

"I... I wasn't..." you took a stumbling step back, the brown paper bag crinkling loudly in the stagnant air. Wrong place, wrong time. You were simply a person who had worked a double shift and wanted to make a salad, your mundanity was going to become your undoing.

"Put the bag down."

"What?"

"The groceries," he murmured, his voice dropping to a register that was quite intimate. Tom became close enough to see the way the cold was turning your knuckles sickly. "It's heavy, isn't it? If you drop it, the celery will bruise. And I imagine you went to quite a bit of trouble to find it this late."

It was a test. A way to see if you would still obey the social contract or if you would finally break and scream. Tom found himself hoping for the latter. The silence of the woods was starting to feel a little too crowded, and he was beginning to wonder if your anatomy was as elegant as your panic suggested.

"Is that a—" you couldn't finish, knees buckled, and you had to clutch the groceries to your chest to keep from collapsing.

"Let's skip the shock, shall we? It wastes time neither of us has." Tom adjusted his coat, looking every bit the gentleman except for the dried blood beneath his fingernails. "Yes, it's a body. I put it there. Specifically, a torso and several detached limbs I have cut myself. Does the honesty of it frighten you?"

"I—I won't tell anyone, I promise."

"People always say that," he mused, mocking pity. "But the brain is a leaky organ. Memories fester. You'd tell a priest, or a lover, or the police. Unless, of course, I give you a reason to be more afraid of the telling than the secret."

The raw, unadulterated terror radiating off you acted like a tonic on his nerves, it seemed to cut through the residual static in his mind. Most people were dull, even in death, but your fear made him feel substantial. The voices did not return, not yet, but something else took their place. It gave him a jolt of electricity that made the tips of his fingers tingle beneath his gloves—a sensation of power so potent it was almost intoxicating.

Tom Riddle wondered if this was what other men felt when they fell in love; this overwhelming, possessive need to keep the object of their attention pinned under a microscope. Only, Tom didn't want your heart—he wanted to cut through your sternum and spread your ribs apart, claim the very center of you, hold it where nothing and no one else could touch it.

Perhaps that cunt was right, falling in love feels a lot like magic.

Tom Riddle had expected more of a struggle.

Most animals and humans were, at their core, just poorly optimized creatures who found a useless burst of energy when faced with the end, but you though, you had been remarkably easy to fold. When you turned to run (big mistake), your shoes slid on the mud, and Tom hadn't even needed to exert himself. He simply reached out, his fingers tangling in your hair with a hard tug, and redirected your momentum toward the ground, the sound of your skull hitting the ground made you fully unconscious.

Your wrists are bound to the legs of his table, then for a few minutes, you began to stir on the floor. Somewhere between the road and here, it had ceased to matter. So had everything else. Anthony was long gone inside his head.

He watches from the armchair across the room, legs crossed, hands folded over his knee. The kitchen light is dim but deliberate—enough for you to see him, not enough for you to see the entirety of the space around you. Tom learned that trick years ago. Fear thrives in partial darkness. Too much light, and the mind grows bold. Too little, and it retreats into itself. But a soft, yellow glow from a single overhead fixture? That keeps the imagination working overtime.

Your ankles are free, which is intentional. He wants to see if you'll try to kick. He wants to see what you do when you realize there's nowhere to go.

"There you are," he says, voice soft. Almost warm, or at least, the imitation of it. The cadence of tone you'd hear from an actor in a romance movie.

You jerk against the restraints, and the chair scraped against the floor. Your eyes found him immediately. Most people take a moment to orient themselves; they look at the ceiling first, or the walls, or their own hands. But you look straight at him, and Tom feels something shift deep within his heart.

"You're going to want to scream," he continues, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward slightly. "I wouldn't recommend it as it will only exhaust you, and I find that tedious to work around. You'll need your strength."

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. No sound comes out, and Tom can see the words stacking up behind your teeth—why, please, help, someone—all the useless vocabulary of the dying. Tom has heard it a hundred times, he could recite it in his sleep.

"I imagine you have questions." Tom then stands, smoothing the front of his trousers. He's changed since the woods; fresh shirt, dark trousers, no blood. The hands he extends toward you are clean now, scrubbed raw in the utility sink until the water ran clear. "That's natural. I'll answer some of them."

Your chest is heaving, he could see the outline of your ribs beneath your shirt with every breath—the expansion and contraction of the thoracic cavity, the elegant mechanics of survival. Beautiful, really. He has to resist the urge to press his palm flat against your sternum just to feel it.

"You're in my home," Tom says, crouching to your eye level. This close, he can see the fine tremor in your lower lip, the way your pupils have blown wide despite the light. "No one knows you're here, and even if someone came looking—which they won't… They wouldn't find this place, I've made certain of that."

Then, almost tender: "I'm not going to kill you."

Your breath hitches. Hope—there it is, that useless, bright thing igniting behind your eyes. It made Tom almost smile.

"Not immediately," he amends. "Not tonight. It depends entirely on you, really. On how well you listen. Whether you make this... unpleasant for both of us."

Tom reaches out, slowly, giving you time to flinch. You do. Your whole body goes rigid as his fingers brush your jaw, tilting your face toward the light, and he studies the bruise forming at your hairline—the gift of the forest floor, the impact that had rendered you mercifully silent for the drive back. The skin is already bruising purple, warm to the touch. He makes a mental note of it; the location, the size, the way the swelling is spreading toward your temple.

"You hit the ground quite hard," Tom says, almost apologetically. "I would have been more gentle if you hadn't run. Running complicates things, it forces my hand."

"I won't—" your voice cracks, splinters. "I won't run again. I won't tell anyone. Please, I'll do—"

"You'll do what?" Tom tilts his head, genuinely curious. "What could you possibly offer me that I couldn't simply take?"

The question hangs in the air between you, he watches you search for an answer—watches your mind race through bribes and bargains, through promises you don't have the power to keep. It's almost pathetic, the way you're grasping, like watching a mouse chew off its own leg to escape a trap that has already sprung. Tom had seen this before, of course. The bargaining stage, and it bores him almost as much as the denial.

Tom could put you out of your misery, he could tell you that there is nothing you could offer. But watching you squirm is, he finds, not entirely unappealing.

"You have a very elegant neck," Tom breaks the deafening silence, apropos of nothing. His thumb traces the line of your jaw down to your throat, hovering over the pulse point. Beneath his fingertip, your heart hammers—rapid, panicked, wildly fast. "The carotid artery sits two centimeters beneath the skin here. Did you know that? Most people don't. They go their whole lives with this extraordinary machinery humming away inside them, and they never once think about how close it is to the surface. How easily it could be opened."

He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been fascinated by the body's vulnerability. As a child, Tom had pulled apart small animals with the same reverence other boys reserved for their toys out of a deep and abiding need to understand. To see how the pieces fit together. To learn, eventually, how to take them apart again. The human body was simply the most elegant iteration of that same principle. More complex, yes. More resistant. But the resistance was part of the pleasure.

The way the skin split along natural lines, the way blood followed gravity like water follows a river. His fingers had itched even then, small and useless as they were, to press into the soft places and see what gave way. How the spine bent and straightened and bent again. How the hands, those remarkable instruments, could close around a throat and feel the pulse fluttering beneath the skin like a trapped bird. Dead, dead, dead.

The children at school called him strange. They had not been wrong. Other people sought peace in religion or medication or the arms of a lover—Tom sought it in the space between the fourth and fifth ribs.

"I'm not going to hurt you tonight," he spoke again, withdrawing his hand. Tom stands, taking a step back, giving you air. The shift in proximity makes you exhale; a shaky sound that seems to surprised you as well. "I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them truthfully. If you lie—I'll know, but I won't punish you. I value honesty more than anything, do you understand?"

When you nodded, a smile ghosted over his lips.

"Good," Tom returns to the armchair, settling into it with ease. "Well first, tell me your name."

The first time you saw a dead body, it was your father.

You were fifteen, which meant you were old enough to understand what was happening but young enough that the nurses still looked at you with that particular softness reserved for children who had to grow up too fast. They kept calling you honey and sweetheart and placing warm hands on your shoulder, and you let them because it was easier than telling them to stop. Easier than explaining that their pity sat on your chest like a second lung, making it hard to breathe.

The room smelled like artificial lemon and something else—something entirely wrong, the kind of smell that clung to the bedsheets no matter how many times the staff changed them. You learned that smell over the previous eight months—the smell of a body eating itself from the inside out.

Your father had been handsome once. That was what everyone said at the funeral, as if the past tense absolved them of having to look at what he had become. You remembered his hands most of all—how they had been steady and sure, capable of fixing anything in the house, of lifting you onto his shoulders at parades, of holding a coffee mug without trembling. Those same hands had been lying on top of the hospital blanket when you walked in, yellowed and thin, the bones visible through the skin like the skeleton was already trying to escape.

Your father was already gone when you arrived, the machines had been turned off twenty minutes earlier, but no one had thought to call you until after, because no one ever thinks to call the child first. They call the spouse, the sibling, the next of kin listed on the form. You were fifteen, you were not on the form.

So you walked into a room where your father's body was still warm and watched a nurse pull the sheet up over his face, and you felt—nothing. Not nothing, exactly. That wasn't fair. You felt the absence of something—absence of the grief you were supposed to feel, the grief that everyone expected to see written across your face.

Though when you looked at the shape beneath the sheet, the shape that had been your father for fifteen years, all you could think was: that's not him.

Because it wasn't. Whatever had been living inside your father's body—the thing that laughed at his own jokes, that cried at the end of old movies, that taught you to ride a bike and let you win at cards and called you kiddo even when you were too old for nicknames—that thing was gone. It had left sometime in the night, or maybe it had been leaving for months, leaking out of him a little at a time, and what remained on the hospital bed was just the packaging. The shell. The meat. You had stood there for a long time, staring at the sheet, and the numbness creeps in.

We are all just waiting to become objects.

It was a horrible thought, God—you knew it was horrible. You tucked it away in the same drawer where you kept all your horrible thoughts, the ones you weren't supposed to have, ones that made you feel like something was wrong with you. Because people weren't supposed to look at their dead father and see meat. People were supposed to see a life, a legacy, a man who had loved them.

But you had seen the body for what it was. Meat. Meat. Meat.

You didn't cry at the funeral, and your aunt had pinched your arm afterward, hard, and whispered show some respect into your ear, and you had nodded and tried to manufacture something that looked like grief. But your face had never been good at lying, and everyone had gone home talking about how cold you were, how distant, how strange. Maybe they were right, maybe there was something wrong with you.

You thought about this sometimes, in the years that followed. In the quiet hours between shifts, on the bus ride home when the city was nothing but streetlights, in the moments just before sleep when your mind was too tired to guard its borders. You think about your father's hands, and the sheet pulled over his face, and the way the nurse had avoided your eyes because she didn't know what to say to a girl who wouldn't cry.

You thought about death a lot, for someone your age.

Not in a morbid way, at least you thought so. You simply observed it, sometimes. The way the cashier at the grocery store had dead eyes behind her smile, or the man who lived two floors down hadn't walked his dog in three days, and the dog had started barking—this hoarse, desperate sound that made your stomach churn, and the way the city itself seemed to be dying a little every day, the buildings graffitied and gutted, the streets cracking open to reveal the dirt beneath.

Death was everywhere. By the time you were an adult, you had seen more bodies than you could count, developing a theory; unspoken and unshareable, that most people were already dead, though they just hadn't stopped moving yet. So when you turned the corner that night—the shortcut through the woods, the one you'd taken a hundred times before and saw the man standing over the bag, that fucking bag that was too suspicious to be anything but a body, you did not scream.

You should have screamed. Every survival instinct, every movie you'd ever watched, these crime documentaries—they all said scream. Because the first thing you thought, the very first thing, before any of the useful responses was: That's not a person anymore. And somehow, impossibly, that made it worse.

You recognized that shape, and you would have never known who was that body, except that it had been reduced to parts and placed in a bag, but you recognized the thingness of it. The object-ness. The way the flesh had stopped being a person and started being just... meat.

You had seen this before. In a hospital room, at fifteen, watching a sheet rise over your father's face. And the man standing over the bag—tall, dark haired, dressed like he was going to a dinner party instead of disposing of a corpse; he saw you see it. You watched him realize the moment your pupils dilated, your breath caught, your brain finished processing what your eyes had already understood.

The man was too calm, not a panic crossing his face, and then he stood up slowly, wiping his hands on a cloth, and looked at you with something that might have been curiosity. And you thought, in that strange, dissociated way that had become your default response to horror: He knows. He knows that I know what death looks like.

Then he spoke, and the world tilted sideways, and you stopped thinking altogether.

The next few hours were a blur of sensation.

Cold mud seeping through your shoes. The crack of your skull against the ground. The taste of blood and dirt on your mouth. The smell of him—clean, like soap and something something woodsy, like cedar or sandalwood, and blood, but old. Dried.

And then waking up; bound to a leg of the table. A dim light overhead. A man in an armchair watching you with the patience of someone who had all the time in the world. He asked for your name and you gave it, didn't think about lying, because lying had never been your strength, and something told you that this man would know anyway.

In return, he had told you his. Tom Riddle. What an unusual name, you thought as he spoke of it. Maybe it was a fake one he gave you.

That was hours ago, now you sit in the silence he has left behind. You could feel the table beneath your wrists is solid wood, the kind of table that had belonged to someone's grandmother before it belonged to a murderer, and you had wondered if he killed that grandmother too, or if Tom simply bought the table at an estate sale like a normal person. The thought is so ridiculous that you almost let out a laugh, and the almost smile hurts your face, and you realize that your jaw is clenched so tight you might crack a tooth.

You force yourself to relax for a brief moment—just fucking breathe, then it was your father's face who floats up from memory, but it's what he looked before, not dead. It was when your father was alive—when he was a person, not a body.

We are all just waiting to become objects. You had been fifteen when you thought that—you had been fifteen, and grieving, and so terrified of your own emptiness that you had turned your father into a philosophy problem just to avoid feeling the loss.

You missed him. Fuck, you missed your father. Will you see him then? If Tom killed you tonight, and he might, he probably would, the odds were not in your favor—would you open your eyes and find yourself in whatever came next?

Would he be there, with his open arms and the look he got when you made him proud? You didn't know. You had never known. But for the first time in years, you wanted to believe. Desperately so. You wanted to tell him you were sorry for being cold, for not crying when you should have cried. You wanted to hear him say it didn't matter, you wanted to hear him say he loved you anyway.

With the ropes cutting into your wrists and the silence of this room suffocating you—you wondered if convenience was such a bad thing. If believing, even for a moment, might be its own kind of salvation.

Tom stands at the stove, stirring a saucepan with the same steady hand he uses for everything else, and a thought passed through his head. I am going to marry you. It is, perhaps, the most dangerous thought he has ever had. More dangerous than the first time he held a knife to living flesh nor the first time he looked in a mirror and saw nothing looking back.

He tries to imagine it—the ceremony, the rings, the life that would follow. Tom imagine himself introducing you to someone as my wife, and the word feels foreign on his tongue. But Tom Riddle does not have a wife—he does not have a girlfriend, a partner, a confidant. He only has himself, and his work, and the voices that never quite leave him alone.

His gaze focused on observing bubbles on the sauce, watching the basil released its oil into the heat. He dipped his finger down, and tasted it on his tongue, then decidedly, added a pinch of sugar. The thought comes resurfacing once again, I am going to marry you, or I am going to kill you, I'm not sure which one turns me on more.

Or Tom could do the latter instead. It would be easier.

The knife was in the drawer, three feet to his left. He could cross the kitchen in four strides, and you would not even have time to scream. He could lay you out on the table where you now sat, and he could take his time, the blade sliding in—that first resistance, then the give, then the warmth of blood spilling over his fingers. Tom could peel back the layers of you; skin, muscle, fascia, bone, and he could finally see the edifice of your fear and regrets.

Where did it live? Was it in the brain, like his? Or had it settled somewhere deeper, somewhere more primitive?

He wanted to know. That was the problem, wasn't it? Wanting. Tom had spent his entire life wanting things—power, silence, the sweet relief of a world that made sense but this was different. This wanting was soft, curled around his ribs like smoke, the memory of your exposed skin beneath his fingers, the warmness of its touch.

Hm. Maybe he would gift you something. A heart, perhaps? Your father's, if he could find it. Tom was very good at finding things.

The pasta is good.

That's the first coherent thought you've had in hours, and it's so absurd that you want to vomit it all out. Your stomach clenches around the first bite, uncertain whether to keep it or reject it, and you have to force yourself to swallow. This is wrong—all of this is wrong. Your fork hovers over the bowl, and for a moment, you consider putting it down—refuse to eat, make some useless gesture of defiance that would change nothing but would let you feel like you still had some control. But you're hungry. God, you're so hungry.

You can't remember the last time you ate a proper meal, can't even remember the last time someone cooked for you. But that night, for reasons you still couldn't explain, you had decided to make something real. A salad. Nothing fancy, simply vegetables and maybe some chicken if you felt like splurging.

You'd walked to the store, bought the celery, and walked into the woods like a lamb to slaughter. This was what happened when you tried to take care of yourself—this was what happened when you reached for something better.

It lead you to this, whatever the fuck this is.

And now you're eating Tom's pasta and trying not to think about the body, but you cannot stop thinking about it. Someone's son or daughter, maybe. Someone's friend. A human being who had woken up that morning with plans and preferences, and now that person was in pieces, and you were eating pasta, and the pasta was good.

The guilt rises in your throat, hot and acidic, and you chase it down with another bite because the alternative is to stop eating, and stopping feels like giving up.

Tom sat across from you, his gaze on you. He's not eating anymore, his hands folded on the table in a pose that might look relaxed if you didn't know better. But you do know better. You have been watching him too, cataloging the details the way he probably cataloged yours; the way his shirt fits across his shoulders, the way some of his strands falls across his forehead, and his eyes; almost black in this light, haven't left your face since you sat down.

He's handsome. You hate that too.

"When was the last time you had a proper meal?" The question is so ordinary, so domestic, that it takes a moment to process, and when you didn't answer he spoke again. "That's what I thought," Tom added. "You live alone."

It's not a question, but you nod anyway.

"No partner. No family. No one who would notice if you didn't come home."

You set down your fork. The metal clinks against the ceramic, loud in the kitchen. "Is this some fucked up thing you do with your victims before you kill them?"

"No," Tom says simply. "This is something new."

You laugh—a short yet bitter sound that scrapes your throat on the way out. "Forgive me if I don't take the word of a murderer."

"You do not have to believe me, (Name)."

"Then I don't understand you," you replied, and your voice comes out steadier than you expected. "You kidnap me. You tie me to a table. You ask me my name and tell me yours like we're at some fucking party—and now you're feeding me pasta and asking about my eating habits." You shake your head. "What do you want from me?"

Tom is quiet for a long moment, then his voice came out softer, it wasn't warm or anything but not cold either.

"I have told you already, haven't I? I simply want to know you."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

You don't break eye contact, and neither does he. In the silence swallowing you whole, you realize something that makes your stomach turn and your heart race in equal measure. He means it—he actually means it.

"I think you're just lonely, Tom."

"Perhaps," he said after a pause. "But I know you are not the cure for loneliness."

"You know, most people pick up healthy habits or do normal stuff when they feel lonely—you cut people into pieces."

"I cut bodies into pieces. The people were gone long before I found them." He watches you carefully, looking for the flinch, the disgust, or moral outrage that always comes eventually. It doesn't come, and you're not sure why. "You understand that, don't you? You've seen it before—the moment when a person becomes just... meat."

Your jaw tightens. "My father."

"That's when you learned," he noted. "When you understood."

"Understood what?"

"That the person and the body are separate. One can leave while the other remains."

"Yes," you whisper. "That's when."

"I am sorry."

"Are you?"

"No," Tom admits. "But I would like to be."

You don't know what to do with his honesty, you have spent so much of your adolescence tightly clutching onto anger like all women do. It was worse than the blood constantly collecting in your mouth, worse than realizing the wretchedness and agony that blooms within you. So much death, so much loss.

You should be plotting your escape, planning your survival, thinking about anything other than the way his voice sounds when he says your name on his lips. Instead, you sit there, and you wonder what it would feel like to be that honest. To look at someone and say this is who I am, and I will not apologize for it. You have been apologizing your whole life—for your grief, for your coldness.

Tom doesn't apologize for being the way he is. Tom Riddle simply is. And some small, shameful part of you envies that.

Tom descends the stairs, with you following behind him, you could feel the warmth radiating off from his hand around your wrist, firm enough to remind you that you are still captive, still at the mercy of a man who collects bodies the way other people collect stamps. The fluorescent light flickers on, and you see it.

The table is steel, old and gleaming, yet it's clean—spotless, actually, wiped down with the same fastidious care Tom applies to everything else. But cleanliness does not erase what has happened here. You can feel it in the air, heavy: the ghost of every body that has been laid out on this surface, and on the table, arranged with precision, are the pieces.

You stopped breathing. Tom releases your wrist and steps forward, his shoes clicking against the concrete floor. He moves to the table, gestures to the display like a curator showing off a prized exhibit.

"I told you I would give you something," he says, and his voice is soft, almost tender. "Something to prove that I understand."

You cannot speak, words died at the throat, your lungs frozen, your brain struggling to process what your eyes are seeing.

Arms. Legs. A torso, split open and hollowed out. The remains are fresh, you can tell by the color, the texture, the way the blood has not yet fully dried. This is someone else. Someone who had been alive yesterday, maybe, or the day before.

"There was a man," Tom says, circling the table slowly. "He lived three streets over from you. He kept to himself, mostly. But he had a temper. He had a history, had done things to others. People who could not fight back." Tom pauses, his hand hovering over the torso. "I had been watching him for weeks. He was meant to be my next... project. But then I met you, and I realized that I wanted to repurpose him."

He lifts something from the table. It is small, dark, wet—and it takes you a moment to recognize it for what it is. A heart.

Tom holds it in his palm, cradling it like it's precious. The organ is still moist, fresh, and bearing the warmth of the body it had been taken from. He turns to face you, and his eyes are bright with something beyond your comprehension.

"I could not find your father's body," Tom explains. "I searched. I looked through records, through cemetery plots—every possible location where he might have been laid to rest. But too much time has passed, and the trail has gone cold, and I am not omniscient. Not yet." He steps closer, and the heart is between you now, close enough that you can smell the iron of it. "But I found this. A heart. Not his—I cannot give you his. But a heart nonetheless. A symbol. A promise."

Your knees buckle, with your hands reaching out, then grabbing the edge of the table to steady yourself, and your fingers come away wet.

"What the fuck, Tom?" you manage, and your words barely a whisper.

Tom Riddle has never given anyone a gift before, for he has taken and taken and taken but has never given. The concept had always seemed foolish to him—a waste of resources, an inefficient allocation of effort. Why give when you could simply take? But you are different, he supposes. Someone he would like to marry. He extends his hand, the heart resting in his palm like an offering.

"Take it," Tom whispered. "It's still warm—the metabolic heat hasn't fully dissipated. It's the most vibrant thing in this room, second only to you."

He thinks about the word love. He has never said it, not quite sure he knows what it means. Though standing here, in this cold basement of his, with the smell of blood in the air and the warmth of the heart bleeding into his palm, he thinks that perhaps this is what love looks like for someone like him. Not flowers or poetry, but rather, something like this; a heart, still warm, held out as an offering.

Surprisingly enough, you do take the heart, you tender fingers closes around it—tentative at first, then firmer, as if you are afraid it might slip. The blood seeps into the lines of your palm, staining your skin red, and you look down at it with an expression he cannot quite read.

"Okay," you rasped out, ache stirred inside your chest.

Tom seemed surprised. "Okay?"

"Okay," you repeat. "I'll keep it."

[saintnoxia]

𝟎𝟎𝟔:  𝐎𝐍𝐄  𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓  .  .  .  let  the  light  in. summary:  tom  thinks  you've  been  acting  suspicious  lately.  unfortunately  for  you,  curiosity  is  one  of  his  worst  habits.  he  intends  to  find  out,  one  way  or  another.  pairings:  tom  riddle  x  fem!reader. words:  9.1k. warnings:  alternate  universe  where  tom  didn't  become  voldemort.  NSFW.  also  fluff.  no  angst.  hogwarts  years.  it's  tom's  pov  whole  fic  so  he's  spiraling  tbh.  ooc?  tom.  reader  the  real  idgafer.  things  escalated  quickly,  tom  doesn't  know  what  to  make  of  that.  first  times  with  each  other.  making  out.  reader  giving  tom  head  of  the  year.  you  pretend  you  know  what  you're  doing  so  you're  winging  it.  virgin  tom  because  let's  be  honest.  author  notes:  my  second  attempt  at  anything  nsfw,  forgive  me.  it's  coping  week  and  i  had  a  dream  about  this  fic,  it  was  so  vivid  i  had  to  finish  the  draft.  it's  also  an  attempt  to  see  if  my  skills  are  good  enough  to  write  tom's  pov  (it's  not).  even  if  it's  ooc  of  him,  i  think  i'm  fond  of  this  version  of  tom.  any  typos  &  error,  send  them  out  to  me.  as  always,  enjoy  reading  :)

This was the natural order of things; a world defined by hierarchy, measured in grades, and solidified by the sheer force of his own will. The repulsive need to be something more than human, to transcend the frailties of the flesh and the commonality of the spirit, was his sole drive. Terror and desire often go hand in hand, Tom lived in the center of both—the terror of being mediocre, the desire to be eternal.

Neither good nor evil. Simply as is. That is Tom Marvolo Riddle in his core. This is the kind of man he was becoming. He defines a good person as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their shadow—they know their weaknesses.

In other words, he understands that there is no good without bad. Good and evil are really one, but mankind have broken them up in their consciousness. Mankind had evolved to polarize them, creating a binary of light and dark to comfort themselves, but Tom had seen the truth in the grey.

And then, there was you.

It began with the precipice of his creation—rules and laws he meticulously had written, structures Tom intended for everyone to bow to, if not immediately, then inevitably. He had already established his inner circle, the Knights of Walpurgis, instilling in those pureblooded, idle sons of privilege the conviction that they answered to him, and him alone.

Remarkably enough, it had taken very little effort to persuade them to address him as My Lord. Foolish! Utterly foolish, and for his own amusement of course. Tom did fancy that title, but mostly he just enjoyed watching them grovel for a bit of his attention. It does wonders for his ego, blood status seemed meaningless when these purebloods are beneath him anyway.

It is natural for Tom that people simply gravitate towards him no matter the cause because he is that charmingly deceptive. He knew exactly what to say, when to smile and laugh, when to offer a helping hand to younger students. Tom made a point of remembering the smallest details about people he would otherwise ignore, all for the sake of his ambition, making this uprising to godhood much more unbearably tedious.

For years, the system had been simple. Foreseeable even. He worked twice as hard, he excelled in all subjects, and the castle bent itself around the inevitability of his brilliance. Professors admired him. Students feared or idolized him. Tom's reputation was something few students managed to earn so early, carefully built and impossible to dismiss.

But alongside that, there was always another name.

Yours.

Not above his, never quite below it either—always beside it, irritatingly parallel. It was intolerable, to say the least. Tom did not believe in coincidence. Excellence required discipline, a will sharp enough to carve through the mediocrity of others, and yet you moved through the same system with a carelessness that bordered on sacrilege.

You matched him in every examination. Potion compositions written with neat perspicuity. Defensive spellwork executed with unnerving control. Even the obscure theoretical questions—those that forced other students into frantic guesswork, you answered with the same certainty Tom did.

Tom hated your lineage; he hated the way the name (Lastname) opened doors for you that he had to blast off their hinges. Though more than the blood status, he hated your apathy. You were his only academic peer, the only one whose scores occasionally flickered above his own, regardless, you treated your magic like a common parlor trick.

You didn't crave the mastery he did. You seemed to treat Hogwarts like someplace you were merely passing through. Competition was the heart of Hogwarts, everyone knew this. Students devoured each other for recognition, clawing upward toward approval, toward power, toward the fragile illusion of importance.

But you never played the game. That, perhaps, was the most offensive thing about you.

Tom could tolerate rivals. Rivals had its own purpose, it could create friction against which greatness could be measured. He could have a little bit fun with that, even hatred had a kind of structure to it, something orderly and quite predictable. If you had glared across the classroom at him, if you had sneered when your marks surpassed his, if you had attempted to gather your own little court of admirers to counter his—Tom would have understood it.

You did none of those things.

You did not gloat when Slughorn praised your potion work, though the old man's delight was obvious when he compared it to Tom's. You did not preen when Dumbledore returned Transfiguration essays with identical Outstanding marks, the faintest proud expression in his otherwise neutral expression betraying how unusual it was.

It was the ease that galled him. Tom looked for the tell tale signs of strain in your work and found nothing. The possibility that you were achieving parity while distracted—while barely even present, festered in his mind. You don't even try. Tom always tried.

If you can do this while your mind is elsewhere, then what are you capable of if you've given enough care? And why, merciful Slytherin, do you not simply care?

To serve his own incessant curiosities, Tom had taken to observing you over the years—purely in passing, of course. Not stalking. Certainly not a growing fixation. Though he would never allow anyone to suspect it. You simply had an unfortunate tendency to appear wherever his attention happened to fall. Yes, that's it.

First he noticed you often studied alone, sometimes with that (Mudblood) Hufflepuff Bathilda Cattermole. The name alone carried an unpleasant taste in Tom's mind, though he concealed it perfectly whenever she was near. The girl was harmless, in the way insects were harmless; small, dull creatures occupying space that hardly matters.

It was a grotesque display of wasted intellect; you would lean in to whisper about some inconsequential nonsense to her, laughing as if there is not a care in the world. Books would lie open around you, several at once, but your attention drifted between them without urgency. Sometimes you would abandon them entirely to chase something trivial.

Once, Tom had watched from the castle window as you spent nearly twenty minutes attempting to coax a kneazle out from beneath the greenhouse steps. The creature eventually allowed itself to be scooped into your arms, where it immediately began purring like a moggie. You had laughed then, the sound light and unguarded, before setting it down again and walking off as if the entire incident had been of equal importance to any academic pursuit.

Tom had found himself irrationally irritated for the remainder of the day. It did not make sense, nothing about you made sense.

And lately, the matter had only become stranger, because you had begun behaving suspiciously. Tom did not mean the kind of suspicious behavior that plagued foolish students experimenting with cursed objects or forbidden spells. No, he understood that kind of ambition very well. This was different—you had begun disappearing.

You were doing things. Odd things.

Lingering outside the Restricted Section long after the librarian had dismissed the last student, only to leave without taking a single book. Standing perfectly still beside the Black Lake at dusk, as though waiting for something beneath the surface to answer you. Disappearing into the greenhouses after curfew and emerging later with dirt beneath your fingernails.

Scribbling something hurriedly into a small notebook before tearing the page out and folding it away into your robes.

On more than one of his late patrols, Tom had encountered you where you most certainly should not have been. It would have taken very little effort to deduct points, to escort you back to your dormitories, to see you assigned detention for the rest of the term. He never did. Curiosity, after all, required patience. Interrupting you now would only delay whatever it was you were trying so strangely to accomplish.

None of it aligned with the person Tom believed you must be. Someone who could match him intellectually had to possess the same hunger. The same drive toward something larger than the petty distractions of ordinary life.

Which meant there were only two possibilities.

Either you were profoundly idiotic or you were hiding something.

Tom preferred the second theory.

Sooner or later, you would reveal something, and when you do, Tom would finally understand what game you were playing.

The next Potions lesson began as most did; thick with the sour sweet fumes of simmering concoctions and the tension that inevitably followed the presence of Slughorn. The dungeon classroom was already alive with the low burble of cauldrons when Tom arrived. Students parted almost unconsciously as he moved through the room, their murmured conversations dimming in that subtle way they often did around him.

He also noticed where you were sitting.

Second row from the back today, quill tucked absently behind your ear, sleeves rolled just high enough to keep them from dipping into the potion you had not yet begun brewing. Several ingredients already sat neatly arranged before you, though you seemed far more interested in turning a small scrap of parchment between your fingers than in the lesson itself.

Tom slid into the empty seat beside you.

Slughorn clapped his hands together at the front of the room, mustache bristling with enthusiasm.

"Today, my young prodigies, we shall be attempting something a touch more delicate. A Draught of Peace."

Several students groaned quietly.

Tom, however, his attention had already shifted to the small parchment still turning slowly between your fingers, the same small notebook paper he had seen you tear from its binding on other occasions. Interesting.

Slughorn continued. "You will be working in pairs today! A proper Draught requires a steady hand and excellent timing—two minds are better than one, eh?"

The class began shifting noisily as students rearranged themselves, Tom did not move, and either did you. Which meant, of course—

"Well then!" Slughorn beamed, clearly delighted. “Riddle and Miss (Lastname)! Excellent pairing. Two of my finest students, what a treat!”

A few heads turned. Tom could practically hear the unspoken thought ripple through the room. Of course they’re paired. A faint smug expression etches across his face, at least they know you were somehow off limits when it comes to these things.

"Miss (Lastname)," he began softly, almost conversationally, "I must say… you have an impressive method of organizing your workspace. I can always tell which students will end up with a perfect potion before they even begin."

You glanced at him briefly, eyebrow raised.

"And which category does that put me in?" you asked, tone light, friendly.

Tom allowed a faint laugh. "You, of course, are in a class entirely your own. Unpredictable, yet precise. There's a balance to it I find fascinating."

Your mouth quirked into a tiny smile, clearly amused by the rare compliment. Tom's eyes flicked to your cauldron, noting the way you measured each ingredient with careless elegance.

"Do you always work like this?" he asked casually, already preparing his moonstone. "Or is today a special occasion?"

"I like to keep things interesting," you replied, shrugging. "Life's too dull otherwise."

Tom's lips curved into a more deliberate smile. "Interesting… yes, I would describe you exactly the same way."

He stirred the cauldron slowly, watching the vapors curl turn into blue, but his attention never left you. He let the silence linger just long enough for curiosity to prick at you, how does one keep a conversation alive with someone who seems so unbothered? Tom could comment on the potion, the parchment, the steam curling from the cauldron—anything.

All he had to do was ask the right question, make the smallest observation, and you would respond.

"You measure very carefully," he observed, as if it were the most offhand remark. "I've seen plenty of students rush and ruin the potion before they've even begun."

You shrugged, dipping your wand into the mixture. "I don't see the point in rushing. Potions aren't a race."

"No, they aren't. But some do seem to treat every lesson like one." He tapped the side of his cauldron lightly with his wand. "I can't imagine how tedious it must be to follow the rules that closely all the time."

You glanced at him, curiosity in your gaze. "Rules aren't so bad, I suppose. Sometimes they're convenient."

"Convenient," he repeats. "Yes, that's a good way to put it. Easier than constantly calculating where others might go wrong, I imagine."

"Some people take rules far too seriously. I prefer to experiment a little."

Tom tilted his head, watching the vapors twist. "Experimentation has its merits. It makes life more interesting, doesn't it?"

"Exactly," you said, with a faint smile, as though confirming a shared secret.

"I reckon we'll learn quite a lot from each other today."

Your expression changes, clearly amused yet unfazed. "I suppose we shall."

Three days had passed since that pairing in Potions, and in that time, Tom had seen you more than he had anticipated—passing in corridors, exchanging brief words in the library, sharing a glance across the dueling stage, and of course, working alongside him again in most classes.

He realized now that his usual methods were only partially effective with you. You allowed proximity, allowed conversation, allowed a teasing smile here, a hint of amusement there but never more. Never enough for Tom to feel in control, never enough to fully unravel the enigma you carried.

Yet in those fragments, he had learned much. Tom had learned that you were gratuitous even in your apparent spontaneity, that your curiosity was boundless yet tempered with a certitude that could split through any problem, that you were unbothered by pretense, immune to the usual allure of titles and admiration, and profoundly uninterested in anyone's expectations but your own.

He admitted (only to himself) that there was a peculiar elegance to it all.

And perhaps the most infuriating and intoxicating part of it was how utterly self-contained you were. Tom had assumed, as he always did, that charm could open the edifice of your brain, his superior intellect could lure any mind into conversation, or attention could extract secrets like water from a sponge. Not with you.

You were careful, playful, intelligent, and wholly autonomous. You revealed only what you wished for Tom Riddle to see. And yet, every conversation, every shared glance, had allowed him glimpses—perhaps, of patterns. A mind that, while inscrutable, was fascinating in its logic and entirely unpredictable in its choices.

"Good morning, (Name)." says Tom one morning, at the Great Hall where you were seated.

"Hello, Tom." you murmured, currently occupied reading a novel, you didn't give him a glance.

"Shall we walk together to class later?"

Tom knew it was a gamble, offering such a casual invitation while so many watched. Yet he was confident enough in your nature to suspect you wouldn't outright refuse. And if you agreed… well, that would be even more instructive. The thought of it made him linger a moment longer, anticipating.

It struck him, belatedly, that Bathilda was watching, mouth slightly agape. How amusing, that she assumed he was making some grand gesture. Tom allowed himself the smallest smirk, quietly amused by the idea that people around them couldn't see the simplicity of his plan—a casual walk to class. It was not for them, after all. It was for you.

You glanced up briefly, then back at your book. "I think I'll pass, thanks."

The audible gasp from Bathilda Cattermole made him flick an almost invisible glance toward her, noting the sheer incredulity on her face. Tom felt a subtle tick in his jaw, though his expression remained perfectly composed.

"I see," he said smoothly, voice gentle but on edge. "But perhaps I could persuade you? It need not be a long conversation. Merely a stroll."

"Thanks, Tom, but Betty and I have plans on the way to class," you said lightly, turning a page. "I wouldn't want to steal her company."

Tom's eyes swept over to Bathilda, then back to you. "Very well."

A flash of irritation ran through him. You had rejected him without effort, and yet he could not betray the stir it caused. Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow he would not be denied so easily. His mind churned with possibilities, the ways Tom might lure you into conversation without tripping over your defenses, the ways he might pique that insufferable independence of yours.

He was patient, though even then, patient has its limits.

The following morning, Tom arrived at the Great Hall with his usual lackeys, and yet, his attention was elsewhere. He scanned the familiar faces, eyes drifting past chatter and the clatter of breakfast, seeking you.

And there you were.

But not alone.

Cadmus Sallow, a Gryffindor; gawky, loud, all good natured bravado—walked beside you, his hand brushing yours casually as if the world were no more than a playground. You had giggled at something he said, the light in your eyes utterly unrestrained, a sound that ricocheted through Tom's mind.

Tom stopped just short of the Slytherin table, teeth clenching, the muscles at the back of his neck stiffening. His mind ran through options, each more preposterous than the last; intercepting politely, feigning casual coincidence, perhaps even conjuring an excuse to walk with you without appearing obvious…

And yet, you didn't glance back, didn't seem aware of his presence. Infuriating, because it was trivial. It was mundane. Something curdled inside him, a strange, unfamiliar burn he did not recognize. Tom had not expected you to acquiesce to him yesterday, but he had hoped for some small opening this morning. But now this, he gets instead.

He observed you as you accepted Sallow's attention. Every instinct in him bristled, though entirely not at Scamander's presence, but at the ease with which you allowed it. The thought of you, walking beside another student, unselfconscious in ways that had not included him, kindled a strange unrest beneath his exterior that Tom had never allowed before.

Tom tried to analyze it, to place it in intellectual terms. Was this a test? An act to draw him out, or merely a display of that infuriating self containment that had made every prior interaction with you both vexing and fascinating? Perhaps, he realized reluctantly, it was simpler than that. Perhaps you simply… did not care to include him at all.

He pressed his hands lightly to the edge of the table, forcing himself to maintain composure. He would not betray even a flicker of irritation, would not let anyone see how quickly the sight had unnerved him. His mind, always so accustomed to control, swirled instead with new kind of cunning.

Because one way or another, whether through his impeccable charm or subtle provocation, he would see you walk alongside him. And he would understand—whatever strange, confounding force drew him to you, it would not be denied.

Night had settled over Hogwarts, the castle quiet except for the occasional owl or the soft rustle of ghosts wandering the corridors. His usual late patrols gives him the perfect pretense to wander the halls, deduct points from students who broke curfew hours, and assert control in the small ways he could. Patrols were a duty—but Tom always preferred them.

As he walked along the path near the Black Lake, reverie in mind, his eyes caught movement. At first, he thought he was mistaken; a pair of shadows that shouldn't be there. Then he recognized them. Closer inspection confirmed what his mind had already been racing toward—Cadmus Sallow and you. Too close, too casual.

But it wasn't the proximity that set his teeth on edge, it was what followed next.

Before Tom could fully process, Cadmus lifted you effortlessly into his arms. Your scream carried across the water, and in a split second, he tossed you into the lake.

Time slowed. Tom's brain scrambled, processing: You can swim, yes. But why the theatrics? Why the—Panic. Alarm. Rage. You were going to drown in that lake, whose night dark depths had swallowed creatures before, where one miscalculated stroke could have ended everything. You were going to be eaten alive.

Cursing under his breath, he raised his wand. "Impedimenta!"

Cadmus froze mid step, hit by the curse thrown, stumbling backward onto the grass with a groan; unconscious before he even hit the ground. He didn't care for that boy, not now.

Without thinking, Tom dived into the lake. The water enveloped him, cold and suffocating, but he pushed downward, past the ripples and shadows, searching desperately. He spotted a swirl of motion, a glimmer of the shape he knew belonged to you, sinking lower than any ordinary person should.

Hands closed around you, firm as he dragged you upward, breaking the surface in a violent rush, lungs screaming from the shock. He hauled you to the shore, water sluicing off your hair, clothes sticking, and only then allowed himself a glance at your face.

His hands were shaking from a burgeoning, murderous intent that made the Lake's depths look inviting by comparison. Tom looked at your pale throat, then back at the dark lump of Sallow on the grass. He wondered how long Cadmus Sallow would last if his lungs were magically filled with the very lake water he'd thrown you into. It was a fascinating academic question. He'd leave the boy's body at the bottom of the lake, anchored by the weight of his own stupidity.

The world was full of mediocre people; surely the loss of one loud mouthed Gryffindor would be a net gain for the universe. A simple Killing Curse felt too quick, a mercy Sallow hadn't earned. No, Tom would unmake him. The audacity of it—to put hands on his interest, to ruin his clothes, to force him into a display of uncalculated emotion.

You coughed, the water spilling out in a rush, leaving you trembling and breathless against the damp earth. Your eyes were bright with adrenaline, blinking up at the dark silhouette of the boy looming over you.

"Have you completely lost your mind?" Tom finally had snapped. "That idiot just threw you into the lake! He could have killed you!"

You blinked at Tom, water dripping from your hair, looking far more confused than frightened.

"Tom Riddle?" you glanced around, then at the lake. "What are you doing here?"

Tom stared at you in disbelief. "What am I—? You were drowning, (Name). I saved you."

"…I asked him to throw me in."

You what?

The words did not settle into anything sensible, they hovered somewhere between incomprehensible and deeply irritating.

"You… asked him," Tom repeated slowly.

Water dripped from your sleeves as you pushed yourself upright, still catching your breath. Behind you, the lake lapped innocently at the shoreline as though it had not just been the site of a life threatening rescue.

"Yes," you said, brushing wet hair from your face. "I asked him."

Tom's mind, which had been seconds away from devising several creative methods of disposing of Cadmus Sallow’s body, stalled completely.

"You asked him," he said again, more sharply.

Then you nodded your head, as if this clarified everything, as if it was enough of an explanation. Tom glanced down at you, then toward the unconscious Gryffindor sprawled several feet away, then back at the lake.

A long, very quiet pause followed.

"You were sinking, (Name)." Tom said finally, voice tight. "You disappeared beneath the surface."

"Yes," you agreed cheerfully.

"That generally happens when one is thrown into deep water."

"And yet," your hands gestured vaguely at yourself, "I'm fine, Tom."

"You were drowning," Tom insists stubbornly.

"No, I wasn't."

"You were underwater."

"That's how swimming works."

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "I heard you screaming."

You shrugged. "It's part of the experience."

"The experience?"

"Yes, Tom. I feel like we are going around in circles."

He inhaled slowly through his nose, as though restraining himself from committing several crimes at once. Behind him, Cadmus Sallow groaned faintly. Tom’s head snapped toward the sound with a glare.

You followed his gaze and blinked. "Oh," you said. "Why is Cadmus unconscious?"

"Because I hexed him."

"For throwing me in the lake?"

"Obviously."

"But I asked him to."

Tom's patience, already hanging by a thread, strained violently. "Yes," he said tightly. "You mentioned that."

You tilted your head at him, studying his soaked robes, the lake water dripping from his hair, the fact that he was kneeling in the mud looking equal parts furious and bewildered.

"…Tom," you said slowly.

"(Name)." Tom says your name with the same timbre of your voice.

"Did you jump into the lake to save me?"

Tom's gaze shifted away from yours, settling somewhere over your shoulder toward the lake. For the first time that evening, he found himself momentarily at a loss. He had not planned the dive, had not weighed the risks or consequences. The moment he believed you were in danger, he had simply moved. Instinctively. Recklessly. The lack of logic in that decision disturbed him deeply.

Irrational—precisely the sort of behavior he despised in other people. Although Tom preferred not to dwell on why your safety had seemed suddenly more important than his own. He did not respond to your question but it was quite obvious from the way his expression subtly changed, the way ruddy crept up from his ears, evidently clear.

A sound reached him then—a laugh. Yours. Tom's attention snapped back immediately, the unfamiliar warmth of the sound catching him off guard. It was effortless, genuine in a way he had not quite witnessed before, this was something else entirely.

Your eyes had crinkled slightly at the corners, your shoulders shaking lightly, and your nose scrunching faintly as you laughed under your breath. It was your entire expression softening, leaving Tom too mesmerized to even look away. You were beautiful. Crushingly so. How does he look away now that he has seen you?

The sound was oddly compelling. He wondered, briefly, what it would take to hear it again from you. Perhaps it was not such a wasted effort after all.

"I was not dying, all right," you managed between breaths. "Cadmus and I were testing something."

"Testing what exactly?"

"I am merely crossing off my life list."

Tom blinked. "Your what?"

You shrugged slightly, wringing water from your sleeve. "Betty told me about it. Muggle sentimentality, you know. It's just… a list of things you want to do at least once. Little experiences, ridiculous ideas, things you'd regret never trying." You gestured vaguely toward the lake. "Being thrown into the Black Lake at night happened to be one of them."

Tom regarded you with a narrowed gaze, reconsidering everything he thought he had understood. For a moment he felt the irritation of a theory collapsing in his mind. Tom had believed he was beginning to understand you—your odd behavior, your distance, the curious independence you guarded so closely. Yet every time he thought he had placed you inside his head amongst all other things, you do something utterly nonsensical. Tom goes back to zero again.

"Why on earth," he asked finally, "would anyone willingly do something like that?"

"Because it's ridiculous," you said simply. "And we're almost out of time at Hogwarts. We'll be graduating soon!"

Tom understood the source of your strange behavior now. The explanation was disappointingly simple; a list of meaningless experiences, both sentimental and irrational. And yet, for reasons he could not categorize, he found himself standing alone in the corridor the next morning with a small bouquet conjured in his hand, waiting for you.

An apology was unnecessary; you had, after all, survived the ordeal unscathed. By every rational measure, the matter should have been dropped.

His gaze lowered briefly to the flowers.

They were small things; delicate blossoms threaded with thin stems of green, arranged with a care he had not consciously intended. Most girls like flowers, right? Assumingly so, Tom decided to go with that. It's the sort of gift people offered to smooth over minor inconveniences, but not something one prepared after dragging someone half drowned from the Black Lake in the middle of the night.

A group of younger students passed at the far end of the corridor, their chatter reverberating against the walls before fading down the stairwell. The castle was slowly stirring awake, morning light spilling through the tall windows and stretching across the floor in long bands.

Tom remained where he was.

The sensible course of action would have been to leave. There was nothing requiring his presence here, nothing obligating him to wait. If anything, the more pressing matter still remained Cadmus Sallow, whose continued existence was a mistake Tom had not yet eliminated.

He could see you were finally walking, side by side with Bathilda Cattermole, her usual chatter filling the quiet morning. Tom adjusted the small bouquet in his hand, straightening his robes, and started walking toward you with measured steps. The usual confident stride was tempered by an unfamiliar anticipation.

When he finally fell into step beside you, he allowed a wry smile to soften his otherwise stern expression.

"Good morning, (Name). Care to let me borrow a moment of your time?"

You glanced at him briefly, eyebrow arched. For a passing moment, Tom feared refusal—instead, you nodded, turning your attention back to Bathilda. "I'll see you later, Betty."

You walked with a calm ease, hair styled and eyes glowed, and for the first steps, neither of you spoke. The silence was not uncomfortable; it was tension interlaced from the events of the Black Lake, from shared glances and unspoken questions, from the chaos of the night left behind but not forgotten.

Finally, Tom broke it, holding out the bouquet.

You blinked, startled. "Oh…? What's this for?"

Tom's jaw stiffened. Words rarely stumbled from him, and yet, here they came, halting and uncertain. "For the other night," he explains. "I didn't mean to come across… harshly. Or alarm you. You… surprised me."

Your lips quirked, faintly amused, but your eyes studied him intently, trying to read more than the words themselves.

"Well," you said softly, "I suppose it's appreciated."

He let out a small exhale, though his heart pounded. The corridor stretched ahead, sunlight streaming through, dust motes drifting lazily in the morning light. He fell into step beside you, keeping a careful distance, conscious of the warmth emanating from your presence, yet unsure how close Tom should allow himself.

"You were reckless," he said finally, careful, but with an edge he could not fully suppress.

You glanced at him, tilting your head, eyes curious. "Perhaps. But I wanted to be. It was… necessary."

Tom's eyes drifted to yours, trying and failing to assess the logic behind your statement. And then, without thinking, he let a corner of his usual precision slip.

"Necessary?" almost incredulous. "You could have drowned or worse—killed by Grindylows."

"You saved me," a teasing lilt in your tone. "Did you not?"

The corner of his mouth twitched—almost a smile, though he would not call it that. Something in your easy confidence, in the way you had faced the lake, in the way you now accepted the bouquet without complaint, unsettled him in the best possible way. He had expected the refusal, but not this. Not you.

Both of you walked in silence for a few moments longer, the bouquet held loosely between your fingers, the weight of unspoken words lingering. The lecture he'd prepared died in his throat, replaced by the simple, startling peace of your company. In the soft, hazy light of the morning, the world seemed to shrink until there was no past to interrogate and no future to plot—there was only the reality of his shadow falling beside yours on the path.

Tom Riddle was simply there, matching his stride to yours, captivated by the way the sunlight refused to flee from your gaze.

Finally, you glanced down at the flowers. "You didn't have to do this, you know."

"I know," he replied evenly, though the edge in his voice betrayed him. "But I wanted to."

Your eyes softening ever so slightly. "Then… thank you, Tom."

You continued walking, the corridor fading behind as the path led toward the small wooden bridge spanning the stream that fed into the Black Lake. The world around you were quiet—too quiet, perhaps, and it left only the two of you in the sunlight dappled hush of the bridge.

You stopped abruptly, turning around to face him, lifting your gaze to meet his. The bouquet shifted in your fingers.

"Tom," you began softly, voice unusually serious. "Are you… courting me?"

He froze, then he blinked once, twice, and for once, words had failed him. Courting? For a man who prided himself on having a silver tongue, the silence that followed was positively deafening. Tom had never—never—intended to express anything so personal, or resembling affection towards you. And yet, somehow, you had come to that conclusion entirely on your own.

How had you drawn that conclusion?

Tom's mind scrambled, a myriads of contradictions swimming through his head. He could not dissect this, could not plan a clever retort. You had thrown him entirely off, the bridge beneath him felt narrower, the air heavier with the implication of your words, his chest felt tightly suffocating.

He tried to search your expression, the certainty in your eyes, trying to find a misinterpretation—a trick, anything Tom could use to reduce this to something manageable. But there was nothing. The words hung in the air between you, tangible and daring him to respond.

Tom felt an unfamiliar pang of something like hesitation, like fear, like desire, like fury, though he could not tell which. He felt unarmed, exposed to your understanding, and frustratingly, Tom hated that it pleased him.

You didn't wait for him. The silence stretched, the soft ripple of the stream below, and the bouquet trembling slightly in your hands, as if even it sensed the tension.

Finally, with your usual decisiveness, you added: "I'll be your girlfriend then."

You had chosen him, on your own terms, without persuasion, without manipulation, and entirely outside his control. In that moment, Tom felt like he could do nothing but stare at you in disbelief, breath caught.

Tom Riddle has a girlfriend now. Girlfriend. The word still lingered in his mind, as though it didn't belong in the same sentence with him. Tom Riddle has a girlfriend. The notion felt preposterous, ridiculous even! and yet, undeniably true.

He passed the portraits on the walls with the usual composure, he caught snippets of whispers behind painted frames; "Did you hear?" "Tom Riddle's taken someone?" "Finally, (Name) got him!" Each murmur was a pulse in a pulse of the castle, each rumor a tick in a clock he was normally so meticulous in controlling.

Now he could not control this. No charm, no subtlety could alter the simple fact that he belonged, in some inexplicable way, to another. To you. The absurdity of it struck him. Women had never interested him, not really. Most bored him, were predictable, or clever in ways that paled before his own superior intellect.

Affection, romance, flirtation—these were minor distractions at best. He had never permitted sentiment to intrude on his pursuits, what use of a lover when you're going to be the most dangerous wizard in the whole world? For Merlin's sake, Tom Riddle had never even touched a woman before. Most certainly, he wouldn't touch you now.

By the time he reached the Potions dungeon, he found himself in a rare situation; Slughorn grinned more widely than usual.

"Ah! Riddle, my boy!" the professor clapped him on the shoulder with almost inappropriate enthusiasm. "I hear congratulations are in order! Finally, you've acquired… a companion, hm? (Lastname) at that… I always knew the two of you would be entangled with each other one way or another… Ah, young love indeed."

"Yes, Professor." Tom forced himself to smile, internally, he felt as though a part of him had been unmoored. "It seems so."

Moving past the congratulatory chatter and toward the workbench, arranging himself with the same deftness he applied to every potion he brewed. Each ingredient was placed, vials aligned by size and content, powders sifted into neat piles, liquids in graduated flasks reflecting the dim glow of the dungeon. Even here, in the sanctuary of Slughorn's cauldron lit chaos, Tom's mind tried to regain its usual order.

Slughorn, hovering nearby, could hardly contain his curiosity—or his delight. "Yes, yes, excellent! I always did say a clever boy like you would find a clever witch…" He leaned in closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "Now, tell me, Riddle, do you find yourself… distracted?"

Tom's hands didn't falter, but his eyes drifted, unconsciously, to the miniature vial of essence he was weighing. He suppressed a sigh. "Professor, I assure you, focus is not an issue."

Slughorn chuckled, rubbing his hands together as if he had caught a rare and fascinating specimen. "Ah, but there's a certain… ineffable quality when young hearts collide, hmm? Even in the most disciplined of minds, it makes one… a touch less predictable."

Tom did not respond. Instead, he moved with methodical care, measuring powdered roots into precise increments, stirring liquids until they shimmered exactly as expected. His mind, however, kept wandering; the bouquet still in your hands, the way sunlight had glinted off your hair as you walked beside him, the sharpness of your teasing remark that had sent him scrambling for words on the bridge.

It was maddening, but also oddly captivating.

Tom snapped back to the present as Slughorn leaned over, peering into the beginnings of a simmering potion. "Yes, yes, that's it! Beautiful technique! Never have I seen such attention to detail."

Perhaps, Tom should have never taken this advance lesson from Slughorn this morning. Long fingers deftly adjusting the contents of the cauldron. Each motion was precise, a discipline to counterbalance the chaos of his thoughts. He could not allow himself to lose control—his plans, his ambition, his careful cultivation of influence, but he could not deny the strange undercurrent that had begun when you accepted the bouquet, when you had decided, entirely of your own accord, to be with him.

He arranged the final ingredient into the cauldron, watching as it dissolved perfectly, releasing a faint luminescent mist. Even in this small triumph, Tom felt the tug of distraction. The world outside this dungeon had changed. You had changed it.

Slughorn hummed appreciatively. "Ah, Riddle, my boy… not only masterful in skill but evidently… masterful in the ways of… hearts as well. Remarkable!"

His thoughts, usually as unyielding as the lines of a spell, were tangled now—wrapped around you, around the absurdity of being called your boyfriend, around the unwelcomed warmth he felt every time your name passed through his mind.

And yet, his fingers still moved, because if there was one thing Tom Riddle could still command, it was the magic at his fingertips.

The Room of Requirement was something both of you began to hang around together (your idea, of course), a warm haven far from the watchful eyes of Hogwarts. Bookshelves lined the walls, a soft rug underfoot, and a low couch sat in the center, perfectly arranged for the two of you. It was much more peaceful this way, without prying eyes or baseless gossips.

"I haven't kissed anyone before," says you, legs stretched lazily across Tom's lap. "Have you?"

A visceral moment of surprise, Tom's hands stilled over the book in his own lap, the words on the page blurring as his mind registered the weight of your words. He knew he should answer quickly, with charm or wit, but nothing came.

Have he? Of course not. Tom didn't have time for the clumsy, uncoordinated exchanges of saliva he'd seen other students engaging in behind the greenhouses, or corners. Besides, he thinks it is unsanitary for people to have done that, even the thought itself makes his skin crawl in repulsiveness.

Tom's gaze finally peered over you, and that's when he saw it. A soft, subtle flush to your lips. Was that tint? A balm? An application of some cosmetic? The realization that you might have prepared for this—that those lips were currently a different shade than they were at breakfast, had sent a surge of something molten through his veins.

His body leaned in, shadow stretching over you, his gaze fixated on your mouth.

"What is this?" Tom whispered, his thumb rising to brush your lower lip. The contact was rousing. He felt the tender heat of your skin, and the tint came away on his thumb, a smear of pale red against his porcelain skin.

"Do you like it?" your voice soft, velvet provocation.

"I am not certain," he swallowed hard. The words barely left his mouth before his restraint cracked. His body shifted, leaning closer with his own heart hammering against his chest.

"Do you… want to kiss, Tom?"

The first touch of his lips to yours was hesitant, leaving you panicked by that sudden act, but you didn't push him away either, so he took it as a sign. Tom had never kissed anyone—not properly. He knew of the mechanics, the general idea, but intimacy was something he hadn't quite learned hands on. Tom barely knew where to put his hands, what to do, where to look, and you had noticed exactly that.

His entire body feels like it's burning and perhaps, that's okay. The angle was slightly off, his upper lip brushing awkwardly, teeth grazing lightly in a moment of over caution. You tilted your head to compensate, and the small, imperfect corrections only made the contact more intimate, more yours.

You laughed softly against him when his tongue accidentally brushed yours, flustered and amused at his fumbling attempts, and Tom responded with a quiet exhale of frustration mixed with exhilaration. The points of your noses got out of each other's way, exhales mingling, and he heard you gasped out a little moan, too, dizzy from the sweltering intimacy.

Finally, without prior signals, you closed the circuit with a soft, shy kiss, then another, and another, all chaste but all meaning the same thing; Tom Riddle is kissing you. You were kissing him.

He'd been simply reduced to a boy who didn't know how to breathe. When he finally pulled back, just an inch, his forehead rested against yours. He was breathless, his skin flushed in startling pink, and his eyes were wide like yours.

"I think," he whispered, "that I might require more practice."

"Me too as well." you simply said, at a loss for words.

And then, when you tried to move—your knee had bumped into something hard in between his legs, earning Tom to elicit a soft groan from his throat, his eyes snapping shut as the air left his lungs. You must have realized this because your eyes widened in a flash of horrified realization, and your breath hitched in a small, audible gasp.

"I—" you began, the heat already rushing to your cheeks.

"—No," Tom interrupted, his voice strained. He cut you off before the apology could leave your lips, saving you both from the embarrassment of his bodily reaction. "My apologies, (Name)."

He withdrew slowly, his back hitting the rear of the couch with a heavy thud. Putting a clinical distance between his raging boner and your knee. He sank back against the cushions of the couch, his spine stiff as he stared at the ceiling as if the answers to his sudden loss of composure were written in the rafters. You remained where you were, sprawled out with your head pillowed against the armrest, the air between you still lingering with the ghost of that clumsy kiss.

Tom could back out now. Part of him wants to. He could say that this was over, and never have to relive this moment again. But Tom hadn't been a coward nor a quitter. He's also hard.

You surprise him when you hover above him instead, settling down on his lap—closing the distance between you again, the touch of your lips soft until Tom feels the wet of your tongue once more. This time he expects it, parting his lips in response, letting you in. The feeling of your tongue tracing his mouth is odd at first, but only until he realizes that you must have known what you were doing with your tongue.

"I want to feel you in my mouth," you say in between breaths. "Is that okay, Tom?"

Tom was already losing his mind anyway, so he nodded instead. He's suddenly hyper aware of your breasts brushing his, your soft hands against his cheeks, the warmth of your thighs above his. Everything's just a little too much in a way that's just right.

When you pulled away, heaving breaths, Tom had the urge to pull you back just so he could taste your lips again. The tint on your lips had been long gone now, and Merlin, you looked absolutely alluring in his eyes. It's like his mind's gone irrational now, every logical thought he has had been thrown out in the window, all Tom could think was you, you, you.

It didn't end there, fortunate enough. You kneeled in front of him, your hands trembling quite a bit as you pulled Tom's pants down carefully, and Tom gasped at the relief on his aching cock, pushing up into your hand. The cool air bites at the patch of wet precum on the front of his knickers. You hesitated for a second with your fingers wrapped around Tom's waistband, giving him a second to back out, but when Tom nodded it's all you ever needed to pull them down.

His cock springs free, slapping against his belly and smearing a little pool of precum against his navel. You ran your tongue over your bottom lip, eyes hazy with want. The first touch of your hand on his has Tom nearly collapsing back down onto the couch—he groaned, head lolling forward which gives him a better view of your fingers tugging his hardness, stroking up and down and twisting your wrist at the head. The slide is dry but it still feels so good that Tom was practically seeing stars, shaking with the effort of not bucking his hips forward to thrust into your fist.

When you slid the tip of his over the seam of your mouth, back and forth, smearing pre come on your full lips, Tom was a goner. It's too much. All of it. Your fingers working insistently over his length, the slow, smooth glide over your soft, soft lips—Tom thinks he might come like this, which is embarrassing in itself. He doesn't want to. Tom wants to feel the inside of your mouth, he wants to release himself inside your mouth and have you swallowed it whole.

Then your lips closed around him—oh.

You kept looking at the way his face twists in pleasure as you suckled at the head softly, making squelching noise purposefully and a low grumble forms in Tom's throat. You could feel the way his cock twitches in in your mouth, gagged by the length of him, but you pushed through anyway.

"It feels—it feels good, (Name)." Tom rasped out, his fingers running through the strands of your hair, tugging them lightly.

With his words, you pushed yourself further and feels it slip down your throat. It's weird, a foreign feeling and definitely not the most comfortable but it was fine. Especially at the loud groan falling from Tom's lips as your nose hits the other's crotch.

You had stayed there for a few seconds, throat convulsing around the hardness shoved down and Tom could feel you choking this time. Coughing a little, you pulled away and a string of spit connects your swollen lips with his. His fingers around your hair tightened, and his whole body jerks forward, thrusting his into your mouth until he cannot comprehend anything any longer.

A spike of pleasure shoots through Tom's whole body and he bucks up with a moan. It was hot, everything you do turns him on so much and he can't seem to calm down. The sound of skin slapping against skin and your own muffled whimpers filled his ears and you felt tears running down your face. Pleasure almost blinding Tom.

Tom had swore he blacked out for a second, pleasure coursing through him like liquid fire, he called out your name—then his whole body tenses up as spurts of hot white releases inside the warmth of your mouth. His fingers went numb, falls loosely around your hair, both exhausted, panting for breath as Tom come down from the high.

"How… where did you learn that?"

"Betty lends me her Muggle romance novels."

Graduation day arrived beneath a sky so bright it almost didn't feel real.

The Hogwarts courtyard was alive with movement—students drifting between stone arches in dark robes, laughter rising in waves, owls swooping overhead as if they too sensed something momentous had ended. The air carried the smell of summer grass and warm stone, the Black Lake glittering beyond the distant trees. After seven years within these walls, the castle seemed to be watching them go.

Tom found you easily.

You were standing near the fountain, sunlight spilling through the trees above, catching the familiar shape of you in a way that made something in his chest flustered. Even after everything; exams, rumors, whispered ambitions about his future—his gaze still found you first. You had cradled his face in your hands like Tom is the most precious thing in existence. He has never known such feeling to be so pure as the love you bestowed upon him a year ago.

"Enjoying the festivities?" Tom asked as he approached, hands clasped behind his back.

You glanced over your shoulder, smiling faintly. "Trying to. It's hard to believe we are actually leaving."

Tom's gaze were heavy, contemplating—then, without warning, he slipped a hand into the deep pocket of his robes. When it emerged, nestled between his pale fingers was a heavy, unsightly thing of dull gold, crudely fashioned but radiating a thrum of power, at its center sat a black stone, etched with a crest. You looked at the heavy gold and then up at his smug, beautiful face.

"It's a family heirloom of mine," he stated. "Gaunt."

Your brows lifted slowly. "Tom…"

"You should marry me, (Name)."

You crossed your arms over your chest, a playful glint in your eyes. "Aren't you supposed to be on one knee for a moment like this, Mr. Riddle?"

Tom's mouth twitched. "No."

You stared at him, skeptical. "You're unbelievable."

"I’m efficient," he corrected smoothly, holding the ring out toward you. "The answer remains the same regardless of posture."

A laugh escaped you despite yourself, shaking your head. "You are the least romantic person alive."

"Possibly," Tom said mildly. "But you are avoiding the question."

You stepped closer, examining the ring, then him. "Are you seriously proposing like this?"

"Yes, I am."

"Without kneeling?"

Tom raised an eyebrow. "Well?" he said impatiently. "Say yes already."

"You know most people make speeches." yet the smile spreading across your face betrayed you.

"I hope you realize by now, I am not most people."

A laugh escaped from your lips. "That's definitely true."

Your gaze softened as you looked at him again. The courtyard noise faded slightly around you; distant chatter, footsteps, though in that moment it all felt strangely far away.

"You're really asking me to marry you," you said quietly.

"I thought that was clear."

A smile tugged at your lips. "You're planning to go conquer the world, aren't you?"

"More or less."

"And you want me along for that?"

Tom reached out, his hand finding your waist and drawing you a fraction closer. His gaze held yours with an honesty he allowed no one else. "I intend to go very far, and I intend to stay there for a very long time. It would be so kind if you were by my side."

"That's the closest thing to a romantic confession I think you’re capable of."

You didn't wait for him to find the words to argue, you leaned forward, as your lips had met his. Tom's reaction had been instinctive; his hand wrapped around your waist, pulling you flush against him as he kissed you back, firm and certain, in a way that was entirely his own. When you finally pulled away, there was fondness in your eyes.

"…I assume that means yes." he murmured.

You simply reached out, took the heavy Gaunt ring from his pale fingers, and slid it onto your hand. The black stone looked dark and formidable against your skin. It was obvious that something about you lights a fire in him, Tom Riddle looks alive when you were in his arms. Human like he had never seen himself before. In love. Not only love, but perhaps, beyond salvation. Spectre of his mortal soul.

"Yes, Tom," your heart stirred. "I might even cross it off my list."

[saintnoxia]

hi noxia!! do you write in ao3?

hi anon! the thought haven't passed me yet, so unfortunately, i do not. but if that's something people would be interested in, or it would make my work more accessible. i'd absolutely consider cross posting there. simply let me know :)

[saintnoxia]

hi hi ! just wanted to say i absolutely adore your writing <3 and that ur blog layout is gorgeous

hi, sweets :) thank you so much, i'm glad you're enjoying the writing. i'm ridiculously pleased you like the layout too, i spent far too long fussing over it hahaha.

[saintnoxia]

hi noxia!! no pressure in just curious if you'd ever consider writing jealous tom. that would be so satisfying to read in your unmatched writing style

hello anon! thank you for your kind words. i can't promise anything specific but i will say the thought of him being jealous is definitely something i'd love to explore. so we may see that from him sooner rather than later!

[saintnoxia]

aaaa the absolutely whipped, undone dark lord written by you is something beyond. absolutely beautiful and so gentle it hurts. how intimately you write such a cruel man giving out his everything for his beloved. absolutely enjoyed every second of reading, thank you so mucj for your work!

i've always been drawn to the idea that love doesn't erase who tom riddle is, but reveals a part of him no one else is allowed to see. thank you so much for reading, anon! :) and for putting it into words so gently, writing him had been a comfort for me.

[saintnoxia]

𝟎𝟎𝟓:  𝐎𝐍𝐄   𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓  .  .  .  on  the  wrong  side  of  tomorrow. summary:  fell  through  the  cracks  of  time  to  prevent  a  war,  but  fell  in  love  with  tom  riddle  instead.  farewells  unspoken,  leaving  him  behind  to  return  to  your  own  timeline,  only  to  see  the  man  who  spent  half  century  waiting  for  you  at  the  end  of  it  all. pairings:  tom  riddle  x  fem!reader. words:  4.3k. warnings:  golden  trio  era.  fix-it  fic  (failed).  time  travel.  predestination  paradox.  older!tom  riddle.  little  plot,  all  vibes.  reader's  savior  complex  seeps  through.  established  relationship.  ex  lovers  to  lovers?  angst/comfort.  maybe  a  tiny  bit  ooc  tom.  moral  ambiguity  for  both  of  them.  yearning  tom  riddle.  author  notes:  let  me  cope  a  heartbreak  by  writing  this.  i  originally  wanted  it  to  be  shorter  something  1k  words,  an  excuse  to  write  tom  riddle  bathing  reader.  i  don't  know  why  but  it's  very  intimate  to  me.  any  typos  &  error,  send  them  out  to  me.  as  always,  enjoy  reading  :)

Impossibly wretched woman,

You interpret my heart, my nature as you wish to believe it. In truth, I have no secret longing to be saved from myself. You would insist that I am wrong about myself, that somewhere beneath what you so delicately call my misshapen life, there exists light. You always did have an unfortunate fondness for hopeless causes.

I suppose I should begin elsewhere. Letters, I am told, are meant to explain things. Though I fail to see the purpose of explaining anything to someone who will never read what I write. Perhaps the act itself is the explanation.

You once accused me of being incapable of reflection. You shall consider this your evidence to the contrary. You have insisted on many things—I let you believe them. It seems fitting that the last words I write to you begin with a lie you once tried so desperately to disprove, because the truth is far more inconvenient.

You fell out of time like a misplaced star, breathless, furious, and utterly convinced you had come to change history. I remember the moment with irritating clarity, and I am convinced that you were put on this earth to torture me, somehow I find your cruelty to be quite enjoyable.

You believed you had come to save a boy, yet, instead, you found the man he would become. I wonder if you understand yet what kind of man you chose to love, because you have left me.

Must you be so cruel? Were you always cruel even then? I wanted to kill you with my own hands, to hunt you down, and see the fear in your eyes when you realize I have been always myself, to loathe the way you made me feel.

You should have taken me with you, and perhaps, my mistake is knowing that I would have followed you.

Only ever yours, T.M.R

There are many things in your life that you have come to regret, your thread weaves in and out of living skulls. Your mother used to collect little porcelain figurines, they sat along the shelves at home, delicate things with painted smiles and dust gathering at their feet. You remember the way the light would touch them in the late afternoon, turning their glassy eyes bright for a moment before the sun moved on.

Gone astray in the field lands now, you think. Everything ends up there eventually, but the war had to have been ingrained somewhere in the back of your mind. Your mother concerned, come back to the world, she whispered.

You were thirteen when you realized that everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. The nights became new and out of it grew something more reckless and brazen, dreams barely appearing—spent sleepless nights lie awake, wondering if there was something you could have done to stop yourself from loving Tom Riddle.

There was no turning back now, you must move forward or you'll forever looking back on your shoulder to check a glimpse of him. You've needed so much with nothing to touch, palm sweat and sticky fingers aching for someone to hold—hold him? Hold the way your palm fit against the curve of his jaw? Hold the way you would kiss the back of his head as he slept, and whispered; I want more time with you.

It had seemed like such a small wish then, you hadn't yet understood the severity hidden inside it. Time had never belonged to you, and certainly it did not belong to Tom.

Your home appears at the end of the road exactly where it should be. The garden gate hangs crooked on its hinges just as you remember, though the paint is peeling more than it should be, and then you push it open; the hinges makes a tiny screech, and reminded of how your mother used to hate that sound.

Walking up the stone path slowly, your breath shallow as you headed inside. Your gaze wandering around and stopped when you saw the porcelain figurines are still on the shelf.

For a moment the sight nearly breaks you. They sit exactly as they did in your memory—painted shepherdesses, glass eyed rabbits, delicate dancers frozen mid twirl. Dust has gathered along their bases, thick enough to dull their colors, you reach out and brush a finger over one.

Where was your mother? You could feel it then, your heart pounding. Everywhere you look, it's empty and abandoned.

"Mother?" you called out, but there was nothing. "Mum?" a crack in your voice, louder this time, and still met with nothing.

Your vision began to blur, a heart that aches and carries a burden that no one could console feels tighter around your throat, then, a sick feeling began to bloom in your stomach. Nauseous, you hurried through the kitchen, doubled over to the sink, hands clutched at the edge—heaving, you tried to retch, to tear the sickness out of you, but your throat was filled only with the dry silt of dead years.

In the corner of your eyes, you noticed newspaper piling up on the table, grime covered. Your hands wiping across from your mouth as you tried to compose yourself, walking over to it. The paper crackled softly as you unfolded it, the date sat at the top of the page.

Your stomach dropped. Five years ago. You had been gone for five years, and something in you permanently shatters, so much time had been lost, so much time had passed and you were nowhere, not even a home.

Your eyes moved across the page until something made them stop, it was your name; printed in small black letters near the bottom, and the headline read:

WITCH STILL MISSING AFTER STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE NEAR HOGWARTS

You forced yourself to read through the lines.

Authorities remain baffled by the disappearance of a young witch who vanished near the Hogwarts grounds last week. Witnesses report seeing her walking near the forest moments before she seemingly vanished without a trace.

The Ministry of Magic has launched a full investigation, though officials admit the circumstances appear highly unusual.

Your hands shook as you turned the page, and another article sat just beneath it—larger, much larger. What was written of it made your whole body sick to the stomach.

RISING DARK WIZARD GAINS FOLLOWERS ACROSS BRITAIN

The photograph beneath it showed a symbol you recognized instantly; the Dark Mark.

The mysterious wizard known as Lord Voldemort has continued to gather influence within the wizarding world. Reports indicate a growing number of followers identifying themselves as "Death Eaters," though the Ministry has yet to confirm the full extent of their activities.

Sources within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement warn that Voldemort's movement appears unusually organized and strategic, far beyond the chaotic uprisings seen in previous dark wizard movements.

Your hands flipped the pages frantically, and it was more articles, more dates, more headlines, each one worse than the last.

MINISTRY SECURITY BREACH — OFFICIALS SUSPECT DARK WIZARD INVOLVEMENT

AURORS KILLED IN SUSPECTED DEATH EATER ATTACK

LORD VOLDEMORT’S INFLUENCE SPREADS ACROSS EUROPE

You couldn't bear to look at it anymore, your hands throwing them away with a scream from your throat, collapsing to the floor as the weight of the years crushes the breath from your lungs. For the first time since forever, you collapsed on the floor hugging your knees as tears streamed down your cheeks, and wept. It felt unbecoming, though it didn't matter anymore—you were utterly alone in this house.

You ran.

You ran as far as your feet could take you, through these woods, through the trees where you felt the earth wrapped around you, and hoped that when you pass out, your eyes would open and thought of it as a nightmare. Foolish woman. So much endurance in the heart of pain, where you tried to see the light in him only to see you have succeeded in giving him a reason to survive more than ever now.

You did not know where you were going, only that you couldn't stay.

Cheeks pressed against the decaying leaves, waiting for the world to reset. Death in your eyes was no less divine than the sun, you'd wanted to feel it again, to hear your mother's voice—to hope she'll whisper in your ear to come home.

Home, home, home. I want to go home. Let me go home.

"Search everywhere!" a voice so harsh, unfamiliar yet urgent. "The wards at the old cottage were tripped. If she's the one the Dark Lord described, do not harm her. If you so much as scratch her skin, he'll have your head."

"Spread out!" someone shouted. "She can't have gone far!"

You scrambled to your feet, your limbs heavy and disobedient. Panicked, and it drove you deeper into the thicket. Breath came in shallow gasps that felt like they were tearing your chest open, not caring about the thorns that caught on your skin, nor the branches that whipped across your face. You kept running.

"There! By the ridge!"

A flash of red light, Stupefy flew over your shoulder, charring the bark of a tree inches from your head.

"I said do not harm her, you fool!" the wizard roared. "If she falls and breaks a bone, we are all dead men by nightfall!"

You skidded down a steep embankment, the world spinning in a blur of grey and black. Your whole body landed hard at the bottom, the air driven from your lungs in a violent heave. For a moment, there was only the sound of your own blood rushing in your ears, and then, a deafening silence.

The woods went still. The shouting had stopped. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, afraid to disturb the shadow that began to lengthen across the clearing.

Then, there was a silhouette in your line of vision, you had felt him then—you'd felt him now. The thread of your life has finally run out of length, snagged firmly in the palm of the only person who knows how to pull it; an awareness buried somewhere beneath you that had never truly gone quiet. Tom.

"There you are," his voice spoke. "(Name)."

You looked up, your vision blurring with tears and exhaustion.

Tom stood there, silhouetted against the pale moon, a dark lord built on the ruins of your hope. His face was pale, his features carved from the finest marble, but his eyes; those dark, intelligent eyes you had once kissed the lids of—were now burning with a scarlet light.

"I never would have thought you'd return someday," he said, and the tenderness in his tone was more terrifying than the soldiers' threats. "I have been waiting for decades. Don't you think it's time you finally come home to me?"

The dirt beneath your fingernails reminded you were grounded in a reality that had outgrown you. You stared up at him, chest heaving, the air caught in your throat like a mouthful. He looked like a statue brought to life by some dark, ancient ritual—too perfect, too beautiful, his presence expanding to fill every gap between the trees until the forest itself felt like his own domain.

"I didn't come back for you," you choked out.

"I know," he answered. "Because you left me, didn't you?"

"Where is my mother?" your heart stirred. "The house... the papers... what did you do?"

You waited for his answer even though you already know what it meant, you kept waiting for all of this to be over. But that's what you do, waiting. Always waiting and waiting and waiting for something that will change, and when it does, it terrifies you—you'll look back on the enormity of your regrets, it makes your mouth fill with vomit. You kept waiting for an answer that would never come. There is no right answer. There is only ever him.

Will you allow yourself to look at him past through the changes? That you have decided to go back home—to leave him without saying your farewell, that you have failed at what you were supposed to do; to go back in time and prevent a war; even then, it was too much to ask for a child of a soldier. But you loved Tom, all parts of him. There is good in this madness, you thought heartbreakingly, because what does it mean if everything you have destroyed yourself for—have meant for nothing?

"Your mother lived," he finally says.

Your fingers curled into the dirt. "Lived," you repeated hoarsely.

"She searched for you."

"How long?"

His eyes never left your face. "Years."

You pictured it without meaning to—your mother standing in the doorway of that cottage, waiting for footsteps that never came. Waiting through winter after winter, believing that maybe tomorrow you would return.

"Eventually," Tom continued, "Mrs. (Lastname) stopped asking the Ministry."

"Did she die thinking I abandoned her?"

"Yes."

For a moment the forest blurred again through your tears.

"I waited too," he said quietly. The cruelty in his eyes dissolved into a raw expression of want. For this fragile breath of time, Tom was not the master of the world; he was someone who looked simply hurt. A glimpse of him.

"You?" a bitter sound tore its way out of your chest before you could stop it. "You? You who conquered half the world!"

"And still I waited."

In that moment you understood something horrifying, that the war, the followers, the endless reach of his power might have begun with many reasons, but somewhere along the way it had twisted itself around a far simpler truth.

Tom Riddle had never stopped loving you.

"You vanished," Tom continued, his tone low in that familiar way you had once known meant he was holding something violent just beneath the surface. "One moment you were there. The next—gone. I tried to look for you everywhere around the world, every corner of it. I have failed."

"I don't believe you, Tom."

And maybe you never will.

"I studied every piece of time magic I could find. I even stole a Time Turner to look for you in every timeline, yet your existence was nowhere to be found," his mouth curved faintly. "You would have enjoyed the irony. The man you believed could not reflect spent decades doing nothing else."

Your body hurts. "Why? Why build… all this? Why become this? Why become him?"

"You still believe there was a moment I could have chosen differently," he tells you.

"There was!"

"Was there?" his voice cutting through yours. "You told me about the future. About the war. About the people who would try to stop me. You told me which mistakes would cost me victory."

"I didn't mean—"

"I know, (Name)." the gentleness in his voice made your chest ache. "You never meant to help me."

"I only wanted to save you," a sob escapes from your lips.

"Did you ever truly believe I wanted saving?"

You had always known. You had known that the plan of yours was already in shambles, a losing game. You were always going to lose yourself no matter the outcome, clasped around your wrists, dragging you down—it would have never worked, you know that now.

There was never a version of this story where you saved him; there was only a version where he used your light to see the path towards the darkness. You are the silt in the river of time, settling at the bottom of a history that has been rewritten in your name, and Tom is beyond saving, and still…

"You loved me anyway," he spoke again.

"That's not the same as agreeing with what you became."

"No," Tom murmured. "But it was enough."

Your voice came out thin. "Enough for what?"

Tom slowly lowered himself until he was kneeling in the very same dirt that stained your skin, a mirror image of the ruin you had become. He didn't look away; he reached out, his slender fingers ghosting over your trembling knees before settling firmly on your waist. Heedless of the filth, expression similarly close to something holy.

"Enough for me to build a world where you would have somewhere safe to return."

"Safe?" you pushed yourself up on shaking arms, dirt crumbling beneath your palms. "You call this safe?"

"You left… you were gone as though the universe itself had stolen you from me."

"I thought I was fixing it."

"Fixing it?" a harsh breath escaped him. "Do you know what those first years were like?"

You averted your gaze away, unable to answer him. For you have feel the guilt bubbling up inside you, a guilt that was never supposed to be felt. You shouldn't have to feel sorry for leaving a future dark lord in his time, but you have longed for people before, you have loved people before. Not like this. It was not this—for you are each other's executioners.

"I killed men who swore they could find you," words were not spoken with pride. "And when I realized you were truly gone—do you know what remained?"

A beat passed.

"Nothing," he answered for you. "There was nothing for me anymore, (Name). I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I am weak. Who could I have possibly be—if not completely yours?"

There were more tears streaming down your face, you could feel the exhausting coming to take its toll on your body, you were tired of running, you supposed. Even if you have the chance to do it all over again, clean slate, you knew in your heart that you'd make the same mistakes, you would have loved him better, but you could not have loved him more.

"And so, I have made myself stronger, a world with me ruling it. Strong enough that if time ever decided to give you back to me, I would never allow you to disappear again."

"That isn't love," you gave a low sob. "I don't think you love, Tom. This is sick, you—you've gone mad."

His eyes burns. "I don't think I love you. I know it the way I know how to kill; instinctively. Irrevocably."

A cold blade sliding through your sternum, hot white red; flashes of memories back when you first had met his younger self, it feels a long time ago now. You had spent time wondering if he was capable of the word, only to realize that in his mouth, he does. Spent so long believing that if Tom Riddle ever did admit, the world would finally make sense, that love would be the proof that somewhere beneath the ambition and cruelty, there's still remnants of humanity inside of him.

You cannot breathe. Maybe none of it had been foolish, but the way he says it now tears that hope apart, as there is no hesitation in him. Tom does not do anything halfway, the past rearranges itself in your mind, all that matters to you was you want to hurt him, and all that matters to him was you want him, still.

Tom gave you everything, and it is a beautiful crime.

You would have sacrificed yourself, you were always going to. Tom knows that.

Night had deepened by the time he brought you back.

For fifty years he had imagined this moment so many times that it had lost the shape of reality. In those early years—before the war had fully begun, before the world had learned to fear him, Tom had dreamed of finding you again in quiet yet desperate ways.

You stirred slightly when he reached the bathing chamber. Warm light filled the space, reflecting off pale stone and deep pools of water charmed to remain perpetually heated, steam curled through the air in slow drifting ribbons. Tom set you down on the edge of the bath.

Mud streaked your skin, tangled in your hair, remnants of dried leaves clung stubbornly to the fabric of your clothes, your hands trembled faintly where they rested against your knees. You looked like someone who had been dragged through the grave of the world. He wanted to take care of you.

Tom reached forward slowly, his fingers brushing the collar of your ruined shirt. The cloth had torn along the shoulder during your fall down the embankment, dirt had settled into the exposed skin there, smeared across the fragile line of your collarbone.

Then, he unfastened the ruined shirt carefully, peeling it away from your shoulders with slow gesture. The movements were hesitant, but there was something undeniably gentle in the way he avoided touching the bruises forming along your ribs. You did not help him, simply sat there as he worked, your gaze drifting somewhere past him.

Where do you go when you're not looking at me?

Your clothes fell down eventually until it was dirt and blood remained on your skin, bruising. He turned toward the bath, and with a small movement of his hand, the water rippled, his magic warmed it further. Tom's hands reaches over, testing the temperature himself before guiding you forward.

When your feet touched the water, you flinched slightly.

"Too warm?" he asked.

You shook your head faintly. "No."

Tom helped you sink into the bath, as the water rose slowly around you, washing away streaks of mud and dried blood. Leaves loosened from your hair, floating briefly on the surface before dissolving under quiet charms he had woven into the water long ago.

You shut your eyes closed, tension in your shoulders began to loosen, if only slightly, and Tom knelt beside the bath. For a long moment he simply watched the water swirl around you—this was not how he had imagined your return.

Tom imagined you stepping through a door somewhere, older perhaps but still yours. The world already bent beneath his control, ready to be placed at your feet. He had imagined you would understand, though reality rarely obeyed the elegance of imagination.

Instead you had returned to him like this. Something Tom was never prepared for, but in all aspect, there is still acceptance. No matter how you come to him, he would have had you. That's how he is. He dipped a cloth into the bathwater, wrung it out slowly before lifting it to your shoulder.

You stiffened at the contact, and his hand paused.

"You're injured," he pointed out.

"I've had worse."

Yes. He knew. Tom pressed the cloth gently against the dirt along your exposed skin, wiping it away in slow yet careful strokes, muddiness dissolved under the water's warmth, revealing clean skin beneath it. Bruises. Small cuts. Evidence of your frantic flight through the forest, the sight of them filled him with a simmering anger.

"You would have sacrificed yourself," he said after a while.

You did not open your eyes, but your mouth speaks so weakly. "You always knew that."

"You would have died trying to stop the war," he continued quietly, brushing damp strands of hair away from your temple. "Even if it meant destroying yourself."

A faint breath escaped you. "That was the point."

Perhaps, he will never understand the intricacies of the way your mind works, why you were so insistent on destroying him, the orifice of your decisions. Maybe, he will never come to understand them at all. But was that something that drawn him in the first place? The unpredictability of your actions, even if you love him, even if you know the cost of loving him.

Trying to find the trigger that would make you choose yourself, choose him, over the abstract concept of peace. You were a creature of light that was constantly trying to blink itself out of existence, and he had become a God of shadows simply to ensure there was a dark enough room to keep you from fading. Yet he still stood here, baffled by the convolution of your heart. Why do you always insist on the hard path?

You loved him with the same breath you used to condemn him, and it was that very contradiction that had kept him tethered to the thought of you for fifty years. If you were so intent on destroying yourself, he would simply have to make the world so small that there was nowhere for you to fall except into his arms.

You were cruel in your own ways, Tom supposed. Impossibly wretched woman.

Still, he pressed his lips against the bareness of your shoulder, his hand trailing on your back, palm smoothing over the wet skin, tracing the bumps of your spine, counting the years he had lost with you. When he finally pulled back to look at you, his face was mere inches from yours, his pupils dilated, reflecting nothing but the wreckage of the woman he had loved.

Tom reached out to catch a stray droplet of water from your chin, his touch so light it was almost too intimate, his head leaning in to press a soft kiss to the corner of your mouth, then Tom's cheek would rest against the crook of your neck, inhaling you as if he could pull your very soul into his own lungs.

Pulsating along with the beat of your heart, Tom wanted you to grab him and shake him, to say that he's yours. That he wanted you to come after all these years to rearrange what's left inside of him. He breathes for you so let him do it on your terms. Take his heart, take it as it is already yours. Replace it with something easier to understand, etch your name into his.

To fondle the snake that devours you both until it has eaten your hearts away. This pain will remind him of you.

[saintnoxia]

as painfully satisfying it is to read gut wrenching angst of Tom always finding strength to leave, Noxia do you think there could be a scenario where he doesn't? where we stay as his secret, hidden from the prying eyes and only for his own knowledge? where his obsession, his love gets the best of him, where he cannot dare to harm us? where he is ready to throw the world, but only to our feet?

as much as I want that a part of me thinks he's too selfish, too proud to consider anyone his equal but I would love to hear your thoughts

this is such a beautiful question. thank you, anon :)

i do believe there's a possible version of him like that, because even someone as prideful as tom—he is not immune to attachment. i don't really believe in the notion that he cannot feel love because he was conceived under a love potion. it feels far too literal, especially for someone as emotionally complex as tom. circumstance may shape him, but it doesn't strip him of the capacity to feel, it only distorts how that feeling manifests, he is also way too sentimental for his own good.

love, or however it is he views it as, can make even the most resolute man hesitate. tom does not love in a way that weakens him, where strength isn't found in escape but staying with you.

hidden things are precious! he'd never harm you & losing you would be the one thing he couldn't rationalize away. and i think that's exactly why it would terrify him. because once you exist as something he must protect, something he cannot discard or even dominate without consequence, you become the only person he cannot control (control is so deeply woven into who he is that this surrender for you would cost him more than he'd ever admit) tom could hide you from the world, yes. but more importantly, i think he would hide himself in you.

[saintnoxia]

noxia hihi what's your hogwarts house??

hi, anon! :) i guess it is pretty much obvious now, and might be a little too basic, but i am in slytherin. you can see it in my tendency to romanticize morally questionable men.

[saintnoxia]

your writings are one of the best I've ever read in my life and i cannot put in words how much I love your works

this means a lot than i can properly express, so thank you for the bottom of my heart, anon :) truly. i'm really grateful you took the time to read my works, it is highly appreciated, and motivates me to write more!

[saintnoxia]

𝟎𝟎𝟒:  𝐎𝐍𝐄   𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓  .  .  .  gore  me  through  the  heart. summary:  in  the  dark  lord's  presence,  survival  became  a  cruel  game  of  fascination,  and  desire  bloomed  where  hatred  should  have  lived. pairings:  tom  riddle  x  fem!reader. words:  10k. warnings:  marauder's  era.  tom/voldemort  is  in  his  40s,  reader  in  her  early  20s.  morally  ambiguous  reader.  vaginal  fingering  because  tom  wants  that  cookie.  stockholm  syndrome.  blood  play  kinda.  slight  non-con.  unhealthy  dynamics.  tom's  pov  is  halfway  through  the  end  so  you  know  he's  unreliable.  toxic  relationship(?)  but  it's  toxic!  open  ending,  but  tbh  they  will  end  up  together  eventually. author  notes:  happy  late  valentine's  day!  i  tried  my  best  to  write  that  one  scene,  so  forgive  me  if  i  am  not  the  best  at  it.  no  angsty  ending  this  time  because  it's  the  month  of  love.  also  big  thanks  for  giving  love  to  my  prev  fic,  i  was  occupied  irl  to  respond  but  you  have  my  gratitude  always.  any  error  &  typos,  let  me  know.  enjoy  reading  :)

Before the war had a name, it had a feeling. You were told that power was something to be earned through study and discipline, but young girls imagine they were born to be cherished and loved, when instead, they were created merely to be destroyed. You were deemed as one of the greatest witch that had ever lived—a woman of remarkable potential; a rising star in a world that was rapidly darkening, though you supposed, potential was simply another word for a target, and in the midst of it all; you were beginning to doubt the boundaries of your own mind.

The atmospheric nostalgia of Hogsmeade has lost its usual scent of evergreen needles and molten chocolate, replaced by the people's dreadfulness and the weight of the Ministry's warnings—it was only a year since your graduation, yet the safety of Hogwarts felt a lifetime away.

Pulling your coat tighter around your shivering body; its fabric gently brushing against your skin in a comforting manner, though it did little to settle the erratic thrumming in your chest. Beside you, were faces of blurred belligerence and familiar tones.

Sirius was barking a laugh at something James had said—a sound aimed for bravado but landed in bitterness, while Peter scuttled to keep pace with their long strides; skittishly walking. Even Remus, usually your voice of reason, seemed frayed; his gaze scanning the horizon for a moon that wasn't yet there. But you weren't looking at the horizon either.

For the third time in ten minutes, you glanced over your shoulder.

The cobblestone streets were sparse; few shopkeepers were hurriedly bolting their doors despite the early hour, the locks clicking shut like teeth. Shadows elongated under the flickering streetlamps, stretching like ossified fingers across the stone.

There was nothing there. No black robed figures with masks, no evident shimmering Disillusionment. Yet, the skin on the back of your neck crawled—a sensation that an unknown presence was peeling back the layers of your thoughts, one by one, until you stood mentally bare in the center of the street.

Paranoia, you thought, warily glancing between your friends. It's the headlines in the Prophet.

Muggleborn families disappearing left and right; being plucked like rotten fruit, and you knew your name sat at the top of someone's list. Dumbledore's counsel had been gentle but grave; to disappear.

He had paved the way for your family to vanish into the mist, and expected you to follow for your own protection—you had looked him in the eye and refused to do the coward's will. Your family was hidden; safely tucked away somewhere you never dared to ask, in fear, that one day; you will meet your end.

You had to fight, you knew so.

As you reached the edge of the village, where the path wound toward the Shrieking Shack—the wind picked up, whistling through the dead grass, and you stopped dead. Within the reflection of a grime covered apothecary window, you saw a tall yet elegant silhouette standing perfectly still near the mouth of an alleyway.

Your gaze swept over to examine closely; its stillness more terrifying than any sudden movement, and catches a glint of eyes that burned in the dark; irises the color of tarnished silver seemingly caught every stray flicker of the streetlamps, ultimately, staring back at you—its expression twisting into a dark triumphant glee, and when you whirled around to face it; the alley was filled with nothing but emptiness.

Your breath hitched.

"Hey, you coming?"

Remus had stopped a few paces ahead, saffron eyes clouded with concern. He stepped back toward you, long fingers reaching out to steady your arm.

Remus' touch felt sudden, grounding you back to reality with the warmth of his palm. You stared at him then back at the empty street; your pulse drumming in your ears like a warning bell—the feeling of being watched hadn't faded, only it ever intensified.

You leaned closer to him.

"Remus, I think there's someone watching us."

Even in the decaying grandeur of 12 Grimmauld Place, the sensation of being watched persisted—it was as if its eyes were peering out from the empty portraits, and the cracks in the molding; waiting for the precise moment your resolve would finally fracture. Your mind grew restless, and with it, solitude became your new companion. No one came to bother you for the next few days, though Remus came to check upon you from time to time.

In the dim light of the Black family library, a stack of defensive texts piled high beside you. Few people from the Order were downstairs; their voices rising in a muffled heated debate with Moody about patrol routes, and you were supposed to be researching counter curses for a string of recent attacks on the outskirts of London, but your quill had been hovering over the same piece of parchment for twenty minutes.

"A mind as sharp as yours should not be wasted on the mundane logistics of a losing war."

What—

The voice hadn't come from the door, nor the window; it had unraveled from the very shadows you had been staring at for twenty minutes. Ever so slowly, the darkness in the far corner of the room organized itself; a figure of lean yet voracious silhouette had stepped into the weak jaundiced glow of your candlelight; in a moment of breathless delirium—you wondered if you had finally hallucinated him into existence.

He was devastatingly exquisite, it was beauty devoid of any human warmth—a face carved from obsidian stone, or perhaps carved by the Gods themselves, the appearance becoming agonizingly clear now as you see him.

Dark curled hair swept back to perfection, skin as the color of winter milk, stretched over bone structure it feels almost uncanny, though his eyes. Yes, his eyes. The same sullied silvery irises that stared back at you then; is doing the same thing now.

"Who are you?" your felt your voice finally returned. "How are you here?"

"It's a pity, really," he said simply, unmoving. "The Blacks used to keep such a tight grip on their thresholds. Now, it smells of wet dog and desperation downstairs. I do not know how you stand the noise."

"You knew them," the realization making the library feel even smaller, the atmosphere indisputable. "The ones who lived here before."

"I knew many things that have since been forgotten or discarded. The world has grown remarkably loud and awfully dull in my absence."

"I said, who are you?"

"A name is a small, trivial thing." He leaned closer, his shadow stretching over your lap, consuming you. "Though, you may call me Voldemort."

A visceral shiver curled down your spine at the sound of it, lungs felt as though they have been filled with ashes of a thousand burning prayers, a mere word that has caused grown men to stammer and your friends to reach for their wands with driven hands; his name—uttered with such impudence, made it feel as if he were laying the name at your feet like a gift.

In this room, time had stopped. Dumbledore had spoken of this name in cautious tones, painting a portrait of a monster stitched together by malice and shadow. You had spent months learning his motives—the warnings, the casualty lists, the abstract horror of a Dark Lord.

But Dumbledore's stories had never mentioned the crushing weight of his presence, nor the way his beauty possessed a semblance of clarity of a morning's frost, you had been prepared for a beast; you were not prepared for a man who looked like he could bleed the conviction from your heart without ever laying a hand upon you.

Shall you believe him? You shan't. Not in the way your instinct told you to do so, you felt as though the world had been playing tricks on you, or would it be the last time you'll feel your lungs breathe? Was he here, simply to kill you? There were myriads of thoughts swirming inside your head; you should be wary of this, and yet, you cannot tear your gaze away from him, something draws you in—you couldn't figure.

"They say you're the end of all things," you whispered. "That even speaking your name out loud would invite a curse into one's blood that can never be purged."

"Do you believe them?" He spoke, his head tilting with a curiosity that feels almost tender.

"I believe you're a murderous man playing godhood."

"Is that what Dumbledore tells you?" he didn't laugh so much as exhale a melodic note of derision. "The Headmaster's greatest talent is convincing the bright and the brave that their shackles are medals of honor."

"I'm here by choice," you stubbornly insist so. "To stop people like you from tearing the world apart."

"The most beautiful lie ever told," the words drifting through hollownesss. "Is it a choice to spend your nights in a graveyard of a house, living inside a family's manor that would have despised your very existence?"

Unnerving perhaps, the way he seemed to look down on you, though you wouldn't have been surprised. Your mind reels back to the portraits in the hallway that shrieked Mudblood until they were hoarse, muffled words ringing in your ear; being muggleborn woman in this war meant you had to be twice as brilliant just to be considered equal, you were grateful for the Order and the friends you had made, especially ones much like you.

Though such notion was beginning to plague your mind; you were fighting for a world that still, in its quietest corners, wondered if you truly belonged.

"You are no better than them," you bit out, expression hardened. "You're killing my entire existence."

"The world is a dying animal, choking on its own civility," he looked at you then. "The only difference is that now, the blood is being spilled for a purpose. Better to die in my history than to live a mediocre life in this shallowness. I am giving their lives meaning, I am making them immortal through their fear."

The shallowness settled inside your heart, you wanted to scream at him, to defend the people downstairs who had given you a home when the rest of the world offered you nothing, though as you looked at the stack of books—the endless research you did while others took the glory; the resentment you had buried flared up like an infected wound.

Looking at him was like staring at a sun that didn't provide warmth; only a blinding light. Voldemort was fundamentally, catastrophically wrong, such falsity in the natural order that wore the face of a God.

The rhetoric of a man who had long ago stopped seeing people as anything other than pawns, and for the first time, you realized that the Order hadn't prepared you for this; the terrifying allure of a nightmare that made sense of your own alienation.

"Is that what this is?" you gritted your teeth. "A recruitment pitch for the disillusioned?"

"I am the only one who can show you how to do more than just survive."

"I will not become like you."

He was leaning into your space then—until the scent of vaporous sandalwood was all you could inhale, your gaze drawn to his hand; long, pale fingers resting near your own, and the sight was divinely uncomfortable. Your mind skewed with flashing images of warnings and omens, only to find them melting away like wax in the heat of his proximity.

"By giving me a glimpse of this conversation," he whispered, a fluent caress that made your hair stand on end. "You already are."

James was beaming, his glasses lopsided as he paraded a swaddled, tufty haired Harry around the room like a trophy. You sat in the corner, a glass of firewhisky warming your palms, watching Lily. She looked tired—shadows etched deep under her green eyes, but when she looked at her son, the war seemed to stop at the threshold of her heart.

She was the beacon. They all were, tethered to a morality that felt increasingly like chains dragging you into the depths.

"He has her eyes," Remus says, sliding into the seat beside you. He looked better tonight, less tired, caught up in the infectious hope of a new life. "It makes you think, doesn't it? That maybe there's a version of the future where we're not fighting anymore."

You forced a smile, the muscles of your face feeling stiff. "It's a beautiful thought, Remus."

It made you think of your childhood, how strange it is to feel like it was forever. Then suddenly, you're twenty two and the world becomes an hourglass, and you're watching the sand pile up at the wrong end. You thought of how when you were just a kid, your heartbeat was like a kick drum at a rock show, now it's a time bomb ticking out.

It is terrifying, you wanted to forget about dying, but mostly, you want to forget about saying goodbye to your family if it ever comes down to that.

His absence was haunting than his presence could ever be. Voldemort had not crossed your space again ever since that encounter, yet he had colonized the very labyrinth of your resolve. He had left a splinter in your mind, and every time you breathed, you felt the edge of it twist, gutting you apart.

Lily walked over, shifting Harry to one arm to squeeze your shoulder. "You're unusually quiet tonight. Even for you."

"Just taking it in," you lied, offered her a small smile. "He's perfect, Lily."

"He is," she whispered, her gaze softening. "He's why we do this. All of it. To make sure he never has to know names like... well, his."

"But he will," your voice barely a thread. "He'll know the name because the world won't let him forget it. I worry we're only burying ourselves alive, Lily. When does the hiding stop?"

Lily's grip on your shoulder tightened, a brief flash of sadness crossing her face before she steeled herself. "It stops when it's safe. We do what we have to so he can have a life, not like ours, (Name). Don't let the war hollow you out before it's even begun."

"You're right—I'm sorry."

She gave your arm a final, encouraging squeeze. "Get some air, Remus went outside. Talk to him—you look like you're drowning in your own head."

Outside of James and Lily's home, the stars obscured by a thin veil of mist that clung to the hedges of Godric's Hollow.

Remus was leaning against the porch railing, his silhouette uneven. The war had been unkind to his body; even when the moon was thin, his transformations left a permanent toll. Beside him, propped against the railing, was his cane—a sturdy thing that looked far too old for a man in his early twenties.

The light of a cigarette glowed in the dark, a tiny spark.

"Lily sent you to fetch me?" he asked, his voice rough. He didn't turn around, but he shifted his weight, his leg clearly bothering him.

"She thinks I'm inside my head too much," you said softly, stepping up beside him. Without asking, you reached out and took the cigarette from between his fingers, taking a slow long drag. The smoke burned, familiar and grounding. You handed it back. "Maybe I am."

Remus took the cigarette back, his fingers brushing yours; his skin was always too warm, a feverish reminder of the wolf beneath the surface. He took a final pull, the ember illuminating the exhausted lines around his eyes before he exhaled a plume of grey into the mist.

"Lily's right to worry, you've been restless—it's starting to show."

"I'm just worried about my family, that's all," your gaze lowered on to his leg. "You're in pain, Remus. Let me get you a chair from the kitchen."

"No," he shakes his head firmly. "I can handle it, (Name)."

Passing the cigarette back and forth felt like the last rite of a childhood that had died too soon, and the air between you felt it was full of the things you were both too tired to say. With Remus, he was the only one you could be truly comfortable with because he understood that some things like self loathe and isolation—don't leave you whole.

"That feeling you had back at Hogsmeade—that someone was watching us," his voice dropping to a cautious register. "Does it still follow you? Even here?"

How could you tell him?

How could you explain that the presence wasn't a nameless dread, but a man with a voice like a secret shared between two people who shouldn't exist? To admit that Voldemort—the very name that made Peter tremble had stood in the space of Sirius' family home and spoken to you as if you were an equal.

The guilt was a viscous thing; eating you alive every passing moment. You felt like a traitor by omission, and by keeping your encounter hidden from them, you had effectively invited him into their sanctum.

How could you tell Remus?

"Every shadow looks like a threat lately," the lie hangs heavy. "I'm sure it's just my nerves."

Remus doesn't believe you. "You will tell me, right?"

"Of course," you replied, though it felt meaningless.

You watched a stray ash fall from Remus' cigarette, disappearing into the dark. You were protecting them, you told yourself. If they knew how close he had gotten, they would lose the little hope they had left. But as you looked at the gate in the edge of the property, you knew the lie was for yourself.

Voldemort horrified you, but at the same time, you horrified yourself more. You are both horrible.

You have always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to your inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom you thought you were. You've always enjoyed watching your daydreams go down in defeat; never convinced of what you believed in. You could fill your hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through.

Words were your only truth, when the right words were said, all was done; the rest the was the sand that had always been. It didn't feel like that anymore. Keeping the secret was the only thing that felt like it belonged solely to you, even if it was the very thing that was destroying you.

The mission had come wrapped in the language of urgency. A whisper from the Ministry. A possible meeting point for suspected sympathizers on the outskirts of London. Moody's paranoia had only began to grow stronger every assignment, and yet when your name was paired with Peter Pettigrew's, something cold had coiled low and tight in your stomach.

It was unfair, you told yourself. Peter was your friend. He had been there when James first managed a corporeal stag and nearly trampled three suits of armor in the corridor. He had laughed; high and wheezing when Sirius set Snape's parchment on fire. He had sat up with Remus during long nights when the moon loomed too large and no one spoke of it.

He had been there, even for you.

Still, when the two of you Apparated to a deserted stretch of woodland beyond a crumbling manor house swallowed by rot, the unease did not fade. The clouds above sagged low overhead and swollen, pressing the world down into a suffocating hush.

The manor loomed ahead—its windows blackened and ruined, like empty eye sockets. Gates twisted inward, warped, as though something had forced its way through them long ago and never bothered to repair the damage.

Peter was unusually anxious, each inhale came shallow, each exhale misting faintly in the air. You found yourself matching it unconsciously, then forcing your lungs to steady.

"You're certain this is the place?" your eyes sweeping the perimeter. Your wand was already drawn, knuckles tightened around the handle.

"Y-Yes," he stammered. His gaze flicked everywhere but at you. "Tip came in this morning. Said there'd be a contact."

"From which side?" you repeated, stepping forward. Gravel crunched beneath your boots, unnaturally loud in the silence.

He hesitated, you noticed. "I—I wasn't told."

"Huh," you said. "Neither was I."

You moved anyway, because turning back would mean admitting fear, and you had spent too much of this war refusing to be frightened. Though the atmosphere had changed as soon as you crossed through the broken gates, your nose filling in senses; smelled akin to something metallic, like blood left too long in the open. Then, you decided to lift your wand slightly and cast a silent Revelio.

Peter lingered behind you, only too far behind.

"Peter," you said without turning, senses tightening. "Stay close."

"I—I am."

You could feel it—like the air itself had been strained through and wrung of anything alive, you could feel your pulse began to hammer from the deliberate absence of danger. The quietness of this place was too odd; it did not ebb and flow the way natural silence did.

Inside, the foyer open in a cavern of shadow; ceiling had partially collapsed; pale moonlight spilled through beams overhead, illuminating floating dust motes that drifted like dying stars. Marble floor was fractured and littered with dead leaves, splintered wood, and the scattered remains of shattered mirrors.

Your reflection flickered in the fractured glass at your feet—split into a dozen versions of yourself. In one shard, your face looked determined. In another, afraid. And in one, you did not see yourself at all. You saw him, in memory; his eyes beneath a streetlamp in Hogsmeade, a still silhouette at the mouth of an alley.

Your breath caught.

Turning around, and before you could warn Peter—pain detonated through your shoulder. A curse struck you at close range, red light searing into your flesh like knife pierced straight through bone, and its force hurled you forward, making your wand flew from your fingers, skidding uselessly across the marble.

"P-Peter?" you choked, voice thin and disbelieving.

You pushed yourself up on trembling arms, Peter stood several feet away, arm extended, wand shaking so violently it looked as though it might leap from his grasp. His eyes looked terrified.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice breaking. "I'm s—so sorry, (Name)."

The second curse came before you could process the first. It hit lower; your thigh. And God, does it hurt with the searing ache shot up your spine, your leg giving out entirely as you collapsed onto the stone floor, the impact cracking your vision into sparks. You could taste copper, warmth spread beneath you.

"You—" blood filled your mouth as you tried to speak. "You wouldn't—"

"I didn't have a choice!" Peter squeaked, hysteria fraying his voice into something unrecognizable. "He said—he said if I didn't—"

Of course.

A laugh almost clawed its way up your throat, though it dissolved into a wet cough instead. You had known, some part of you had known this entire mission was bloody wrong. That everything about this place had been too heavy and strange—that Peter's fear had not been about what might happen but what already had. How could you be so foolish, and why would Peter do this to you? You were his friend.

You rolled weakly onto your side. Blood pooled beneath you, soaking into dust and spiderweb cracks in the marble, your magic fluttered erratically in your veins—flickering like it had been dying, reaching instinctively for something, anything to ground itself to.

Peter stumbled backward, eyes darting toward the sound of footsteps.

"Go," a voice commanded from the distance.

Peter fled, not looking back. Though for a split moment, you could see the guilt festering in his expression, but you will not blame him for his actions. Perhaps, you were just the same as him. You could feel Voldemort's presence looming over you, not the monstrous caricature whispered about in Prophet headlines. He was a man, like he had appeared back then.

His gaze were fixed upon you—and you felt stripped bare beneath it. Voldemort stepped closer, you tried to crawl backward, but your body refused; too weak from the curses thrown at you. There were tears threatening to spill from the corners of your eyes, you hated it.

Voldemort knelt beside you.

"You're bleeding faster than I anticipated," he murmured, almost to himself.

Your fingers scrabbled weakly across the floor for your wand, nails catching against cold marble. You found nothing but dust and shards of mirror, then cold fingers wrapped around your wrist before you could reach farther.

"You set me up," you breathed. The ceiling above you blurred into streaks of grey, and when he didn't respond, you spoke again.

"You used him," your vision dimmed at the edges. "You used Peter."

"I offered him significance." his thumb pressed lightly against your skin. "He was eager to be chosen."

The word chosen scraped against something raw inside you. Peter had always hovered—never quite James, never quite Sirius, never the brilliance of Remus. He had laughed the loudest, tried the hardest. You remembered the way he would puff his chest when praised, the way his eyes lit up at even the smallest acknowledgment.

"You prey on the small parts of people," your voice felt far away, as though it belonged to someone else bleeding out on the marble floor. "You use their fear against them."

His gaze did not waver from your face. "I simply reveal them," he corrected.

The pain in your shoulder pulsed in time with your heartbeat. Each ache sent warmth spilling farther beneath you, sticky and wrong. And with it, your strength draining. Humiliation burned hotter than the wound. Your magic; your will—reaching for him in weakness.

"There it is," he said.

You tried to yank your hand free, expression faltering.

"Don't you fucking touch me." the effort made black spots swarm across your vision.

"And let you crawl through your own blood?" his tone was mild, almost conversational. "You are many things. Pathetic is not one of them."

The ceiling above you seemed to tilt, the fractured beams of moonlight blurring into lines of silver, forcing yourself to focus on something solid—on him.

Voldemort did not look like a monster, and perhaps, that was the most terrifying part. No slit pupils. No scaled skin. No grotesque distortion. Just a man; beautiful in a way that felt deliberate, his skin pale but smooth, unblemished. Features cut sharp and symmetrical, as though sculpted with intention rather than born of chance.

If you had passed him on Diagon Alley two years ago, you might have looked twice, you might have thought him distinguished, you might have wondered what it would be like to have him look at you the way he was looking at you now.

"You could have me killed," you said, though it came out odd. "If this was about proving weakness, you've made your point."

A faint smile ghosted across his mouth.

"I did not bring you here to make a point," he replied. "I brought you here to shift your understanding."

Your laugh broke into another cough. It hurt—everything hurts, you wanted to go back to Godric's Hollow, to your people, you wanted to see Remus once again, and most importantly, you wanted to tell them of Peter's betrayal. Except, you know now that you never would; it would burrow you further into the yawning chasm of guilt.

"You think this—" you gestured weakly toward your wounds, toward the blood staining your clothes. "is enlightenment?"

"I think," he said, leaning closer, "that pain clarifies."

His free hand lifted, brushing the damp strands of hair from where they clung to your temple. The touch was unhurried. Intentional—as though he had all the time in the world, and you flinched despite yourself.

Voldemort's fingers were cool, unnaturally so, against your overheated skin. The pads of them slid through your hair, smoothing it back from your face with a care that felt grotesquely misplaced amidst the scent of your blood. His knuckles followed the line of your cheekbone, tracing it slowly, thoughtfully; there was no tremor in his hand. No rush, only that awful curiosity.

You realized then that he was studying you. Your lips parted, though you weren't sure what you meant to say. A curse. A plea. A promise? Instead, what came out was softer than you intended.

"You sent me with him," you whispered, despairingly. "You knew I wouldn't refuse."

"Yes."

"You knew I'd trust him."

"Yes."

"And you knew he'd break," you finished.

His thumb drifted, fingertips brushing beneath your eye where tears had gathered despite your will. He paused there, catching one before it could fall, then his gaze followed the movement with such fascination it made your skin crawl.

"You were afraid," he observed quietly. "But you walked through that gate. You sensed the trap, yet you entered it knowingly."

Heat flooded your face, equal parts fury and shame. You forced your eyes to focus on him—to hold his gaze even as your vision swam. You would not let him see you look away. Though holding his gaze seemed stepping too close to a precipice; there was no warmth there, no rage even. Only depth, vast and consuming. Now, inches from your face, you understood the lie in that comfort.

You could feel how easily he could still it. How little effort it would take, and yet—he did not. Why?

Thoughts staggered, trying to make sense of it. He could have killed you the moment Peter's first curse struck true. He could have stepped from the shadows and finished what had been started. Instead, he knelt here in the wreckage of a forgotten manor, blood pooling beneath you, touching you as if you were something fragile.

"You wanted to know if I was here," he finally said what had been eating you alive for the past few months.

"No," denial was the only thing keeping your dignity. Or what's left of it.

"You were curious," he murmured. "That is what will undo you."

"I am not yours to break."

"No," he agreed easily. "You are not."

"If I die here," you said faintly, "they'll know."

"Will they?" his tone was almost curious. "Pettigrew will tell them you were ambushed. He will describe masked figures. He will weep for your supposed death."

"Your dear friends will comfort him," Voldemort continued. "They will not suspect him, only pity him for witnessing such tragedy."

Your chest tightened from the awful plausibility of it, and the worse of it all was—

"They trust him," you whispered.

"Just as you did."

"You're sick," you spat, because it was the only thing you could do.

"Perhaps." then, his hand slid beneath your shoulder, lifting you slightly. The movement sent pain lancing through your ribs.

Will this be your end? It settles into you slowly, like winter creeping through the cracks of a poorly sealed window. You supposed this is how it would happen, not in a blaze of glory, nor wands raised beneath a burning sky, with your friends at your back and courage swelling bright in your chest.

But here. You try to imagine tomorrow continuing without you; the sun rising over London as it always does; the Ministry buzzing with rumor. Life, indifferent and relentless. Would anyone feel the exact moment you disappear from it? Perhaps, your mother would.

You see her hands—always warm, always busy. The way she smooths your hair back when you visit, even then, as if you are still small enough to fit against her shoulder. You never told her how frightened you've been these past months, about the war they will never know. You let her believe you were safe; capable, untouchable.

You would never see your family and friends again.

The first thing you registered was softness—consciousness returned in fragments, not all at once though, they came back in pieces. Your cheek rested against something smooth; linen, perhaps. It felt cold against your skin. There was no distaste in the air, no rotten decay. Instead, you caught the faint scent of polished wood and something floral drifting through an open window.

You were alive, you realized. Alive and breathing. Your eyes snapped open, and the first thing you saw was the high and pale ceiling, traced with intricate shapes. Sunlight filtered in through gauzy curtains, gilding the edges of the room in soft gold. You lay in a bed far too large to be yours, sheets immaculate, your body wrapped in bandages beneath clean clothes that was not your own.

Pain followed immediately when you bolted upright; reprimanding, but dulled compared to before. Your shoulder throbbed in a tight ache, thighs burned beneath layers of careful healing. They weren't fully mended, only stabilized. Advanced magic, you realized.

Rage flooded in to fill the hollow where fear had been.

You swung your legs over the edge of the bed, breath hitching as the room swayed slightly. A thick rug cushioned your bare feet when they touched the floor. Everything about this place screamed wealth—subtle and old. Dark wood furnishing, silver accents, and tall windows overlooking manicured grounds that stretched farther than you could immediately see.

You crossed unsteadily to the window, bracing a hand against the wall. Outside, beautiful scenery of gardens unfurled in geometric precision; white peacocks drifted across the lawn like ghosts, fountains glinted in the sunlight. Recognition prickled faintly at the back of your mind. Malfoy. He would not hide somewhere obvious. He would hide somewhere protected by influence, by loyalty, by wealth old enough to insulate corruption.

The door clicked softly behind you, and turning sharply, ignoring the protest of your healing wounds. He stood there as though he had been expected all along. He looked clean, no sign that hours ago he had knelt in blood and ruins.

If not for the memory seared into your mind, you might have believed you had imagined it.

"You're awake," he observed.

You said nothing. Your gaze swept past him, measuring distance to the door, to the hallway beyond as your began calculating—your body might not be at full strength, but desperation lends clarity. You knew you needed to get out of here before it could get worse, because it would. Eventually.

"Your wounds required attention," he continued, stepping inside and closing the door quietly. "You lost more blood than what I was expecting."

"You should have let me die," you shot back.

"And deprive myself of the conversation?" he replied mildly.

Your hands curled into fists at your sides. "You abducted me."

"I saved you."

"You drugged me."

"I healed you."

You took a step toward him despite the tremor in your leg. "I am not staying here."

His gaze flicked downward briefly, taking in your unsteady stance before returning to your face.

"That remains to be seen."

The audacity of it made your vision flash red, knowing no one would look for you. Of course, no one would—why would they? You were dead. Peter would already be spinning his story; the ambush, death eaters, the tragedy, your body conveniently unrecovered. You were dead to them. The heaviness of that realization pressed suffocatingly against your ribs, your friends would be grieving you right now, and you were standing in between sunlight.

"You cannot keep me here!"

"I can," he said calmly. "For now."

You looked at him, your gaze unmoving—at the measured stillness, the patience he conveys. He did not seem concerned that you might lunge for him. Did not seem threatened by your fury.

"I will leave," you said, seething. "Even if I have to crawl."

For the first time, something like approval flickered across his expression.

"I would expect nothing less."

Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict pain on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness. Tom did not see himself as good or evil; such labels were for the weak who feared their own reflection.

He knew himself most better than human beings would.

Every thought, every impulse, every cruelty weighed against his own understanding. Control was his principle, not morality. And in you—your resilience, your sole defiance, the fire even in weakness, he found a perfect reflection of purpose. To test, to observe, to bend without breaking; it was justification enough, and the obsession that it sparked in him was neither chance nor folly, only it was inevitable.

Tom had watched you struggle against the invisible barriers he had meticulously made around the manor, you kept trying to escape for days despite not being fully healed yet.

You moved with desperation, yet all of it was futile. That was not a failure in itself, that was the point. The moment you realized that the world was not as pliant as you believed, that your control was an illusion, that was the moment he began to see you clearly.

He had been busy building himself a new name, a new world. There is so much violence in reconstruction, he supposed; every minute was grisly, but he had to participate. He was building what he nor other people cannot break. In the midst of it all—you would stand with him, Tom knows so.

"You are not strong enough yet," he called you out, standing at the top of the stairs.

"Remove them," you demanded hoarsely, pushing yourself upright despite the tremor. "If you think I will stay willingly, you're more delusional than I thought."

Tom's eyes followed every tremor of your body, every flicker of your gaze, with the same veracity he applied to his magic, to his plans, to the shaping of a world that bent under his will.

He did not move closer, not yet. He wanted to see you struggle, to see in between pride and despair carve itself across your face. Every flinch, every expression you made, revealed more of you than any words ever could, and that both delighted and disturbed him.

"You misunderstand me," he stepped down the stairs with slowness. Each footfall echoed across the empty hall, "This is not about consent, or choice, or permission—I am not here to negotiate with you."

"I never asked for this," you hissed, pressing your back against the cold wall, chest heaving. "I never agreed to—any of it!"

"Your insistence… your refusal to collapse entirely—it intrigues me. You do not realize how rare it is."

"Intrigues you?" you spat. Your chest rose faster, breaths short, anger tangled with fatigue. "You mean you want to hurt me more. To see me suffer. That's all this is to you."

"Perhaps," he admitted, though there was no malice in it. Not the sort that anyone else would recognize. "You confuse the sensation for cruelty because it's unfamiliar, because you are unaccustomed to seeing yourself clearly. And you… frighten so easily when confronted with reality."

"I won't allow myself to satisfy your curiosity, Voldemort."

Would you say it—his name, the one buried beneath the legend, the horror? Tom. How would it sound coming from your lips? Hesitant, he knows. Perhaps even in anger or disgust, and it would still be music to his ears; a confession of intimacy he would never admit aloud.

He imagined it rolling off your tongue; raw, unguarded, and something twisted and exquisite unfurled inside him. Admiration mingled with obsession, a sick kind of tenderness reserved only for you. In that thought alone, you became more exceptional, and terrifyingly human, and he could not look away.

Tom then, had decided in that moment, he shall make you his.

You wake to the dim light of a room that isn't yours, the kind of gray that presses against your eyelids and refuses to let you think clearly. You had no idea how many days had passed since Voldemort had trapped you inside of Malfoy's manor, and you tried to sit; the world tilts as if to mock you, reminding you that your several escapes had been nothing but failure.

Time had lost its shape here. Every day began and ended with the same suffocating certainty; there was no way out. Only him. Only Voldemort.

He brought food. Warm bread with soft cheese inside, steak you hadn't tasted in months, thick stews. Each meal was offered with the same calmness he exudes, as if feeding you was not mercy itself, but necessity. You refused at first, pushing plates away, sneering through dry lips, insisting you could starve before being grateful to him. But he never argued. Never raised his voice. He only waited, watching you closely, and eventually, hunger won.

Clothes, too, had appeared. They were unremarkable, clean, functional, but they smelled faintly familiar, a reminder of him. You protested, demanded your own, tore at the fabric he laid before you, but his patience never faltered. The clothes were not a gift, you realized.

You belonged here, he wants to say, whether you liked it or not.

Every movement was clouded by your own plotting. You had planned various ways, everything was a rehearsal for the moment you would flee. Every so often, when the door clicked behind him as he left you alone, your fingers twitched, legs aching to run.

You imagined the taste of freedom, the rush of air against your face, the city beyond the trees—and each time, the reality comes in waves. There was no escape. Not yet.

And yet, there was only him. Always.

You wondered why. Why you. Why was it never anyone else? Why had he chosen to keep you here, alone with him, when the world was full of people who could oppose, who could resist, who could die in his place? The question gnawed at you as you ate your meager meals in silence, as you pressed your back against the cold wall and stared at the shadows stretching long and dark across the floor.

Every day, you felt yourself shrinking, your hope curling smaller with every unanswered question, every unanswered glance, every gesture of his that made it impossible to forget that you were alone here—with him, and no one else would come. You ate, slept, and trained, but the thought swirled inside; he could end it all in a heartbeat, yet he had not.

And perhaps that was the cruelest part.

You hated him, you would never allow yourself think otherwise. But a part of you; small, maddening, unwilling—could not deny the fascination. The way he studied you, with patience, with exacting attention. The way he existed as both threat and enigma, human and untouchable, all at once. It made your skin crawl. Still, you could not escape looking at him, even when you planned to flee.

You would try again tomorrow, perhaps. Though it feels like becoming a game between you now.

The next morning, you padded quietly down the halls. Every corner seemed alive—reminding you of the invisible chains that bounds you here. You had no illusions of escape, no glimmers of success left. So today, you weren't running. Today, you were looking for the library.

"Will you escape again today?" The voice cut through the silence, and you froze. He stood at the end of the hall, his dark eyes following you with that same unnerving gaze.

"No," you said flatly, not daring to glance at him, heat rising at the assumption. "I'm looking for the library."

"Interesting," he murmured, almost thoughtful. "Let me take you then."

He did not move toward you, but you knew better than to step past him without permission. Instead, he led, shoulders straight, his presence a constant weight beside you as you followed through twisting halls lined with fading portraits and long forgotten tapestries.

When the door to the library swung open, you felt the faintest spark of relief. Shelves rose floor to ceiling, filled with books older than either of you, spines cracked, leather worn, and filled with words that promised escape in another form. Knowledge, stories, and ideas—here, at least, you could breathe.

Because if you couldn't leave anyway, you would read. Like you always did back home.

You ran your fingers along the spines, pulling books at random. Most were dull or too arcane, but one caught your attention, flipping it open and scanned the pages; Greek mythology, ancient tales of gods and mortals, of life and death. Your eyes settled on the story of Hades and Persephone. Then, you let out a dry laugh, shaking your head.

"Wow," you muttered, voice echoing slightly. "How ironic."

Tom's presence lingered near the doorway, though he didn't reach for the books, didn't interfere either, though you could feel him.

"You find it amusing?" his voice was curious, not mocking.

You didn't turn around. You couldn't. If you looked at him, you'd remember the way he'd watched you bleed, and the fragile peace of the room would shatter.

"A girl plucked from a garden, dragged into a kingdom of shadows. She thinks she's a prisoner, and he thinks he's giving her a crown."

"And what do you think?"

Your fingers trembled slightly as you traced the words. "I mean… that's exactly how I feel here. Trapped. Forced. Expected to adapt."

"Persephone chose to grow, eventually," he tells you. "because even in captivity, one finds ways to shape the world that holds them. Even gods cannot fully bind what has will."

"She's still a hostage," you argued. "No matter how many pomegranate seeds she eats, or how grand the palace is, she didn't choose to be there. He took the choice away. That's not a love story."

"Maybe there's some truth to it," he said. "She did not choose to be there. And yet, even in unwillingness, she discovered a power she did not know she possessed."

You stiffened, fingers gripping the edge of the book. "You mean submission? That's what you're calling power?"

He shook his head, faintly, almost imperceptibly. "No. Control, in its purest form, comes from understanding one's own will—even when every external force tries to crush it. That's what she gained, and what you are discovering."

"You make it sound… noble," your gaze averted away from him. "But it's not. It's being trapped—it's not mine to shape, it's yours, your world. You didn't give me anything."

"I gave you choice," he said softly. "The choice to endure, to survive. You took it. And in doing so, you revealed yourself to me."

"What did you see then? If you say that I revealed myself to you?"

"That you are, indeed, just like me."

You have these lines you won't cross, but then you cross them. And suddenly you possessed the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won't instantly come to an end. You've taken a big, black, bold line and you have made it a little bit gray. Now, crossing it again, it simply gets grayer and grayer until you finally look around and you would think, there was a line here once.

Tom had seen it coming.

Of course he had. Every subtle glance, the way your hands lingered on the kitchen knives when you explore around for hours on end, the trembling of your patience—it all spoke louder than words. And still, watching you now, dagger poised in trembling hands, he felt that familiar thrill of inevitability. He would let you, only this time.

You struck. The metal pierced his chest cleanly, a crimson spreading instantly over his white suit. His breath hitched though not from the physical ache he felt, but from the impossibility of how beautiful you looked.

Blood on your hands, rage burning your eyes, your hair loose and wild across your face as you sat on top of him, it was magnificent.

"Let me go," you rasped, chest heaving, exhausted yet fuming. "Let me out of here."

He felt the heat of your anger, the desperate pulse of life beneath your skin, and in that moment, all his careful control bent toward the unthinkable. Pain was irrelevant; consequence was irrelevant. He wanted you. All of you. The fury, the fire, the stubbornness; it drew him in closer than he had allowed himself to go with anyone ever.

His hands reaching over to pull you closer and he felt the dagger dug deeper in his skin.

When his lips met yours, it was a collision of need and control. You gasped against him, the sound raw, a mixture of rage, despair, and something dangerously close to desire. It disgusts you, he knew.

Tom's hands moved with tenderness, cradling your face, threading through your hair, brushing against your neck, memorizing every tremble, every quiver. He could feel your pulse racing, the tension coiling tight in your shoulders. He will hold on to this pulse against other rhythms, the world will come and go in the tide of a day, but here is your hand with his life in its palm of the very blade you hold inside him.

Each movement of your lips against his was untamed, and it made him ache with a hunger he had never let himself name.

Your lips parted under his, and he felt you suck in a sharp breath—taking the chance to let his tongue in, swirling around the inside of your mouth, teeth grazing. Your tongue traced his, hesitant at first, then bolder, a challenge he accepted without hesitation.

It was not gentle yet it carried a weight of intimacy reserved only for this impossible moment, only for you. He tasted the salt of your streaming tears, and somehow it only drew him closer, more desperate.

You pulled back slightly, breath ragged, forehead against his, lips still brushing in fleeting contact.

"You're still bleeding," you rasped.

"It doesn't matter," he murmured against your mouth again, almost a growl. "Come here."

Then, he pressed his lips against yours once more. Only this time it had been slower, savoring the taste of you—the ache that only you could provoke in him. You slid your palms over his cheeks, pulling him closer as you swiped your tongue at the seam of his full mouth. His other hand slipped down to your waist, cold and large enough to cover a decent expanse, brushed his thumb against your ribcage, tracing the sweep of the bones within you.

"You're—you're going to die," you trembled against his lips.

He pulled back slightly, enough to see the panic flashing in your eyes, and the rapid rise and fall of your chest. And with a slow motion, he wrenched the dagger from his chest, ignoring the sting, and tossed it aside.

He felt the moment you froze, watching him, but he didn't stop. Fingers slick with his blood, he reached toward you. One fingertip brushed against your trembling lips, smudging the red across your skin. Your breath hitched, startled and vulnerable, and he could see the mix of revulsion and fascination, the war between instinct and surrender.

Lifting you slightly as he shifted, guiding your weight until you were beneath him. Your arms pressed against the floor, hands still quivering from adrenaline, dagger long forgotten now, discarded somewhere in the near distance.

His gaze held yours, unflinching, drinking in every flicker of panic, every flush of heat across your skin.

"You're exquisite like this," he murmured, voice reverent, though there was a hunger underlying it, unashamed.

His right hand gripped your wrists lightly to hold you in place, and then his head lowered over to press open mouthed kiss along the curve of your jaw, a moan elicited from your lips as he traced the line with his tongue.

"Tom," he softly spoke.

"What?" your mind's dizzy.

"Call me by my name, (Name)."

When you didn't answer, he uses the sides of his left fingers to pinch and roll your nipple through the fabric of your top, harshly.

"Tom," you gasped out. "No—"

"Yes," he says. "Yes, you sound exactly how I imagine you would. Beautiful."

And you're awfully sensitive, he noticed, writhing under the smallest of touches. He keeps his eyes on your face, reveling in the way you make new expressions he hadn't seen before, it felt like learning you once more. Your eyes are squeezing shut, brows knitted, but the wanton moans escaping your lips hint that you're enjoying yourself.

Then, his thigh nudges yours in between, forcing them to spread, his fingers tracing down your stomach until his fingers found his way under your dress directly to your cunt, the tips of his fingers gliding across your slit to feel your warmth through the fabric of your undergarment. It was wet, and the thought of it made his cock hard. But it wasn't about him, it was all about you.

God help him, he planned on ruining you for trying to kill him, even though he had let you. Excuses, he supposed, but it was better this than what you felt towards him—indifference. This way, he'll see you ruin in the most divine way possible.

You let out a whimper when he collects the front of your underwear in his hand so that it thins right in front of your cunt and pulls. The white of your knickers were soaking as he inches it in an upward motion; his jaw clenching when he sees the way it presses and moves against your glistening wet folds and he wants to lick it, Tom wants his mouth on it.

"Tom, please—" you were breathing fast, so visibly affected by it. "Don't—"

"You enjoy it, don't you?" he taunts, pulling it upward harshly. "Your cunt is wet from trying to kill me."

"Yes, yes," your eyes fluttering close, breaths ragged. "I want you dead."

In a quick motion, he was gliding his middle finger up and down your slit until he felt you bucking your hips, and he concedes, wanting to see more of you, to hear more of the sound you make; he gently slid his finger into your heat. Your walls clench around his intruding finger that goes straight to your sweet spot, your mouth agape, tears streaming down your face.

His finger curls into your cunt, pulling a pitchy moan from you. You inhaled, his thumb coming down to press on your clit. He watches as your walls constrict around his finger, soaking them. Your slick smears around your inner thighs, down to the base of his palm.

He had never been a man inclined toward pleasure. Touch was inefficient as it implied vulnerability; a surrender of control he found unnecessary. Others reached for contact as reassurance or proof of their own existence. Tom had long existed without the warmth of another body beside his own.

Intimacy had always struck him as indulgent—a weakness of those who feared solitude. Even when he had commanded loyalty and devotion, he had done so without laying a hand where it was not required. Touch was for manipulation, never for pleasure, never for intimacy.

And yet, with you, it was different in a way that unsettled him. He wanted to unravel you. Slowly.

Even now, with his finger inside of you, you still tried to fight the inevitability of your own pleasure, still trying to resist what was already happening, perhaps it was repulsiveness—of the way you let him touch you like this. Of not denying him this. He wanted to be the force that made you gasp, that made your resolve blur at the edges, that taught you how thin the line was between hatred and desire. It is a very thin line, after all.

You were naturally seductive and yet, so unaware of it.

He could sense your orgasm approaching, and because he is inherently selfish, he added two more fingers entering your heat, increasing the speed unbearably fast, thrusting his fingers, pressing and rubbing your clit as he watches your face twist into something even more beautiful.

"Let it go, (Name)," he encourages you, his voice low. "Let me see you when you come."

Then you did come undone in his hands, he watched as the way your eyes fluttered open, trying to breathe for air. Shame, perhaps—crossing your face as you realized what both of you allowed to happen. But then again, you seemed exhausted from it.

"Rest," he drew his face closer to yours. "I'll take care of you."

He carried you as though you weighed nothing.

Your breathing had softened, your fury and fire dulled into quiet exhaustion. Your head rested against his shoulder, hair spilling over his arm, fingers loosely curled into the fabric of his shirt as he laid you carefully onto his bed.

He had adjusted the pillow beneath your head, brushed stray strands of hair from your face, drew the covers over your body for warmth. There was blood dried along his collarbone, an ache still throbbing where the dagger had pierced him—but none of it mattered.

Desire, to Tom, had always been theoretical; something other people were ruled by. A weakness to exploit. A distraction to rise above. He had believed himself immune to it, untouchable in his discipline. Though you had proved him wrong, and ultimately, had proved himself wrong.

Tom wanted more, and the notion of it seemed dangerous. Tenderness toward the object of one's desire becomes an expression of love partly, he thought. Because it defies the nature of want, whose instinct is often less to cuddle than to crush. His want was more gnash than kiss, more eat than embrace.

This terrified him. The kind of desire that precludes many kinds of supposed love. It is no accident that people go to the pulse. Lust is an urge to consume and perhaps there is no truer expression of it that does not imply destruction.

He stood there longer than he should have, watching the steady rise and fall of your chest beneath the blankets, measuring it against his own.

If desire was hunger, then what he felt now was something more complicated than appetite. Hunger ends once fed. Hunger quiets. Hunger moves on to its next object. What coiled inside him did not quiet when you slept nor did it not lessen when he had touched you, when he had felt you writhe beneath his hands. If anything, it intensified.

The distinction gnawed at him.

To desire without destroying—was that weakness? Or was it a greater form of control? He was uncertain which frightened him more; the possibility that he cared, or the possibility that he no longer wished to dominate every inch of you.

His gaze lowered down at the dark stain still spreading faintly through the fabric near his ribs. The wound had already begun to close, his magic knitting muscle and skin back together with efficiency, but he could stop it.

Tom could slow it, he could leave it imperfect. The thought rooted itself before he could dismiss it. And he had healed from worse without a second consideration, and flesh was merely another surface to command. But this—this had been delivered by your hand. Not by an enemy in battle. Not by chance. By you.

Others could fear him, hate him, even attempt to destroy him, though none of them had ever left something behind that felt almost too personal. Wrath shaped into steel and driven into his heart. Tom imagined the faint line it would leave; pale scar against his skin.

A reminder that you had once hovered over him with murder in your eyes and fire in your teeth—that you had chosen violence instead of submission.

There was something intoxicating in that.

Because now, in a way no one else could claim, you were inside him. He'd keep you then, he will see to himself that you will never leave his sight forevermore, and he would make it so that you never truly would. Tom does not know if there's anything bigger than what he feels at the moment, this want. If there is, maybe he's that.

[saintnoxia]

𝟎𝟎𝟑:  𝐎𝐍𝐄  𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓  .  .  .  growing  pains. summary:  tom  gave  you  just  enough  life  to  be  miserable  and  just  enough  memory  to  be  haunted,  spent  decades  living  in  the  gaps  of  his  absence.  you  loved  the  wrong  person,  or  perhaps  you  loved  the  right  one  and  still,  it  could  never  be  enough. pairings:  tom  riddle  x  fem!reader. words:  4.7k warnings:  marauder's  era,  but  reader  is  older.  morally  grey  reader.  unhealthy  dynamics.  toxic  relationship.  situationship  so  bad  you  joined  the  order  just  to  spite  him.  problematic  tom  riddle.  voldemort  tom  coming  through.  full  of  angst  without  comfort.  author  notes:  a  very  short  one!  been  busy  with  academics,  my  brain's  fried,  and  i  apologize  for  that.  i  have  a  longer  diff  one  in  my  drafts,  but  i  wanted  to  finish  this  one  first.  any  errors  &  typos,  send  them  out  to  me.  enjoy  reading  :)  missed  you!

There was peace in your time; for a glance at the moment tomorrow is not born, and the past never mattered. With every fibre, with every ache you once had felt in your heart, with every drop of your red blood—you will keep reaching back for what is not there any longer. Had you been so cruel? You never did think so. War often bled through the structure, and you thought you could never be a saint, perhaps a martyr then if they have killed you only so quickly.

Perhaps, you were the prideful one; imagining his broken heart—so that you may never have to face your folly. That you have loved someone who made such grave mistakes, that you might love him still. He really made you happy—yes, Tom Riddle did.

Lord, you no longer believe, and the chamomile tea had gone cold; a stagnant pool of blond reflecting the guttering candlelight, swirling around upon thousand memories flashing inside your head. From across you, Albus Dumbledore sat comfortably; his silhouette cast long and distorted against the peeling wallpaper of the 12 Grimmauld Place. He did not offer lemon drops this time; he offered no warmth at all.

"You've grown restless recently," Albus' voice cut through your own thoughts. "I suspect it has something to do with the scar on your neck, (Name)."

Your fingers were pressed firmly against the uneven line of the scar wrapped around your neck; a silver snarl of tissue, a parting gift from a man who didn't believe in clean breaks. The violent snapped of a soul tether, because when Tom Riddle had vanished—he had reached inside you and ripped his name out of your chest, leaving this remnants of wreckage behind as a sole reminder. You supposed, in Tom's case, a signature.

"Memories are restless things, Albus," you replied. "They don't stay in the dirt where they belong."

"They belong in the dirt because they are dead," Albus countered, his voice losing its usual softness and taking on the weight of an old mentor. "But you—you have spent the last decade tending to the soil, wondering if anything would ever sprout from the grave he dug for you."

"Tom was never that merciful." your hand finally dropping at the table. "He didn't kill me, and I suppose I should have been grateful for that—he simply unmade the world and left me standing alone in it."

"It's a particular kind of cold, isn't it?" Albus said quietly. "Tom didn't love you for who you were nor you were his equal, but a semblance of comfort for him to hide his humanity until he was ready to discard it."

"Is that why I'm here," you asked him truthfully. "Because you see yourself when you look at me? Two people who mistook an ambitious man's attention for love?"

Albus shakes his head, the lines around his mouth deepening into a grimace he couldn't quite mask with a smile.

"You came to me, (Name); desperation etched across your face. How could I refuse such advantage? You know of his small cruelties, you've known him longer than I ever did… and perhaps, in some ways, you are the only person to have done it gracefully so."

A tragic sort of grace, perhaps—the way a chapel remains beautiful even after the Gods had abandoned it. You realized then that your entire life had become a waiting room. Less of a woman and more like a stain Tom had failed to scrub out; a persistent, ugly reminder of a humanity he had outgrown, and years you have spent living in solitude wondering if the reason he let you live was because he couldn't kill you, or because he had simply walked out of the room and out of the version of himself that loved you, leaving you to starve in a reality he no longer believed in.

Which is worse, you asked yourself. You wanted him gone, but the victory of it was you could have never stomach it. You were the sanctuary Tom Riddle had used to hide from his own mortality, and he'd mastered the art of being a monster, your walls were too small to hold him. The grief wasn't for the man he was now, but for the girl you had killed to make room for him, only for him to leave you with nothing but a scar and a cold cup of tea.

"We both wanted to be the exception, didn't we?" Albus continued, his heart breaks for you in a way he understood how it had felt in his. "We thought if we were brilliant enough, or loyal enough, we could be the one person they wouldn't sacrifice. We were wrong. For men like Tom—and men like Gellert—there are no exceptions. Only instruments."

"The difference," your voice tightened, "is that you are trying to atone. I want to stand in front of mine and force him to see that it was his mistake to have kept me breathing."

Who are you, really? You sat in the table tonight once again glaring overhead, conversations whirring loudly. Familiar faces everywhere; exhausted and unkempt. Intent faces, flesh pink, white, yellow. And you sat there without identity; faceless.

Your head aches.

You supposed you were a strange combination of someone who at once wanted, needed desperately, the support and connection of others and in another way rejected others out of a sense of defensive pride. Your initial image was one of a self confident, totally contained, together woman. Seemed haughty, distant, standoffish really. Yet, when people began to know you—you evidenced such a crying need for a completely committed dynamic that it almost drove everyone away for fear they couldn't give you what you had wanted.

The only times you allowed yourself believe in the omnipotent and benevolence was when your anger tasted more like passion and less iron. You pushed a piece of overcooked potato around your plate, the scrape of the fork against the ceramic sounding like a scream in the quiet of your own mind.

"As certain as possible, assuming I can plausibly predict a man who seeks to rise to Godhood," Alastor Moody says to them, pointing his fingers. "The key is understanding this; no real God need prove himself, and anyone who tries is mad or lying. Voldemort's deception will undo him, as it has done countless fools before."

"Spoken like a man who's never stood close enough to the sun to feel his skin bubbling," Sirius Black cut in, his voice sharp with the reckless bravado of a young man who hadn't yet learned that some fires don't simply burn but consume. He leaned back in his chair, and shot a look toward you that was meant to be conspiratorial but felt like an accidental bruise.

"He's giving them something they think is better than the truth, Moody," James Potter added, tapping his wand against the edge of the table. "And that is precisely why the old families are flocking. All more the reasons as to why he had tried to recruit me and Lily." James' eyes seemed exhausted, the light in them dimmed by months of midnight watches and the weight of a pregnant wife he had to keep hidden.

You kept your eyes on your food, the gray starch smeared across the porcelain. You supposed they never really had knew Tom Riddle, or Voldemort. They never have not known the low yet honeyed tone of his voice when Tom Riddle was explaining the mechanics of a curse he'd just invented, making you feel as if you were the only two people in the universe who truly understood the language of power.

"It's easy to call it a deception when you aren't the one being deceived," you murmured.

The table went quiet, and the scrape of your fork had stopped, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. Moody's magical eye whirled, pinning you with its electric blue stare, while his real one narrowed in suspicion.

"You have a thought, (Name)?" Moody growled, his hand tightening around his staff. "Or are you just feeling nostalgic for the guest of honor?"

You didn't look up, though you could feel the weight of Albus at the head of the table; the only one who knew that your silence wasn't pride in itself, it is a slow collapse of your own selfness.

"I think," you started, "that you mistake his vanity for a weakness. If you treat him like a liar, you'll miss the moment he starts telling the truth—and that's when he'll kill you."

"What truth is there in a pile of Muggleborn corpses, (Name)? What truth is in the way he's tearing the Ministry apart?"

"The truth that the world is already broken," you heavily insisted. "The truth that power isn't earned by merit, but by the will to take it. Tom—" you stopped for a brief moment. "Voldemort wants to show everyone that the seams were already rotting! That's his truth. He tells them that the only thing that matters is the strength of their will, and for the first time in their stagnant lives, these old families feel like they aren't just names in a ledger. They will feel like Gods."

You had felt it then; in their eyes—the judgment of the righteous, although you could never blame them. After all, they were still kids. Brave, yes. But foolish, foolish kids who thought fighting a war would mean anything at all. You were speaking a language they hadn't learned yet; the language of the aftermath. You already know they will lose, you had no hope for it.

The table grew blurred, the faces of the Order receding into a smear of warm colors that felt increasingly alien; realizing then that you were no longer capable of their brand of hope. But you knew that monsters were easy—monsters were predictable. It was the man who had read poetry to you in the dead of night, the man who had promised you a seat at the right hand of a new world, who was the real threat.

You had understood his actions, no matter how vile they may be, all better than they ever would. But you hoped that you weren't right about Tom, that you would give anything to believe in their youth and their brave, stupid sacrifices.

The scar on your neck was a tether to a reality they weren't ready to face; that the man they were fighting had already won the only war that mattered. He had made them talk about him. He had made them fear the dark.

"And you?" Moody's voice was a low, dangerous rumble. "Do you believe we deserve it?"

"None of you deserve to die," you continued, looking directly at James and Lily, whose hands were joined tightly under the table. "But you will—all of us will, if you're waiting for him to play by the rules of a society he's already discarded."

Sirius slammed his hand onto the table, the silverware jumping. "So what? We should just kneel? Is that the logic you learned in his bed?"

The insult was meant to draw blood, but you were already hollowed inside. Nothing can hurt you anymore, Tom had been certain about that. You didn't flinch. Instead, you gave him a look of such profound, weary pity that his boldness seemed to shrivel.

"I knelt so you wouldn't have to, Sirius, and I am standing here now to tell you that the view from the ground is a lot more honest than the one from your high horse," you said. "How do you fight a man who offers people their deepest, darkest desires?"

Moody let out a harsh, dry sound of a laugh. "We fight him with a wand and a curse, same as any other Dark wizard!"

"Then you've already lost," you replied, pushing your chair back. The screech of wood on stone was the final note of the conversation. "Because while you're aiming for his heart, he's already inside your head. He's already made you doubt your neighbors, your Ministry, and now—looking at the way you're staring at me—each other."

As you turned toward the door, the hallway felt like a throat; swallowing you whole. You didn't wait for them to answer, and you were quite certain that for the rest of the night, they would talk about you in hushed, suspicious tones—and in doing so, they would be talking about him.

Tom was winning. Even here, in the heart of the resistance, he seemed to linger upon you.

Even if you know what's coming, you're never prepared for how it feels. And while it was happening, you remember thinking; this might be the last time you'll get away with this.

And it was.

AUGUST 1948

The light in the flat in Borgin's alley was never truly gold; it was the color of bruised plums and tobacco smoke, filtered through curtains that smelled of dust and old secrets. The air was thick, stagnant, and so quiet you could hear the frantic beating of a moth's wings against the lampshade.

You were lying on the narrow bed, the sheets twisted and damp against your skin. Tom was beside you, though he was not resting; he was propped up on one elbow, tracing the line of your collarbone with the tip of a finger, his movements tender, Tom had never looked so beautiful in that angle. Mine, you thought. Simply mine.

There was momentary bliss in this quiet intimacy you'd been sharing together, Tom never allowed himself to be vulnerable to any other person, but you have always been his exception to the rules he created in his head—watching you watch the way a single bead of sweat tracked down his throat.

This was the intimacy they didn't warn you about—the kind that felt less like a union and more like a shared madness. Because you supposed, there is something good in his madness. That with whatever wrongness Tom exists in; you let him be. You wouldn't reject the nerve of his being as he is with yours, you would willingly let him exist in whatever form he seemed.

"You're staring again," he said, without looking up. "It's a bad habit of yours. One might mistake it for affection."

I would have you be human, you thought mindlessly. I would have you be enough, just as you are. You never realized it then—one day, this too, will be the past and you will come to mourn it, that you will have to remember him longer than you knew him, and you will never come to terms with it.

"I am simply looking at you. There's a difference."

"Is there? I have never known what it is you see when you look at me sometimes, (Name)."

"Would it be so terrible, just to be a man?"

"I do not know how to," Tom's expression shifted, a flicker of something raw and unrecognizable crossing his face. "I will never be enough, and neither will you. That is why we are perfect for one another—we are both holes in the world, trying to fill ourselves with the other's light."

"I'm not afraid of you, Tom." You reached up to brush a damp lock of hair from his forehead. He didn't flinch, but you felt the subtle tension in his jaw

"You should be," he murmured, his lips inches from your fingers as he took them closer in his face. "Because one day, I'm going to walk out of this room, and I'm going to take everything I have learned from you—every vulnerability you've exposed, every way you've taught me to feel, and use it to make sure I never have to feel anything ever again."

"I know," your voice breaking just slightly. "But you're here now. I'd rather be destroyed by you than ignored by the rest of the world."

Tom let out a breath that sounded almost like a shudder. He didn't say I love you—the words would have tasted like poison in his mouth, and words are futile devices. Instead, he lay back down, pulling you flush against his side with a grip that was far too tight, as if he were trying to merge your bones with his.

"Then stay still," he commanded softly, staring back at you with a certain kind of hunger in his gaze. "Let us see how long we can pretend the sun isn't going to come up."

He kissed you then; a slow, consuming theft of breath that felt like the beginning of an elegy. You held him with a strength born of terror, trying to steady a man who was already drifting toward a horizon you couldn't see. You didn't know then that he was right. You didn't know that for the next thirty years, you would be a woman living in the wreckage of this one afternoon, trying to find the man in the monster he chose to become.

"I'm not going to run away," you whispered against his lips.

"No," Tom gasped in agreement, "I won't let you."

You love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy: it is not enough. Everything is more beautiful because you are both doomed, you will never be lovelier than you are now, and both of you will never be here again.

Deep beneath the layers of ritual scarring and the Horcruxes that had emptied out his soul, there was a vestige of Tom Riddle that refused to die. It was a small, scorched thing, but as it looked upon you, it recognized its owner. He did not call it love—he had no room for a word so soft and pedestrian, it was deeply agonizing to live by.

Tom was drawn to you as the tides are drawn to a dying moon, he revered you with the possessive yet ruinous hunger of a man who had seen everything and realized you were the only thing he'd ever found that was worth keeping.

So, yes. Tom may never call it love but he loved you, and he hated you for it.

He hated that the scar on your neck—the one he had carved with a shaking hand and a fractured soul, still acted as disguised of an affection for his attention. He had crossed a line with you, and for a moment, he never wanted to go back, and simply be. To love you was to be vulnerable; to be vulnerable was to be human; and to be human was to die.

You looked older now than he remembered, time had been unkind to you. Tom supposed it was his fault after all, for not giving you the mercy of death. In truth, he never planned to. He was cruel like that.

"You look very tired, (Name)," he said finally. "I left you with just enough life to be miserable, didn't I?"

Tom didn't have to move toward you, instead, he had watched you from across the distance of years and a thousand sins. His introspection was a dark swirling notion; he hated that your presence forced him to remember the heat of his old bed, the way you writhe beneath him as he took your flesh, and to look at you was to look at a mirror he had tried to smash, only to find the shards still reflecting his own eyes.

"You left me with nothing, Tom," your voice felt steady despite the tremor in the air. "Don't flatter yourself by calling it life."

"Did Albus think sending you here would have changed anything?" He sneered. "Do you truly believe your presence alone will stunt me? I have learned to breathe without a heart, (Name). I suggest you learn to live without the memory of mine."

"You don't understand, Tom—"

"Tom is dead!" He hissed, the wind whipping around him as his magic reacted to his temper. "He was a weak, fumbling creature who let a woman believe she was his equal. I did you a favor when I ripped his name out of your chest. I freed you from the delusion of being loved by something that was never meant to be human."

"And you are a liar and bringer of death," you spat at him, heart aching. "But even a God cannot rewrite the way his name sounded when I whispered it against his skin. You can kill the man, but you can't kill the memory of how he loved me."

"I loved nothing," Tom tells you, a sibilant lie that felt like it cost him his entire remaining strength. "I used you. I carved that mark into your skin so you would never be able to look at another man without seeing my shadow. It wasn't an act of love, (Name). It was an act of ownership."

"Then why can't you look at me?"

"I cannot look at you," it seemed eerily quiet, "and remain what I must be."

His gaze swept over and looked at the scar on your neck; the only piece of himself he hadn't hidden in a box or buried in a cave. You were his living Horcrux in a sense, a vessel for the version of him that had once known how to feel—Tom wanted to destroy you and worship you in the same breath. There is a specific kind of evil in wanting to be remembered by the person you willingly destroyed. He had reached for divinity and grasped only cold, white bone.

The dark lord was flawed in the most ancient way; Tom Riddle wanted to be a God, but he still had the stomach of a man—always hungry, always empty. He looked at you and realized that no matter how many souls he tore apart to live forever, he was already dead. You were destined for him; perhaps, as a punishment.

The lie was merely the only thing he had left.

NOVEMBER 1957

The light in the flat was dying, a jaundiced yellow fading into the grey of London. Outside, the world was moving toward winter, but inside, time had already curdled. Tom didn't glance at you; he was packing a small leather satchel. Tom had looked wrong—his skin was too pale, almost translucent, like fine porcelain stretched over a secret. You thought you knew hunger before this, you find that kind of touch unbearable. To witness. To want. Desire is ugly, you thought. Incessant. Shaped like two hands wrapped around a throat.

"You're not coming back, are you?" you asked slowly, the realization settling in your stomach.

"I cannot take you where I am going," he said, his back to you, and his decision seemed firm this time.

"If you don't want me to come with you," you pleaded, reaching for him. "Then, stay. Tom, please—"

"Crucio."

But you didn't feel the wood against your skin, you felt only searing pain. It was as if every nerve ending in your body had been replaced with rusted copper wire, and Tom was funneling a thousand suns through them. Vision going white, then a bruised, screaming purple. You tried to draw breath to scream, but your lungs had turned to dry stone; the air was a solid that refused to move, your own muscles contracted with such violent, rhythmic force that you felt your own bones breaking under the pressure, threatening to snap just to escape the tension.

Every thought you had ever owned; the memory of your mother's voice; the smell of autumn rain, the way Tom looked when he was sleeping—was incinerated in an instant. There was no you left. There was only the agony, a sentient, living thing that was devouring you from the marrow outward. It felt like being flayed by invisible razors, then submerged in a sea of boiling hell.

And then, just as your mind began to fracture, to welcome the impending doom as a mercy—it had stopped.

You lay there, a heap of discarded limbs, your fingers twitching against the floor. The world came back in excruciating fragments; the smell of dust, the ticking of a clock, the metallic taste of the blood where you'd bitten through your lip. Your nervous system was a scorched landscape, each weeping from the shock.

Then came the hands.

Soft, calloused hands. They were so gentle they felt like a second torture. Tom slid his arms beneath you, lifting your limp, shivering weight as if you were made of gossamer. He pulled you into his lap, and for a terrifying second, you felt the vibration of a sob in his chest—or perhaps it was just the resonance of the curse still humming in his veins.

He tucked your face into the crook of his neck. You smelled the familiar, heartbreaking scent of him, and you hated yourself for the way your body instinctively tried to curl toward the heat, seeking comfort from the very hand that had just unmade you.

"Shh," he whispered, a broken sound. "I had to know, (Name). I had to know if I could do it. If I could break the last thing that makes me hesitate."

"You—" you gasped, your muscles still twitching, your eyes blurring with tears of shock.

"Don't speak," he commanded softly, then leaned down, pressing a lingering, reverent kiss to your forehead, then rested his forehead against yours; his skin deathly cold against your feverish, sweat slicked brow. Tom's eyes blown wide and glassy.

"You are so beautiful, (Name)." he murmured, his thumb catching a tear as it fell. "It's the only time you look as broken as I feel."

He looked at your shattered expression and felt a profound sense of relief; he had finally found the bottom of his own cruelty and found you waiting there. How can he say he loves you without blood? Tom cannot.

If someone had asked you about love, you'd tell them about violence. You thought that's what love was, it's all the same anyway. Brutality is improvised, and you've been trying to fight against something that had won a long time ago, you supposed.

You are slumped against the bricks, a discarded thing in a nameless alley. Your breath hitching—small gasps of pain that look like pale prayers in the moonlight before they shatter.

The wall is a cold spine against your own, the only thing keeping you upright as your legs turn weak. The alleyway smells of soot and impending frost, a biting contrast to the wet, copper warmth spreading across your clothes.

You try to pull in the air, but it feels sharp, like swallowing needles, and the gasps you manage are frantic and thin; you are watching the world go grey at the edges, the slow drain of your pulse a rhythm of gone, gone, gone against the heat of your skin.

There is mercy in bleeding, you thought. You were never meant to survive him.

The world begins to lose its edges, blurring into a soft, monochromatic haze. The pain from the battle; the raw ache where a curse grazed your side is being swallowed by numbness, you looked up at the night sky, Orion above the horizon, and near it, Jupiter. You wondered if he could see it, too. You wondered if your stars were the same as his.

You wonder if he felt it. The moment you ran. It was all so blurry now. Curses thrown around familiar and unfamiliar faces, and you knew they'd view you as a traitor no matter what they stand for.

As your heart slows, does his stutter?

You wonder if, in the middle of his war, he felt a sudden coldness in his chest and knew the name Tom finally becomes a dead language.

Does Tom Riddle realize that the silence you're about to enter is the only thing he cannot command you to come back from?

Perhaps one day, you will tell him about the dream you had; where you and him were together and he did not leave, where you weren't terrified and weren't numb, where things were the way you wished they could be and not for the way they are.

For now, you will have to close your eyes.

[saintnoxia]

𝟎𝟎𝟏:   𝐎𝐍𝐄  𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓    .  .  .  lonely  chimes  sing  of  pain. summary:  safety  is  a  lie  told  by  those  too  weak  to  carry  the  rot  in  their  blood,  and  under  tom  riddle's  grasp,  the  tragedy  is  given  a  new  shape;  you  will  be  made  whole  again,  and  you  will  never  be  clean  from  sin.  shall  you  dance  together?  pairings:  tom  riddle  x  fem!reader. words:  8.4k warnings:  unhealthy  dynamics.  problematic  &  manipulative  tom  as  usual.  no  definitive  appearance  of  female  reader.  1940s  era.  hogwarts  legacy  tiny  lore  and  ominis  gaunt  mentioned.  there's  no  greater  than  the  pair's  perception  of  love  being  fucked  up.  author  notes:  i  hadn't  intended  for  this  to  be  long  but  what  can  we  do!!  (im  sorry).  any  errors  &  typos  you  see,  please  tell  them  to  me  so  i  can  edit  them  out.  anyway,  enjoy  reading  :)

There is tragedy in your blood, you have known long before you could learn how to speak. At some point in your life, you felt there was no reason in telling anyone anything that was happening inside of you. A shame to some, a revolting witch to people who have ever only taken one glance upon you, and decided their opinion mattered more than the child herself, never giving a chance to see what lies beneath expressive eyes. You had been disgraceful to the blood of your own family, to the eyes of the blood purists who wear human skins wrapped underneath scales of serpent green—all waiting for your inevitable downfall.

Because you will fall, or so they say.

You were out of place. Angry, stubborn, different. Never belonged anywhere but within the confines of the sheer size of the library; tens of thousands of books; thousands of shelves; hundreds of narrow rows—all waiting for you to take solace in these old folded pages. That was your peace, a semblance to home you never felt you had.

"It's a bit odd, isn't it? He's staring again," Prudence remarked quietly, almost a whisper to your side as if a mere gossip, then your head slips from your own thoughts.

"Who's staring again, Carrow?" You throw a lazy glance at her side, Prudence's viridescent eyes, however, were drawn across from the library, you nudged her on the shoulder, making her shake her head.

"Riddle," She replied, her tone discreet then leaned in. "Tom bloody Riddle. He's been looking at you like that for what, a whole entire minute now? Did you do something to the Head Boy?"

"I haven't done anything to him, Prudence," you murmured, your voice like dry parchment. You didn't want to think about anything trivial for that matter, least of all people, Tom.

"I don't exist to people like Riddle."

"Clearly you do, (Name)."

But you found your gaze glancing towards him, surrounded by his notable pureblooded peers they all knew. They were like that; a closed off clique that clearly feels like they're always scheming, up to no good, and so you try to stay away from the likes of them.

Your mother, strict as always, had instilled a kind of teaching that never goes away growing up, the kind that's more of an itch and no matter how many times you bleed, it never heals.

You have tragedy born in your blood, insolent child. One day, you will understand, and when you do, I hope you'll feel the burn. You could hear the same stern tone she gives you every time you step into the platform, the same words, the same intonation of it.

It made you feel nauseous.

Prudence Carrow, the only friend you would consider, a truer one than most—had always been observant. She was intelligently beautiful who looked after you since first year, a bit mean but never harmful. She was admired by many, much like Tom, and you often felt she would have belonged in his little circle, the way he collects them like pressed moths beneath glass—pinning them down one by one, admiring their fragile colors only after he'd ensured they could no longer fly away.

But one of many reasons as to why you two work together as friends because of your shared similarities pertaining to certain people or in this case—of Tom Riddle. You never bought into the cult of his whole charismatic personality; the king of everything, and even though you can admit that yes, his intelligence is staggering in that capacity the way no student had ever been. It was admirable to witness, and yet a prickling of the senses—that there was something inherently sinister pulsing beneath his beautiful visage.

To you, perfection was the ultimate indication. No human being is flawless on all sides of their essence, and someone who works that hard to appear so, is usually hiding an ugly rot that would turn the stomach.

Over the years, you hadn't had any meaningful interactions with Tom Riddle himself, you kept to yourself mostly, confined to your own world while he construct a new one for himself within Hogwarts, hence, the infamous Knights of Walpurgis, and thus, making you wonder why he would indulge himself in staring at someone like you.

You feel it in the back of your head, beneath your skin—that itch—that nothing good ever comes out being at the center of Tom Riddle's attention. You simply feel it, despite what other people thought of him; a charmer, a rather exceptional one.

"He's coming over," Prudence hissed, her voice sharp enough to slice through your spiraling thoughts once again. She straightened her posture, the instinctual reflex of a pureblood girl facing a superior, though her hand remained firmly anchored on your forearm.

Tom's long strides, books held in his arm, fighting back a smile as he approached the two of you.

"Carrow," Tom greeted as he came to a halt. His voice was like silk over a blade—smooth, mannerly, and underneath it all; dangerous. He gave Prudence a polite yet dismissive nod that effectively signaled her role in this conversation was over.

Then, Tom's eyes shifted to you.

"I believe you are (Lastname)."

"Yes, I am. What do you want?"

Perhaps, you shouldn't have been so cold with your tone, because then, you had noticed the way his expression faltered into something inexplicable, an irritation flashing in his eyes for a split moment, before quickly regaining his usual composure.

"Professor Slughorn is concerned," Tom explained. "He's been lamenting the loss of a particular ingredient—Aconitum napellus, harvested under a new moon. It seems his personal stores have been contaminated, and he was quite vocal about who among the seventh years had the steady hand to retrieve more from the Forbidden Forest."

You almost hitch a breath. "The Forest is off limits. Especially at night."

"For some," Tom conceded, his gaze glinting with a dark, hidden amusement in them. "But the Professor has a way of granting special dispensations for his favorites."

"Still, it's dangerous out there," You insisted, you had noticed the absence of warmth—Prudence's grasp long gone wrapped around your forearm, it made you wish she should have held them longer. "Professor Slughorn is reckless for even suggesting such thing, making students retrieve his little ingredients for him. Does he want us to die like Warren did?"

You had a glimpse of the way Tom's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly at the mention of the girl, Myrtle Warren, who had died two years ago. It wasn't sympathy that crossed his face, you realized that now—but of concealed vexation, seeping through the cracks of his imitation of a warm expression, as if you had brought up a smudge on an otherwise perfect record.

"Slughorn isn't being reckless," Tom continued, his eyes tracing the line of your features with such focus. "He is being selective. He believes you have a certain affinity for the more difficult aspects of our curriculum. He spoke of your heritage with a great deal of interest, even if the rest of the world chooses to see it as a stain."

A stain. It made your skin crawl upon the mere mention of anything that has to do with your family, because of course, he would know about it. What does Tom Riddle hasn't known about almost everybody? You could admire him for the way he's trying to slither through your veins, making it familiar on his tongue, but it is a warning that he was digging for a foothold he didn't deserve, though you knew better, perhaps.

"I'm not interested in being another one of Slughorn's curiosities, Riddle. And I'm certainly not interested in being yours," The words feeling like a gamble as soon as they left your lips.

Tom didn't flinch though, his gaze unwavering. Instead, he let out a short, dry breath that might have been a laugh if there were any humor in it. He leaned down, placing his hands flat on the table, making the sheer weight of his presence known. Taunting, almost.

"Interest is irrelevant," he countered softly yet his expression says otherwise. "Function is what matters. Slughorn has already signed the permits, and he has quite a high opinion of you, (Lastname). He believes that someone with your particular temperament would be much more useful in the dark than the usual flock of terrified sheep."

Through everyone's eyes, Tom Riddle was almost akin to a God; an untouchable yet cruelly God that they were all too happy to worship and blindlessly follow around. Though through yours, he seemed like a black hole; a dense, consuming gravity dressed in an awfully good looking face and a Head Boy badge. Tom simply won't back down from this conversation, it stirred something in you—something you cannot simply name yet, or afraid to, you supposed.

"Go find someone else to play hero for Slughorn. I'm sure Lestrange would be thrilled to follow you into a ditch. Meanwhile, I have a study to finish, so if you please, Riddle." You said, though your voice was shaking slightly despite your best efforts to remain as cold.

You went to turn the page of your book, an attempt to reclaim your peace, but his hand shot out, though he hadn't meant to touch you, but to slam the book shut with a heavy thud that echoed through the silent library, earning every student's attention surrounding you.

"Professor Slughorn expects that Aconite by sunrise. If you aren't at the Lake by midnight, I'll be forced to tell him you were too unreliable to complete the task… Given how much effort you put into hiding, I'd hate for the Professor to send a letter home explaining that you lacked the basic discipline to follow an instruction."

Tom's politeness finally peeling away like old paint to reveal the rotting flesh of an iniquitous serpent. He didn't know of your mother's specific threats, or her punishments, but Tom knew how to weaponize the fear of being exposed—and to be truthful, it was getting to you.

If a word even gets out of your own incompetence, rejecting a professor's insistence, or rather, a project, you would have already known you were ruined by it by the time you travel home for the break. Thinking about it makes the situation awfully dreadful.

He knew that for someone like you, the only thing scarier than the Forbidden Forest was having the world, and your family—confirm that you were as fundamentally flawed as your bloodline suggested.

Tom Riddle was beginning to learn how to get under your skin, and in doing so, you couldn't find the words dried out in your throat to come out.

Your silence was the response he gladly accepted, knowing you had resigned in fighting him, a subtle smug expression etched across his sharp features.

"Midnight," Tom repeated, his dark eyes burning into yours with an intensity that you couldn't even tear your gaze away from. "I'll see you then."

Tom Riddle did not believe in accidents, and he certainly did not believe in the sanctity of silence—silence was merely a shroud draped over a secret, and he had been spending the better part of his seventh year at Hogwarts peeling back the layers of the castle's history to see what laid beneath the rot.

Somewhere along the summer of 1943, following the conviction of Morfin Gaunt for the slaughter of the Riddle house (one he had orchestrated flawlessly), Tom found himself the sole inheritor of a rotting legacy. Within the wreckage of the Gaunt hovel, amidst the filth and the hollow delusions of a fallen family, Tom had unearthed a singular piece that would be his reckoning: enchanted journals yet frantic writings of an individual named Ominis Gaunt.

His ancestor. His great uncle.

Through those pages, Tom had glimpsed a world of terrifying possibility. Soon, will be his own possibility. His great uncle had written with a mixture of reverence and absolute dread about a dear friend from the late nineteenth century—a singular individual who had casted powerful spells, but also moved through the wizarding world as a conduit for the primordial. Ancient Magic, that's what it was. Tom had wanted that power.

Ominis described his friend who had yielded a silver blue fire, an arcana that could mend the broken or incinerate the irredeemable with a mere thought. Documented the slow, jagged descent of said friend, noting how the weight of such a power eventually eroded the mind, leaving behind a brilliance that was as beautiful as it was lethal. The echoes of a man haunted by what he could not see, but could deeply feel.

But there's one thing worth noticing while reading these journals—your last name; your lineage at the center of this chaos; your ancestor.

And there was you.

Tom dismissed the insanity that supposedly plagued your bloodline; to him, madness was simply the price of a vessel too narrow for the sea it contained. Being tethered to you, was at most, his would be successful strategy if he played his cards right. He watched you for months. Tom had orchestrated the Aconite mission with perfection, Slughorn had always been too easy to manipulate; a suggestion here, a feigned concern for your isolation there, and he had begged Tom to mentor you.

The Professor had practically tripped over himself to hand you to him, Slughorn had confirmed the rumors with a shudder: There is a dormant fever in that girl's ancestry, Tom. Best to let it lie. A shame, really. I've seen it before… but oh! I shouldn't have told you that, have I? No less, that family... they don’t just fall into insanity, my boy, they come entirely undone. Truly a terrible balance for such a powerful thing.

Tom found a cruel sort of beauty in the symmetry of it all: a Gaunt had once stood by the side of a (Lastname), watching them wield the fire of the Ancient Magic. Now, many decades later, the last of the Gaunts would reclaim that position, though Tom wouldn't be a bystander like his great uncle did, he would be the one to help you, to have you on his side when all hell breaks loose.

You would be his, there was no other way. You can get human beings to do anything if you convince them it is moral. You can convince human beings anything is moral.

You felt neither a child nor an adult—botched, putrid, failed creature, combining the worst qualities of each. Your body outgrew you, and now you wield it clumsily, hitting others with your overgrown arms as you stumble over your own feet. All vicious hollow like insides of a young girl searching for any subsititue semblance to familial affection.

Perhaps, the reason why you have always felt everyone that surrounds you is out to get you.

The air outside at night was thin, tasted of wet earth and pine. You pulled your robes tighter, but it did little to ward off the chill that seemed to seep directly from the soil into your boots. Tom led the way, a simple Lumos to head through the darkness of this forsaken forest, and you followed a few paces behind, your wand gripped so tightly that the wood groaned against your palm, hurting only for a fraction—you couldn't be too careless around him.

"You seemed to be afraid around me," Tom said without looking back.

"Or maybe I just don't like being out here with someone who looks like they're enjoying the dark this much," your voice was small, but you forced it to stay steady.

Tom slowed his pace, allowing you to draw level with him. The trees here were massive, their gnarled roots twisting across the path like the limbs of sleeping giants.

"I simply find that the dark has a way of stripping away the pretenses people carry in the daylight. You, for instance, you looked like you're ready to strike me from behind."

"I'm not ready to strike, I'm just on edge. Why do you think that is?"

"A distinction without a difference," he murmured. Tom nudged a heavy, rotted branch out of the way with his shoe. "Why do you do it? The shrinking. The hiding."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Please, don't lie to me. I will know it. But I have seen your wand work in Charms. You don't lack talent, you seemed to lack permission."

"I don't need permission from anyone, Riddle."

"Then you're holding back for your own sake," he said, stopping by a trunk covered in silver lichen. He turned to you, his expression unreadable. "Slughorn thinks you're fragile. He speaks of your family as if you’re all made of thin glass, the inevitability of shattering when one makes a wrong move."

Ah, so Tom knows. You remained silent, but then he spoke again.

"It's very peculiar. The way he watches you in class, waiting for the first crack to show… I imagine it's exhausting, being handled like you're a very fragile thing yet they're afraid of you. Though you're not fragile, are you?"

You looked away, the damp cold of the forest pressing into your skin. "Slughorn's just being cautious. He knows the history, and I suppose, you do now as well."

"He knows a version of it," Tom corrected. His presence seemed to be looming over you now, and you could feel the thrumming of your own chest as he drew closer to your personal space. "Slughorn's sees a liability. Someone who might break the decorum of his little club. But I've spent my life watching people, and you don't look like someone who's about to break. But rather, someone who's being crushed under the weight of everyone else's expectations of your failure."

"It's not an expectation if it's a certainty, Riddle. It's happened to every single one of us. Generations before me, my grandmother, my uncle, and now—"

"And they all tried to hide it, didn't they?" He leaned down, his breath a faint mist in the freezing air. "They tried to pretend they were ordinary until the pressure turned them into ghosts. Slughorn thinks you're weak because you're quiet, he doesn't realize that the quietest things are usually the ones holding back the most force."

"It's not force, it's an erosion. A bloody flood, can't you see? And once the levee breaks, there's no me left. Just the water."

"Is that what scares you? That you'll disappear? Or that you'll actually enjoy what you become?"

"That's a cruel thing to say."

"It's an honest one." Tom reached out, his fingers tracing the rough, silver lichen on the tree bark just inches from your shoulder. He didn't tear his gaze away from you.

"You think you're any different?" you asked, looking up at him, your eyes searching his. "You're just as obsessed with control as I am with hiding. You're just doing it from the other side of the glass."

"Perhaps. But I am not the one lying to myself."

"I'm not lying," you whispered, though the way your heart was hammering against your ribs betrayed you.

You could see the sharpness of his features then, his pulchritude underneath moonlight; prominent and noticeable, it dawned to you how awfully good looking he was despite this conversation you're both having. Then, a ghost of a smile touched Tom's lips—sharp, fleeting, and entirely devoid of warmth.

"No? Then why is the air around us getting colder?" He gestured to the space between you.

Your breath was coming in thick, jagged plumes of mist now, and the frost on the leaves seemed to be creeping toward your boots, crystallization fueled by your own rising agitation.

"Stop it," you said, your hand hovering over your wand.

"I am not doing anything," Tom murmured, his gaze dropping to your hands. "That's you. That's the certainty you're so afraid of. It's beautiful, in a way. Like the calm before the storm."

"It's dangerous."

"Most things worth having are."

You swallowed hard, the damp chill of the air suddenly feeling like tight hands wrapped around your throat. "I want to be able to breathe without wondering if my next breath will be the one that burns the house down."

"Then you must let it burn," Tom whispered, his eyes dark and hypnotic. "It's just the dark and me, and I won't break if you let a little light out. I promise."

"Why are you doing this, Tom? Truly. It's not just for Slughorn, and it's not just because you're bored, and we're forced to collect Aconitum napellus like we're supposed to."

"Because I am the exception."

Tom looked at you then, his gaze darkening with a heavy obsessive focus that felt like a weight against your skin. You couldn't look away, the feeling of he was seeing right through you was tugging at the mere inches of your heart.

All consuming and all burning—that you are the one who mocks the sun, who will be the one to warm him, to hold on to this pulse against other rhythms, stripping you away the tones and textures of your skin, the sinews that bound you together, ancient magic dancing in the very marrow of your bones.

"I spent my life in an orphanage, (Name), surrounded by people who were terrified of the things I could do before I even had a wand to name them. They called it devilry. People call your magic instability. But they are all the same—frightened little men trying to put a leash on the sun because they're afraid of being burned."

"How dare you," the words trembling with a sudden, sharp anger. "How dare you speak like you know what this is. You haven't lived it, you haven't had to watch your own hands and wonder if they'll still be yours by morning. You haven't had to bury your family while they were still breathing because their minds left them first. You know none of it, Riddle."

Your gaze never left his face, your eyes wet with a frustration that felt like it could scald him. "You're just another man who wants to see a spectacle. You want to poke at the monster until it performs for you. You aren't an exception, Tom, you're just a different kind of cage."

But even as the words left your mouth, your heart failed you. The way he looked at you—without pity, without that sickening, polite distance everyone else kept, made a part of you want to scream for agony. You couldn't accept that he was the only person who hadn't looked at you like you were already a corpse.

Tom Riddle looked at you like you were a God in the making, and he was willing to worship at your feet. At what? At the expense of your so called curse of a power? You think not.

"I apologize for my lack of grace," He hadn't meant it, and you both know it. "I didn't mean to push you so far, (Name)."

You averted your gaze away from him, focusing instead at the way the frost had begun to climb the bark of the trees nearby; a manifestation of the temper you couldn't quite tether. The way he says your name felt too intimate, and you disdain the sound of your name falling on his tongue, as if it was familiar to him. It wasn't, you won't allow yourself little hope for anyone at all. Least of all, Tom Riddle.

"No matter. Let's just find this Aconite, and get it over with. We won't speak about this again."

"As you wish," Tom murmured. He stepped back, giving you the air you had been silently gasping for, but his eyes remained on you, dark and patient.

You turned on your heel before Tom could see the conflict still warring in your expression, your boots striking the frozen ground, you didn't wait for him to lead. You didn't want to see the way he was looking at you, so you never looked back.

You couldn't. You knew if you turned around, you would find him paces behind you, watching the way the shadows bent toward you, his silhouette meant a reminder that the conversation was far from over.

Few weeks passed by, and the conversation in that forest still hasn't left your mind. It's beautiful with the sunny weather, especially at the bridge, when no one's hanging around just yet. The sun dipping low over the mountains, caught the stray threads of Prudence's chestnut hair, turning them into a halo of spun glass, and up close, the warmth of the light softened the sharp line of her jaw, making her look ethereal.

"Everyone's talking about it, you know," she started, leaning her elbows against the stone railing of the bridge. "You and Riddle going out in the woods in the middle of the night. Very scandalous, (Name). Very Witch Weekly."

You groaned internally, staring down at the scenery of the Black Lake. "I would rather let a starving Hippogriff eat me alive than hear those gossips."

"Well, you can't blame them for talking. It's the biggest scandal the common room has seen since Tiberius Nott grew that third ear." Prudence muttered, rolling her eyes. "Merlin, Slughorn's such a suck up. And Riddle is even worse for leaning into it."

"I'm already dealing with the Ravenclaws staring at the back of my head in History of Magic. You know we were only out there because Slughorn is obsessed with his star pupil and thought I needed a chaperone."

"Because nothing says safety like being sent into the woods with a guy who looks like he could actually murder you."

"He's a bit much, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is. But seriously, did he say anything? He's usually reserved. I swear, trying to have a normal conversation with Tom Riddle is like trying to interview a marble bust."

"He... talked about Slughorn. And family history," you said, keeping your voice casual, though your heart did a nervous little skip. "Nothing interesting. Just academic stuff. He's as boring as you'd think."

"Oh, you're a terrible liar, (Name). Don't think I haven't been noticing that you're acting weird lately. Something happened out there, and you won't tell me what."

"Nothing happened, Prudence. We found the Aconite, we didn't get eaten by a troll, and we came back. End of story." You insisted with less intent that you usual would, because she would absolutely know if you've been lying, though Prudence know better than to pry when it comes to these things, so she simply nodded in agreement with a worried look on her expression.

"Just… be careful around him, okay? Abraxas has been boasting about a new world coming into our view, and we both know he was not just talking for the sake of it. They're all up to something, and with you involved with him… just… be safe, (Name)."

"I will be," your reply was almost as heavy as the words slipped out. "Besides, I think it will be the last time I'll ever have anything to do with Riddle."

"Riddle's collecting, and if he's trying to pull you into it, it's because he thinks you have something he can use." She reached out, squeezing your hand, her palm warm against your cold skin.

"Malfoy, Lestrange, Avery, Nott—they all follow him like he's some sort of messiah. And frankly, it's quite depressing. But you? You've always been your own person. Don't let him turn you into another one of his knights just because he's the first person who didn't flinch at your surname."

Before you could respond, the heavy doors at the end of the bridge creaked open. Tom stepped out into the dying light, his robes billowing slightly in the mountain breeze. He didn't look toward you immediately; he was tucked into a conversation with a pale sharp featured Abraxas Malfoy, but the moment his eyes drifted toward the bridge, his focus locked onto you with an unnerving, singular intent.

Prudence stiffened beside you. "Speak of the devil," she muttered under her breath. "Look at them. Like they own the castle."

Tom said something to Malfoy, a brief dismissal that sent the other boy scurrying toward the dungeons, and then he began to walk toward you. He wasn't rushing, although there was a hint of avaricious grace to his stride that made the bridge feel much smaller than it had seconds ago.

"I think that's my cue to leave," Prudence whispered, giving your arm a final, warning squeeze. "I'll see you at dinner. Don't let him talk you into any more midnight strolls."

Like his presence always wanting to be known, Tom stopped a few feet away, leaning his back against the railing and looking out at the mountains. For a moment, he didn't say a word but you felt a heavy gaze on the side of your face. Though, he simply breathed in the cold air, looking perfectly at home in the fading light.

"Your little friend," he said finally. "She doesn't like me very much, does she?" Tom didn't sound offended. If anything, you noticed, Tom sounded vaguely amused by the notion of it.

"Protective," you corrected him. "Most people are, when they see a serpent circling."

Tom tilted his head, a stray dark strand falling over his forehead. "A predator then. Is that what I am today? I thought we had moved past the name calling in the woods."

"We haven't moved past anything, Riddle. I told you, I'm not talking about that again."

"Don't pretend to be ordinary for my sake, (Name). It's insulting to both of us. Carrow thinks I'm trying to recruit you, doesn't she?"

You stiffened. "You were listening."

"I didn't have to. I know what people like her say. They see the world in terms of safety and danger, good families and bad ones. They think the goal of life is to reach the end without making a mess." Tom's arm reaches out, his hand resting on the stone just inches from yours. "But you and I know that the mess is where the power is."

"It's easy to admire the mess when you aren't the one who has to live in the ruins," you kept your voice low, and still stood on ground. "I'm not interested in achieving greatness like you do—whatever it is that you're planning. I am simply trying to keep the fire contained so it doesn't take the rest of the world down with it."

"A very polite way to destroy yourself," Tom's expression subtly softened but never with kindness lingering in it, he almost looked disappointed. "You're sacrificing your own life to comfort people who wouldn't do the same for you."

"It's better than the alternative."

"Which is what, wither away in silence?" Tom countered. "Your ancestors didn't fail because they were powerful. They failed because they were ashamed, and you have no reason to be now. They have spent so much time trying to suppressed it that they eventually maddened. Shame is a very restrictive cage."

"Are we going to simply argue every time you approach to talk? It's a bit exhausting now."

"You're right," Tom's tone losing the pressing weight of his earlier lecture. "It is exhausting. Perhaps we should change the subject to something a bit more traditional; the reason why I'm here after all."

You blinked, wary of the sudden shift. "Traditional?"

"The Yule Ball," the words sounding foreign and almost beneath him, yet he delivered them with that effortless and practiced grace. Tom turned his body fully toward you, leaning back against the stone with his arms crossed, watching the way the wind caught your robes. "Slughorn has been badgering me about it for a week. He seems quite concerned that his two favorite students aren't properly integrating with the social expectations of the season."

You let out a dry, incredulous breath. "Is that your way of telling me Slughorn is forcing you to find a date?"

"Slughorn cannot force me to do anything," Tom snapped. "But he is correct that appearances matter. And since you and I are already the subject of so much scandalous gossip as one would put it—it seems only logical to give them something actual to look at."

"You want me to go to the Yule Ball with you just to spite the gossips?"

"Go with me, (Lastname)."

The prospect of being tied to the Tom Riddle for an entire evening sat like lead in your stomach, leaving a bitter taste on your tongue, you don't know what he's playing at, but as you looked at him—the sharp orange light of the dying sun carved out the hollows of his face, and for a split second, the mask of the untouchable seemed to slipped.

There was a flicker in his eyes then, something hungry that you wouldn't know it was Tom in front of you. To finally meet him where he stood and give him a chance. For what, exactly? Even now, you couldn't quite explain.

"I want to walk into a room and not be bored," Tom replied. "I think you're the only person in this castle who doesn't make me feel like I'm wasting my breath. Spite is merely a pleasant side effect."

Tom stepped into your space, close enough that the mountain wind was cut off by the breadth of his shoulders, he was taller than you, and the air between you evoked with the same heaviness that had gathered in the forest.

"Think about it," he urged, his eyes tracking the hint of hesitation in yours. "An entire evening of watching them watch us. The whispers, wondering exactly what we're discussing while we dance. Don't tell me a part of you doesn't crave that. To finally be the one holding the power over their stares instead of being the victim of them."

"I don't dance, Tom."

"Neither do I," he admitted, a real sharp boyish smile touching his lips. He almost looked normal, and somehow, a tiny part of you liked seeing it. "But I am very good at pretending. And so are you."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I shall pry no further," he answered, respectful yet somehow sonorous velvet. "You can spend your Yule Ball exactly as you'd like."

"Okay."

Tom blinked. "Okay?"

"As in, yes, I will go with you, Tom."

"Oh," The syllable fell from his lips with an uncharacteristic lightness. Tom looked almost vivid; sunlight caught the gold in his dark hair and lent a flush of warmth to his usually pallid skin, somehow, more human than you have ever seen him, and the brief trace of genuine surprise smoothing back into his usual composed manner as he offered a smile. "I'll look forward to it."

"You said yes? Have you gone fucking mental?"

The girls dormitory smelled of dried lavender and outside the high narrowed windows; the winter had finally turned aggressive; thick, heavy flakes of snow swirled in the darkness, blurring the line between the sky and the water.

Prudence was standing over your trunk, a half folded silk stocking forgotten in her hand, her face, though, was pale, and jaw set in a line of pure, unadulterated disbelief. She didn't wait for an answer, dropping the silk and pacing the narrow gap between your four poster beds.

"I thought you were joking. I thought it was just one of those nasty rumors Avery spreads to see who's paying attention. But then I saw you—talking to Riddle in the Great Hall, actually acknowledge you in front of everyone."

"It's just a dance," You were sitting on the edge of your bed, picking at a loose thread on your duvet. "It doesn't mean anything."

"It means everything, (Name), and you know it. With Riddle, it isn't simply asking you to the dance. Three days—it took three days for the entire house to start looking at you differently." Prudence shakes her head, then opened her mouth again: "I saw Walburga Black staring at you in classrooms like she was trying to figure out if she should bow to you or perhaps poison your tea!"

"Let them stare, they've been doing that since first year anyway."

"Because now they're really afraid!" Prudence spun around, her voice hushed but laced with frustration. "You're standing next to the only person who would actually encourage you to do it. That's a target on your back, not a shield… (Name), we are months away from never having to see these people again. Why would you hand him your reputation now?"

"My reputation?" You stood up abruptly, the loose thread on your duvet snapping under your finger. "What reputation, Prudence? The one where people move to the other side of the corridor when they see me coming? Or the one where Professors handle me like I'm a live wire about to go off in their faces?"

"You know that it's for your own safety—"

"No, it's for theirs," you snapped. "It's so easy for you to stand there and lecture me. You're a Carrow, which meant you are safe. You get to walk into a room and people see a normal person, not a family tree of lunatics. You don't have to spend every waking second checking the volume of your own voice because you're afraid the rot will slip out if you give in to a single honest impulse."

Prudence flinched, her mouth hanging open slightly.

"You don't get scrutinized," you continued, your voice trembling with years of suppressed heat. "You don't get pity smiles from everyone. Tom knew who I was, what I am, and yet looked at me and saw... someone. Not a child born with tragedy already in her blood."

"Oh, please. Enough with your mother's senseless lines, (Name). You think he's being kind? You think he's the only one who sees you?" Prudence's finger jabbing at the air between you. "I've spent years being the one to pull you back from the ledge! I'm the one who sits up with you when you're shaking, and I am the one who lies to them when you can't control the itch in your skin. And now you're throwing that in my face because Riddle gave you a look and didn't blink?"

"I'm not throwing it in your face! I'm just tired of being a project!" you shouted back. "Every time you look at me, I know you're looking for symptoms. I could feel it. You don't think I don't notice that you have also been waiting for me to break, Prudence? It is terribly exhausting being loved like that."

"He doesn't want to fix you back together. Tom Riddle wants to see how much damage you can do before you shatter for good. You're being so incredibly selfish. You think you're the only one who's had to sacrifice? I've turned down invitations, I have stayed in this drafty dungeon on weekends just to make sure you aren't succumbing to insanity like—"

"I never asked you to!" you saw the way she recoiled, her eyes glistening with sudden, hurt tears. "I never asked you to be my friend. You did that to make yourself feel better, to feel like the good Carrow. 'Oh, poor Prudence, look at her, so patient, so kind... she has to deal with her.' You turned my life into your own personal charity case just so you could feel stable by comparison."

"Is that what you think?" Prudence whispered. "That I'm simply using you to feel good about myself?"

"No," your voice tainted with hurt, you couldn't look at her, gaze averted elsewhere. "But I'm tired. I have made this decision for myself. I want to see what happens if I stop trying to be safe and just be. Even if it's a mistake. Even if it's a performance. I need it to be my mistake."

"I will not watch you destroy yourself for a man like Riddle," her voice rising with a desperate, frantic heat. She stepped forward, reaching out to grab your arm; to pull you back, to do what she had always done. "You are not thinking straight, and this is his fault! It's the blood, (Name), it's the madness talking, it's—"

"Stop it!" you screamed.

You didn't reach for your wand, you didn't even move.

And then you feel it in a snap of a moment—what you had always felt; the silver blue rotten curse you had spent years repressing finally found a way to crack through your veins. It felt instinctual in a way. The atmosphere in the dormitory long gone. A concussive wave of ancient magic erupted from your chest, shimmering like distorted glass. It hit Prudence midstep.

There was no blood and glory. There was only ever a sickening, hollow thud as she was thrown backward. Her head hit the sharp carved corner of her bedpost—with a sound like a dry branch snapping, neck snapping. Prudence crumpled to the floor, her body folding unnaturally, the silk stocking she'd been holding fluttering down to land across her lifeless hand.

The silence that followed was absolute in its own terror. "Prudence?" your voice was a tiny, broken thing.

You scrambled off the bed, the rough floor scraping your knees, but you didn't feel it. You reached for her, your fingers ever so trembling violently they looked like they belonged to a stranger, a monster. The air around her body was still humming, thick with the static of the power that had just ripped out of you—a cold, metallic smell.

You had wanted to be seen. You had wanted to stop being a victim. And in one moment, you had become exactly what everyone was afraid of.

Revoltingly red, nauseatingly alive; a child in a graveyard with death on her hands.

"Prudence… please… This isn't... please."

Your hands managed to grab hers, it was still warm, and that was the worst part—the lingering, deceptive warmth of a body that hadn't yet realized it was empty. Her fingers were curled loosely around that silk stocking, the delicate fabric was a contrast to the way her neck was bent against the oak. You stared into her eyes; they were wide, fixed on the ceiling, still holding that final flash of love she'd felt for you right before you broke her. There was no judgment in them, simply an infinite, echoing nothingness.

"I didn't mean it," you whispered, the words catching in a throat that felt like it was full of shattered glass, clawing out. You pulled her into your lap, her head lolling back with a sickening weight.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything I said. I'm sorry, please. Come back. Just—just come back. Please, just take one breath. I'll be good, I'll be good again."

You pressed your forehead against hers, closing your eyes so you wouldn't have to see the way the light had left your closest friend. You waited for the lecture, you waited for her to flick your forehead and tell you how mental you were being, you waited for the heartbeat that usually thrummed against your own when you were shaking.

But there was only the sound of the snow, and you, you were just utterly, irrevocably alone in it.

Perhaps calling for Tom hadn't been the greatest idea, but what else can you do? He was the only person that appeared first in your mind, hands trembling as Prudence Carrow's body laid bare beneath the floorboard of your dormitory. You feel your heart shaken, gaze filled with emptiness that nothing could ever bring it back.

Time drags on, your waiting felt like an eternity before such coldness caressed against your warm skin. You looked up, only then to see a pair of onyx eyes lingering upon your grievous expression. Tom, you whispered in your mind.

"Close your eyes, (Name)."

With your eyes squeezed shut, the world became a landscape of sound and sensation, numbing your entire body. You heard the rustle of Tom's robes as he knelt, the soft clink of his wand tip meeting something hard, and then a low, rhythmic chanting in a language that tastes acrid on the tongue—then came the sound that would haunt your dreams since then; the dry, crystalline sputter of shrinking. It sounded like ice forming over a lake in a single second, or the folding of heavy parchment, a frantic urge to scream, to reach out and stop him, but your limbs were leaden, steadied by the weight of what you had done.

There was it, you had felt it.

Silence eases back into the room, heavier than before, feeling the bed shifted as Tom stood up, with his presence moving closer, until you could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing. How pitiful it was, to appear so pitiful under the gaze that would marvel on your own misery, it made you shudder for a brief moment.

Tom's fingers were startlingly cold when they brushed against the collar of your dress—you flinched, a sob catching in your throat, but his other hand came up to steady your shoulder, grip firm and uncompromising.

He was meticulous and that was the only reason you felt adjacent to tranquility, his movements slow and deliberate as he worked the pin through the thick fabric over your heart.

"There," he said gently, his breath ghosting over your cheek. "Open them."

Your eyelids felt heavy, glued shut by dried tears and terror, and when you finally opened them, the room looked different—sharper, number. The floorboards where Prudence had collapsed were bare; the silk stocking was gone; the bloodless, folded shadow of your best friend evanesced.

You looked down at your chest.

Pinned to your night dress was a brooch. It was a masterpiece of beauty; a delicate, silver lark, its wings arched as if caught in a permanent soundless scream. A pearlescent sheen that looked suspiciously like the glow of the frost that had covered the windows that seemed to pull at your very soul.

"Don't look so frightened," Tom said, stepping back to admire his handiwork. He looked at the brooch with a satisfaction. "I've taken care of everything. I told you I saw you, didn't I?"

Your hands reached lifted upwards, your trembling fingers hovering just a millimeter away from the cold metal, and could almost feel a faint vibration beneath the silver; it didn't feel like a heartbeat, it felt like the echoing hum of the magic that had bound her.

"She's… she's here," your voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well; uncertain.

"She is exactly where she belongs," Tom said, his eyes burning with a horrifying light. "It looks beautiful on you. Like you are your own person."

Tom's masterpiece. His masterpiece.

"Beautiful?" you dare to ask. "I killed her—I killed her… and you made Prudence into a piece of accessory."

"You called for me, didn't you?" his expression was eerily calm, like he had done this before. "And I came. I did what any other wouldn't do; I preserved the most useful part of your burden. Now, you'll feel her within you, not entirely gone, is it?"

Guilt lodges inside your throat. When you were a child, you had imagined a lot of things—that you would be someone good. You'd dwell bareheaded on a summit turning a wheel that would turn the earth undetected, amongst the clouds, you would have some influence; be of some avail.

It was a trivial longing, you supposed, far distant in the memories of your mind, because then—you could feel your skill almost splitting like a cleaved fruit, flies flying around contrition of your doing.

"Your guilt will only be your undoing, don't mourn for what you have chosen to do, (Name)," Then, a caress of the hand on your cheek, thumb tracing the softness of your skin.

"You didn't call for Headmaster Dippet, nor called for the Aurors. You called the one person you knew wouldn't ask you to repent. You wanted a secret, and I have given you a beautiful one."

You are so beautifully broken, Tom supposed through the chatter of tongues, he never had intended for things to turn out the way it used to, but he reveled in it. He had far greater methods for his to work successfully and cave you in, he didn't have to do anything at all, it was you, as unexpected as it can be. Nevertheless, he got what he wanted in the end anyway.

You.

Most boys his age dreamt of soft hands and shy glances, but Tom found himself intoxicated by the scent of your ruin; what you had done to your poor friend—it was the most honest thing he had ever seen you do, had seen anyone ever do. It was a baptism in the void, a shedding of the mundane morality that had made you so painfully dull to everyone else, yet so tantalizing to him.

Tom, then, painfully realizes, the moment he stared at his reflection; yours was looking right back at him; disgust and contempt; but there was devotion there. The hues of your eyes is a reducing chamber, and if he look into it long enough, he will became the serpent consuming its own tail, trapped in the infinite, circular agony of wanting to own the very thing that will destroy him.

He shall keep you in one of his osier cages and mock you for your own loss of liberty. Then you will open all the cages and let the birds free; they will change back into pieces of your soul, every one, each with the crimson imprint of his love bite on its throats.

"Don't look away, (Name)," he whispered against your ear, steering you through the waltz with everyone's eyes to witness, and his voice felt like sliver of glass. He reached out, his thumb dragging across your lower lip, forcing you to taste the salt of your own grief.

"You see it now, don't you? There is no you and I anymore. There is only the circle. I gave you the silence of the grave, and you gave me the reflection I have been searching for in every hollowness of this world. A divine rot. I have never felt more complete."

[saintnoxia]

thank you so much for the hundred notes! :) sorry for being busy, but i have been writing on my drafts. can't wait.

[snake-queen7]

man in black 💀

simple outfit for LV

[saintnoxia]

I feel like you’re the only person who could provide a psychoanalysis of Tom that comes closest to who he really is?

i've spent a lot of time deconstructing his character ever since i learned about him & i feel that this is such a high compliment, at least for me. even though i tend to stay within the canon version of him; but honestly... fuck jkr lmao. and make some of my own. but thank you :) i try to write him in a way i think best suits his introspection! tom's mind is the loneliest place to be.