Summary: Lewis makes you nervous. Yes you’ve been married to him for months now, but still. And no matter how much you crave him, you can’t seem to muster up the courage to openly ask for what you want. So you keep dropping little hints, you keep playing this little game. Hoping that he would catch a hint one of these days… and he does.
Themes: age gap, arranged marriage, smut, fluff, explicit language
“Can you please help?”
Lewis looked up from the papers scattered all over his desk, and saw you standing at the doorway of his home office, looking at him with those mischievous eyes. “Sure, what do you need, wife?” He asked, smiling.
Gods. He looked divine sat there behind his desk in his suit. The two of you had just gotten back from another fancy dinner party, and once home, he was already working again. Always busy working. You sighed dramatically and said, “The zip at the back of my dress is stuck.” You walked into his office and leaned against the side of his large, ancient looking desk, “Can you help me take the dress off?”
Nice choice of words. He thought. “Anything for you, darling.”
Lewis got up and reached you in less than a second. You turned around and gave him your back, with the zip halfway down. You caught the way his fingers ghosted over your skin before he grabbed the zip to lower it down. Which he did agonisingly slowly. And it had you shivering in no time.
You’d been married for months now. It was an arranged marriage so Lewis was basically a stranger. And you’d heard of him before getting married and he made you nervous ever since. He was older, dangerous, and he was quite famous with the ladies…
Getting married was the easy part. But living with him? Living with a drop dead gorgeous older man was… tricky. Especially when he was so sweet, attentive, and kind to you. You soon found yourself thirsting after your own husband. But you were too nervous to initiate anything. You never sought him out for sex. Ever. After all, given his age and the rumours, he was much more experienced than you were. Plus, he was intimidating as it is. And to imagine all that power unleashed upon you…
“You know,” He began, breaking you out of your reverie, while tugging on the zip that was actually stuck, “I hope you know you’re not being as subtle as you think you are.”
You turned your face to the side and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Oh really? We’re back to playing this game then.” Lewis chuckled, his fingers still brushing against your exposed back, his cold rings tracing down along your spine. “You think I haven’t noticed you’ve been making eyes at me all night? You think I don’t know what you’re doing? What you’ve been doing for weeks now?”
You held back a smirk. Not that he would’ve seen it anyway. “I still don’t know what you mean.”
Zip undone, but he didn’t let you go just yet. You watched as one of his large, tattooed hands reached around your waist to pull you back into him. Your exposed back pressing against the cool, expensive fabric of his suit.
“Don’t act so innocent, wife.” He said, nuzzling your neck and letting his lips brush against your skin. “You think I don't see right through you? Your little antics, huh?” He kissed up your neck till his mouth reached your ear where he whispered, making you shiver, “Accidentally pressing against me at night? Always wearing those little things to bed that barely hide anything? Walking around in those tight leggings? Wearing your little running shorts in the morning?” He chuckled into your ear, the sound making you almost moan.
His hand drifted downward, getting dangerously close to where you needed him the most. That damp spot in between your legs getting wetter, pulsing for him.
“You’re my wife.” He reminded you. “You don’t even have to seduce me. You just have to ask for it.” He reasoned. “Just ask for it, whatever you want. I’ll give it to you.” You heard the smirk in his voice. “I’ll give it to you good and you know that.”
“I… I–”
He turned you around so you faced him.
And that didn’t help at all. Lewis’ beauty was lethal. His pretty brown eyes, his smooth skin, the tattoos all over his neck… he looked like a god.
“Say it, wife. Tell me what you want.” He leaned in, brushing his lips against the corner of your lips. “Ask me to fuck you. Ask nicely.”
Shit.
“Please Lew… please…,” You couldn’t even beg properly. Your mind was melting already, he was too close, his scent, the look in his eyes, it was too much.
“Oh baby…” He leaned in closer, rubbing this thumb over your chin gently, “Can’t even ask for it, huh?” He chuckled, “It’s okay. I’ve got you now. I’m gonna take care of you.” He whispered, before he pressed his mouth to yours.
You melted immediately. Sliding your hands up his chest as you kissed him back with just as much passion as he kissed you. You were starving for him, for this. You had been for way too long now. His mouth moved against yours perfectly, his facial hair felt rough against your skin but you welcomed it.
As he pushed you onto his desk, making you sit on the edge, you mumbled against his lips, “I want you so badly.”
“Yeah?” Lewis smirked into the kiss, “How long have you been dreaming of this, huh? Of me touching you? Of me fucking you?”
He pushed you onto the table, stepping in between your legs already. You spread your thighs, “Too long.” You answered, your dress falling off your shoulders to bunch around your waist. “Way too long.”
He gave you another smug chuckle. Then he got impatient so your underwear came off of you immediately, and in pieces because he ripped it off before he leaned in to kiss you again, as his hand reached in between your legs to play with your wet folds.
He smiled into the kiss upon finding you already wet for him. “All that for me?” He teased, sliding a finger, then another inside of you, Lewis stroked your walls gently, preparing you for more.
You clenched around his fingers, moaning into the kiss as he finger-fucked you relentlessly, his rings cold against your warm skin, making you whine in need and desperation.
You held onto his broad shoulders and kissed him deeper as he made you come all over his fingers in no time. He smirked, looking down at you, given how quickly you came. “You couldn’t hold back, huh? Do my fingers feel good inside you, wife?”
“Yes…”
“I know it does, baby. Look how quickly you came all over my fingers.” He whispered, removing his fingers and shoving them into your mouth without another thought. “Now clean them.” He said, watching intently how you sucked on his drenched fingers.
He couldn’t wait anymore.
He unzipped his pants and took his cock out, looking deep into your eyes as he did. He watched how the sound of his zip made you shiver with lust and desire. He smirked, watching you as you looked down to where he lazily stroked himself. That tattooed hand moving lazily up and down his cock…
Lips parted, heart pounding, you watched him play with himself like you were starving for it. Which you were.
“You want it?” He asked, teasing you with an even slower stroke.
You whined at the way his big hand moved up and down his erected cock. You squirmed, trying to scoot closer to him, “Please…”
“Ask nicely,” He demanded.
You would give him whatever he wanted in that moment, so you fisted the fabric of his shirt and looked up at him, pleading, “Please, Lewis. I want you so much it hurts.” You begged. “I want it, please. Please, can I have it? Can I have your cock?”
He just smirked in triumph, “Of course you can, baby. It’s all yours.” He said, spreading your legs and sliding his cock into you finally. You wrapped your legs around him and welcomed him inside you.
And fuck, he felt good.
You were a moaning and whimpering mess as he began moving in and out of you so perfectly that it felt like you were losing your mind.
“I’ll fuck you whenever I want now,” He whispered, staring into your eyes while he pounded into you relentlessly. His possessive tone only lit your body on fire even more. “You made me wait long enough, baby. No more waiting. I’ll fuck this tight pussy all the time because it’s all mine, isn’t it?”
You nodded, unable to utter another word.
“Yeah it is. I’m your man, and you’re my wife and I’ll fuck you whenever you want me to, you hear me? You’re all mine.” He said, fucking deeper into you like he did own you. He bent down to kiss your open mouth, swallowing all your moans and whines in the process. “All fucking mine.”
His mouth, his taste, his scent. The way his strong body moved to bring you pleasure like only he could. It was all that existed in that moment. The rest of the world was not here. Just him. All of him.
You could only gasp and moan, unable to form coherent sentences while he pounded into you like he owned you. Your entire body tingled. “Lewis…” The pressure between your legs was getting hotter, tighter, and it would snap at any moment now.
Then he pulled away just a little, looking down to where your body swallowed his cock each time he thrust in and pulled out. “Look,” he said and you followed his eyes, letting out an even louder moan when you saw what he was looking at. “I’m fucking my wife, do you see it?” He purposely slowed down his thrust just so you could see.
You nodded.
“You’re mine, then why did you wait this long, huh?” He asked, leaning in to kiss you. A messy, desperate kiss. One that demanded answers. “Why did you keep yourself from me? Why torture me all this time?”
Fuck. Why now?
“I don’t know…” You gasped. “I was too nervous.” You mumbled, looking into his deep, brown eyes.
“Babygirl,” He chuckled, “I’m all yours. There’s nothing to be nervous about. Do you know how hard it was to hold back from touching you?”
You whined, regretting all the time you wasted, and pressing your face into the crook of his neck. You kissed his skin as best you could while moaning and whimpering, “Please,” You begged, “Please, can I come?”
He smirked and sped up into you again, “Wait for me, baby. Just a little more,” He sounded all growly and it only made you clench around him even tighter.
Hearing you moan and squirm under him only encouraged him to thrust deeper and faster into you. He was relentless as his body moved perfectly against yours.
A tear fell from your eye, out of pleasure. He was quick to wipe it away as he bent down and kissed your lips again, pounding into you rapidly. “Come for me,” he whispered against your mouth, his voice strained and raspy. “Come all over your man, baby…”
And that was all you needed. You cried out as you came around him, the pressure finally exploding and a familiar warmth washed over you.
“There we go, baby. That’s it… milk that cock, it’s all yours.” He murmured, his voice like a distant memory given how loud your heartbeats echoed in your ears.
You felt Lewis come as well, his cock throbbing against your walls as he came with a grunt, gripping your hips hard enough to bruise your skin surely as he filled you up nicely. His cum leaking out of you already, even though he was snug, deep inside you still.
𝟎𝟎𝟐: 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓 . . . a long, unfortunate while.
summary: there is no victory in war and the only way out is through. you are the only person who will ever remember that the monster once had a heart, and it all began in a farmhouse somewhere; nowhere in time.
pairings: tom riddle x fem!reader.
words: 14.1k
warnings: time travel gone wrong. age gap(?) since technically it's voldemort in tom's body. alternative universe. golden trio era & everyone's dead. it's just vibes, and lots of timeskips because hell yeah. slightly ooc tom riddle. domestic fluff if you squint hard enough. angst, angst, angst & little comfort.
author notes: this has been sitting in my drafts for a long time, unfinished. i listened to ethel cain unreleased songs, and inspiration came back, so now i'm sharing it to you. ignore the logicalities of this oneshot as it is irrelevant, but feel the pair's emotions & flaws through the shit writing. any errors & typos, send them out to me! enjoy reading :)
What would you have done then—if not for the importance of what little dignity has left mustered up inside your own bleeding heart? Would you be able to admit to yourself, let alone, slip the words past your lips; the confession that you, despite the sufferance, had longed for him? What kind of person are you—if you were enamoured by the likes of Tom Riddle? Perhaps, a slaughterhouse then.
To the extent that you cannot stand the separation; a sentimental thing that twists into a set of teeth; the tragic romantic. Tell him you don't know of this ache, tell him you might have never really knew him at all. But it would have meant that you were lying to yourself; not for Tom.
Time is a tricky little thing that bottles up inside the box of anomalies, and you were at the center of it.
Theodore Nott clings to the idea that your hardships born from the war would come fruitful; that eventually, you'll come back; alive and successful, and when you do—it will be long over. A war has been prevented, clean off the slate. Theodore clings to the idea that you would come back home; return to them, and there would be no stinking room of torment and old blood stained fingers.
How wrong you all were.
You dreamt of wanting open plains and scattered trees, you wanted flower fields and salty seas; soft and steady breeze, flatlands. You dreamt that you would have stopped clawing at your own throat like an animal at the stench of good love—that it is there in your heart but your mind is still afraid. A monster in a shape of a girl.
The Time Turner settled in the warmth of your palm, they were heavy in a way it felt untethered to everything you've recognized. Theodore glances a concerned expression on your direction, but you kept your tongue, and lowered your gaze; averted from him. You knew what you needed to do; choose what you think you need, because if you don't know now, you wondered—will your instinct be good?
"We have done everything we can to ensure your safety, you know the rules of time, (Name)," Theo whispered, his voice cracking. "1944. Slughorn's office. You kill Voldemort before he learns about the Horcruxes. You have to end it before it begins."
"If you don't do this, (Name)," Hermione rasped, "there is no after for any of us."
"I know," you said, the lie tasting like maggots sucking through cement.
Theo's hand brushed your sleeve, a ghost of a touch. "Don't look back. Just... go. We don't have time."
The cellar door groaned, enchantments snapping like brittle glass, the air suddenly felt suffocating; a sign of someone's arrival—the cold and pervasive presence that had turned your world into a graveyard, the war that you have been fighting against long before you could achieve the dreams you had in your sleep. Though this time, unafraid; you didn't wait for the door to burst, nor you have waited for the flash of green light to waver you.
You looked back at the two of them; knowing their inevitable fate, but it would have meant that their sacrificed lives will mean something. To you. To anyone. To the wizarding world. With that in mind, you looped the chain around your neck quickly, the metal searing your skin as if it knew it was about to be violated, then, gripped the dial.
One turn for the lives lost. Two for the blood spilled. Three for the girl I used to be.
As you spun it, the world began to fracture, though it didn't blur into the familiar rush of days and nights. Instead, the cellar walls bled into gray static, the screams of your friends were cut short by the erasure of the air that carried their voices. Then, a hand; long, bone white, and terrifyingly strong reached through the veil of shifting time.
Voldemort.
He had caught you. Voldemort's fingers clamped around your wrist, his magic lashing out to seize the device, to claim time as he had claimed everything else in your short lives. But the Time Turner was never meant to hold two opposing forces of such magnitude, you waited for the tick to do its own bidding, and instead met with a scream. The glass casing shattered, and the sand didn't fall, but rather exploded upward, needle sharp grains piercing through the fabric of your reality.
You felt the terrifying sensation of being unmade; your history, your magic, your very name were being stripped away, peeled back like layers of dead skin, you realized then, you weren't traveling through time; you were falling through the cracks of it.
There's still something there, between the wires that you're scared of and all the things that you know so well, and the silence—the silence was the first sensation that ached in your soul. Then, you felt your body hit the ground with the impact that didn't spark with protective charms or cushioning breaths; it simply bruised. You tasted grit and iron. Your fingers clawed at the earth, searching for the familiar warmth of your wand, but your pockets were empty.
A few yards away, the silence was broken by a gravelly human sound. A gasp.
Forcing your head up, your vision swimming through a haze of gray filth. The world here had felt singularity—a pocket of stagnant existence where the sky was the color of a bruised lung and the air was thick with the scent of wool and decay.
He was there.
Voldemort was crumpled in the dirt, his limbs tangled in the tattered remains of black silk robes too huge to fit his entire body now. He was heaving, his shoulders sharp and bony beneath his shirt, and as he pushed himself up, your whole body went rigid—the serpentine slits of his nose had filled out into a sharp, aristocratic bridge; the waxy, translucent skin had flushed with a sickly, mortal heat.
Tom Marvolo Riddle, in his flesh and bones—no glory, no power.
His gaze lowered at his hands; they were shaking. He turned them over; staring at the knuckles, the veins, the dirt under his fingernails; the mundane evidence of a body that could bleed. For a monstrous creature of what he had become, he been reduced to this—once human, human again.
"My magic," he rasped, stripped of its gold and its terror. He reached into the air, his fingers twitching as if trying to pluck a thread that was no longer there. "Where is it? Where is it?"
He looked at you then.
The dark bottomless pits of his eyes were wide with a ravening panic; he tried to lunge, to wrap his hands around your throat, but he stumbled, his muscles uncoordinated and weak without the grace of sorcery. He fell to his knees halfway between you; panting like a wounded dog.
"What have you done, you wretched girl?" Tom hissed, though his tone felt like an edge of a man who died several times then resurrected, outrunning mortality, and seemed to be facing it once again.
You didn't answer, you couldn't. You thought of Theo. You thought of his hope—that clean slate, and then you thought of Hermione, the war prevented. But as you looked at the dirt on your hands and the man shivering in the gray light, you realized the truth—that you hadn't saved the world; you had simply dragged the devil into the dark with you.
You laid there for a long time, the smell of damp earth filling your lungs. For a moment, you thought of the open plains you had craved, the salty seas and the soft breezes. But this air was stagnant, felt like a trap.
And Voldemort had looked human. Dangerously, hauntingly human.
"Answer me," he snarled. He looked at you, his face pale and sharp enough to cut the air. "The Time Turner. The sand. Where you did get us into with your failure of a plan?"
"I don't know!" you answered, your voice sounding foreign to your own ears—thin, brittle, and terrifyingly small. "We're in the gaps, we're in the nothing. This isn't… this isn't where I supposed to be."
Tom flinched, his dark eyes flashing with a spark of the old, murderous fire, though without green flashes of the Killing Curse to back it up; now, he had simply looked like a drowning man grasping at shadows. He tried to stand again, his legs trembling with a weakness that made him look eerily fragile.
It was a lie, you knew. Even without magic, Tom Riddle was the most wretched man humanity has ever seen, though here, in the shadow of the trees, he was a predator in an unknown prison. Still, the presence of him instilled a certain kind of fear that has never left in the back of your mind.
In a moment of perseverance, you had forced yourself to stand as your knees buckled once before finding a precarious sort of balance. Muscles screamed; a dull ache that felt heavy and permanent, you turned away from him and scanned the horizon of this unfamiliar forest you ended up with. Through the skeletal reach of the trees, a flickering amber light bled through the fog—a farmhouse; solitary and defiant; its smoke curling into the air like a beckoning finger.
"There's a house," you rasped, pointing toward the glow.
"A house?" Tom turned to look at the distance. "You think we are going to play house with some peasants while my command burns in another time? Retrieve the turner, child. Return us both or I shall kill you."
"The turner is gone, Voldemort!" You snapped on him, the fear in your chest sharpening into a desperate anger. "It shattered in your hand. Look at your fingers—you're bleeding! There is no time. There is no more of your Death Eaters. There is only us and that bloody house."
Tom surged upward, his height looming over you even as he swayed, grabbing the front of your coat, his knuckles white, his breath smelling of copper and cold air.
"I do not bleed," he hissed, denial frantic in his eyes. "I am beyond this. I am—"
"You are shivering," your voice trembled but remained firm. You reached out and shoved his chest; the raw, clumsy force of a hand. "And we're both without magic whether you like it or not… Now, either you walk to that light with me, or you stay here and let the frost take you."
Tom's expression shifted, a flicker of genuine shock crossing his features as he realized he couldn't simply silence you with a flick of his wrist. Or worse, actually kill you.
"I will not forget this insolence," he murmured; silky low that sent a shiver down your spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"You'll have plenty of time to remember it," you snapped.
Ignoring Tom's snarl, you turned and began to stumble toward the clearing, and every step was a battle against the thick, cloying mud. As the house grew closer, the scent of wood became more distinct; a promise of warmth that made your eyes sting. You missed home. You had missed everyone you had ever lost, but now is not the moment to dwell on these sentimental things.
"Hello?" you called out. "Help! Is anyone there?"
You didn't wait for Tom, and instead stumbled into the amber circle of light cast by the porch lamp, you could feel your lungs burning. "Please! We've been... we've had an accident! Help us!"
The heaviness of the door from the farmhouse had creaked open, an elderly man stepped out; a lantern held high. His eyes were milky but sharp, and he looked at you with a weary kind of recognition. Tom stepped into the light behind you, his face smoothing into a facade of chilling yet beautiful exhaustion, reaching out and caught your shoulder, his grip tight; thumb pressing into your skin with a warning pressure.
"My wife," he said to the man along with your name, the lie sliding off his tongue; honeyed ease. "And my name is Tom, our carriage... it overturned in the ravine. She's had a terrible shock, we have nothing left."
The word wife hung in the coldness of the breeze, heavier than the fog; you stood frozen. Perhaps it was a tether, or another form of prisonment to ensure that wherever they put him, they would put you, too. In this godless place, Tom would never allow himself to let the only link to their reality out of his sight. You knew then, through myriads of thoughts swirling inside his head—what the implication meant; it made your skin crawl.
The old man lowered his lantern slightly, his eyes traveling from Tom's desperate beauty to the way your hands were shaking against your sides.
"Wife, is she?" The old man murmured, his voice like dry leaves. "You both look like you've been through. Come in. The hearth doesn't care for titles or tales, only for those who are cold."
As the door clicked shut, the warmth of the fireplace felt like an embrace, you were safe from the frost, though you knew this was far from over—everything was suspicious when you're with the dark lord himself; it felt surreal in a way you know it would haunt your dreams when you come back from all this.
If you come back, that is. Because now, there is nothing more than being hopeful that you'd wake up any moment now, and the first faces you would have seen were from loved ones; telling you; you're all right, that nothing bad happened to you, this isn't real, you aren't stuck with him. And you, you are made of dreams; and this world is not for you.
An elderly woman was standing by a heavy iron pot, her gaze nothing of mistrust, she turned her head toward you both. "Oh, dear. Two of them, Arthur? So young to be so broken."
"They've had an accident, Evelyn," Arthur said, ushering you toward the wooden table. "The boy says they're wed."
"Sit, sit," Evelyn urged, a soft lullaby. "The stew is warm. It's root and broth—not much for a lord and his lady, I suppose, but it stays the hunger."
Your gaze lowered down at the table; at the scarred grain of the wood; trying to reconcile the image of the vile man who had murdered thousands with the young man now sitting next to you, his shoulder pressed against yours, appearing for all the world like a weary, devoted husband.
"Thank you," Tom said. His voice was perfectly pitched—low, grateful, and laced with just enough exhaustion to be convincing. He took the bowl Evelyn offered, his fingers brushing hers. "You are too kind to strangers."
"No one is a stranger to the cold," she replied, her gaze turned toward the space just above Tom's head. She paused, her head tilting slightly. "The storm outside... it's got a foul temper tonight, the kind of wind that strips the skin off anything left out too long."
She paused, her sightless eyes wandering toward the space between the two of you. "You both smell of it, the air right before a lightning strike hits a graveyard."
"It was a long walk from the ravine," you finally said. "The air is... different here. Heavier."
"It's the muck," Arthur grunted, leaning over to stir the fire. The embers popped, throwing light across Tom's sharp, pale features. "Everything in these woods is half drowned and twice as bitter. You're lucky you found the fence line. Most folks just wander in circles until their heart gives out from the damp."
"My husband's quite right, dear. I'm glad you found us when you did."
The stew was thick, tasting mostly of salt and earth, but the heat of it was a shock to your system. You realized with a jolt of genuine fear that you were hungry—a gnawing, hollow ache in your stomach that magic had always held at bay. Your body was starting to demand things: fuel, rest, warmth, it was becoming a cage of necessities.
"Do you know anything about the forest?" you asked, gaze held.
"The forest isn't natural," a moment of silence before adding quietly. "People go missing near its edges sometimes... hunters mostly."
A beat.
Arthur's eyes flicker toward Tom briefly before continuing with quiet certainty; "… But no one ever comes out once they've gone deep enough to see those trees up close."
"What do you think waits inside it?"
"Nothing good, child."
"The attic's drafty, but the roof don't leak," Evelyn steered the conversation, her hand reaching out to touch the scarred wood of the table. "You'll want to stay close. The chill comes up through the floorboards once the fire dies down, it's a night for huddling, I expect."
The sudden transition from the freezing mud to the sweltering heat of the fire had thinned your blood; there was a strange throbbing ache in your shoulder—a deep, wet heat you had ignored in the adrenaline of the forest. As you pushed away from the table, your vision fractured into a thousand shards of amber light.
"I—" you started, but your voice caught.
Evelyn gasped when she sees you fully, then she reaches out, her fingers brushing against your arm, but as she moved, her hand knocked into a ceramic pitcher on the table. It shattered against the floorboards with a violent crack, water spraying across Tom's boots.
"You're hurt," Evelyn said, in a hurried urgent tone. "Look at your side, that isn't mud—Arthur!"
You looked down then. The tattered fabric of your shirt was no longer muddied; a blooming crimson was spreading from your ribs; heavy and hot. The shattered turner hadn't just cut Tom's hands; shards of the silver casing must have buried itself in you during the fall, and the warmth of the house was finally coaxing the blood to flow.
The room began to spin. "I... I didn't feel..."
Tom's hand quickly clamped onto your rib, his grip so tight it bruised, you gasped in pain, you gaze averted towards him, and for a split second, the mask had shattered; his face was pale, dark eyes wide with raw panic laced through. And you, terrified of the pain surging through your body.
If you died, he was alone. If you died, his last tether to his world was gone.
The floor rose up to meet you—and the last thing you saw was Evelyn's cerulean eyes and Tom's terrified yet beautifully haunted face as he reached out to catch you, the forest finally claiming your senses.
You saw Harry first.
He looked like a boy who had run out of time. Your clammy hands tried to reached for him, your fingers clawing through the smoke, shouting a name that was lost to the roar of the collapse. You remembered the way his glasses were cracked, reflecting the sickly emerald light that had finally caught him, your mind remembered the silence that followed—a silence more terrifying than the screaming. The Chosen One was a heap of robes and broken hope on the cold floor, and with him, the world had simply stopped breathing.
Then came the others.
Hermione Granger, her face smudged with soot, her brilliant mind irate as she tried to calculate a survival that no longer existed. Theodore Nott, standing in the ruins of their legacies, looking at you with that same haunting expectation: Fix it. Go back. Save us.
You were the one who carried the gold; the one who was supposed to be the knife that gutted apart the cancer out of the past, though as you looked down at your hands, they weren't holding the Time Turner, instead, they were covered in the same blood that was now soaking into the farmhouse floor.
"You failed them," a voice hissed inside your head—not Voldemort's high venomous rasp, but a voice that sounded suspiciously like your own. "You didn’t save anyone, you simply brought the plague with you."
You were standing in a salt stained field, the open plains you had craved, but the grass was sharp as glass and the sea was made of ink. Harry was there again; eyes hollow, pointing toward the horizon where a dark shape loomed.
"He's coming," Harry whispered. "He's always coming for you, (Name)."
Mouth opened; you tried to scream, to tell him you were sorry, to tell him that you had tried to kill the man who did this, but your throat was filled with the sand of a shattered hourglass—choking on time itself. The pain in your ribs flared, a white hot spike that dragged you upward, out of the graveyard of your memories and back into the stifling heat of the attic.
Your eyes snapped open.
The ceiling was low and slanted, the wood grain twisting like tortured faces in the candlelight. You tried to gasp, but your lungs hit a wall of bandages and agony, a heavy weight sat on the edge of the bed, and for a terrifying second, you thought you weren't real.
"Be still," a voice commanded.
It wasn't Harry. It wasn't Theo.
Tom was leaning over you, his face partially swallowed by shadow. He had changed, you noticed; his ruinous robes were gone, replaced by a simple, coarse linen shirt that looked jarringly domestic on him. His hair was damp, sticking to his forehead, and his eyes were fixed on yours with a ferocity that made your heart hammer against your wounded ribs.
"You were screaming," he said. "Spoke of names—Nott, Granger. Then, Potter."
You were still here, it sinks in you, and it was no dream, but a nightmare, you supposed. It made your eyes sting, clenched teeth upon the helplessness you felt lodging inside your throat; ashamed that the dark lord's gaze felt suffocating now that he was looking at you, and you, broken.
"There is no Harry Potter here to save you; there is only the fever, the woods, and the mere fact that I had to watch a peasant woman sew your flesh back together, because you were too clumsy to notice shards of glass in your own gut."
You ignored his snide comment. "How long was I out?"
"Four days."
"That cannot be possible."
"And yet, it is. We're trapped here, you see. In this house, with these people, and a forest that eats anything that moves. You wanted to end the war? Well, congratulations. You've brought us to a place where time has stopped, and the only thing left to fight... is me."
"Four days," you repeated, the words drying inside your lips. You tried to shift, but the pain in your side flared—reminder of your own fragility. "And you didn't... you didn't just leave? You didn't walk into those woods to find a way back?"
"I did," he admitted, his voice dropping to a low bitter rasp. "I walked for hours, I walked until my feet bled and my lungs felt like they were filled with lye. The trees, they don't end. You walk for miles only to find yourself staring at the back of this very house."
Tom looked down at his hands—the cuts were scabbed over now, ugly and red. "There is no back. There is only this patch of dirt and the two of us."
You looked away from him, staring at the flickering candle. "Harry told me you were coming for me. Even in the nightmare... he was trying to warn me."
Your voice broke, a small, pathetic sound that you hated. "I was supposed to save them. I had the turner. I had the plan, and now they're just... they're fucking dead… and I'm stuck with the person who did it."
"Do you think I enjoy the indignity of this skin? The hunger? I am a God reduced to a human weak version of me, I am bound to a girl who scream for the dead in her sleep."
"You did this. You did this to us, how did you know? How did you—"
"I already knew what the three of you were planning even from the beginning. Did you think I was a fool to let you go back into the past and kill me? I would have killed you then; if it weren't for the time already spinning around us."
"Then maybe you should have," you choked out. "You should have killed me… let me bleed in the mud, you should have. Now, I'm stuck in this nightmare with you."
To have spent life holding your hands in tightly hidden fists, to try to understand what it would mean now, to hold them open. The war had long caused your ability to do anything good, you have failed to save your friends, to have saved Harry Potter, and now you were doomed to be here forever.
You know you were strong, but you were also a child. Only nineteen. You wanted whatever Gods that existed to take the world off your shoulders; children should not have to fight, to be so young in a war that is endless.
"I hate you," the words slipping past your lips; trembling with a lifetime of grief.
"I know," Tom replied. "It is the only thing about you that feels real."
This place was beneath him; his hand, the one that had once commanded the very fabric of life and death, felt foreign as he ran a finger over the coarse linen of his sleeve. The texture was an assault. Everything was an assault. The smell of the cedar chest in the corner, the itch of the wool blanket, the insistent rhythm of his own pulse in his ears—it was a cacophony of being.
To be Voldemort was to be a storm; to be Tom was to be the wreckage left in its wake.
He had loathed you, yet he found himself memorizing the cadence of your breathing. It was the only clock left in a world where time had died.
He thought of the woods. Tom had lied to you—he hadn't walked for hours; he had run. He sprinted until his shins burned and his vision blurred, screaming silent, wordless curses into the gray fog, waiting for the familiar green flash to erupt from his fingertips and tear the forest asunder.
But nothing came. Only the cold; only the humiliating realization that he was hungry; that his stomach was a void more demanding than his ambition. He looked at your pale throat, the skin translucent enough to show the flickering life beneath. Tom could kill you, yes, he could. He could press his thumbs into that delicate windpipe and end the witness, end the sufferance belonging to you and him.
The thought brought a momentary, familiar warmth to his chest—the semblance of comfort for the kill.
But then what?
Then he would be alone with that elderly peasants. He would be Tom forever. He would be the boy from the orphanage again, a nobody in a world of gray, with no one to remember that he had once been a God.
I am not a child, he thought, his jaw tightening until it ached. I am the end of all things. He was the plague, and he had brought you with him to the end of the world.
And as the wind shrieked outside; Tom Marvolo Riddle closed his eyes and listened to the heartbeat of the only human left who knew how to fear him.
Tom would reach for it again; greedy human fingers clutching at everything he can reach; and the divine would curl its way through his veins and take everything over like he would—to feel it in his bones like aching; like fire. A world he had created, once glorious, once power and chaos.
The weeks that followed were a slow, agonizing descent into a reality that felt like a fever dream that refused to break. There was no magic to mend the roof, no spells to fill the larder, and certainly no charms to bridge the chasm between the two of you. To the world—or whatever this pocket of nonexistence was; you were the young couple salvaged from the wreckage of a carriage. To Arthur and Evelyn; you were the beautiful, broken things they had plucked from the mud.
The seasons didn't change in the forest; the sky remained the color of a guttering candle, and the fog never truly lifted. Within the walls of the farmhouse, an unspoken war had been established.
Tom had been forced into the role of the laborer. It was a sight that still made your stomach churn with a mixture of dark amusement and pity; the future dark lord; his fine slender hands now blistered and stained with the sap of pine trees, splitting wood behind the barn. You wondered, then, what would have your friends' reactions be, if they saw what you were witnessing now. An irony.
He moved with a stiff yet resentful grace, every swing of the axe felt more like an execution of the life he had lost. Tom didn't speak much to Arthur nor to anyone at all, but the old man watched him with a knowing heavy silence, as if he could sense the heaviness that's weighing down Tom's shoulders.
You wanted to bite down; to tell these people what kind of person Tom Riddle was, or in this instance, Voldemort. You wanted to scream at them that he was a murderer; a tyrant; a dictator; all sorts of evil one could think of—that because of him; you had lost everything he had taken from you—that because of him; you would never know peace in your life, constantly fighting in a losing war.
You watched him from the kitchen window, leaning your forehead against the glass. Tom was in the yard, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sweat slicking his hair despite the biting chill. He swung the axe with a violent precision. His hands, once meant to hold the world by its throat, were caked in sap and dirt, his knuckles bruised and raw.
He looked up, catching your gaze. He didn't smile. Tom never did. He just stared at you with those dark, bottomless eyes—eyes that still held the shadow of the man who had murdered Harry, who had broken the world. He looked at you like you were the only piece of his kingdom he had left to rule.
"He's a tireless one, your husband," Evelyn murmured from the stove, her sharp eyes following your gaze. She didn't miss the way you flinched when Tom slammed the axe into a fresh log. "A bit of a temper in those shoulders, but a man works that hard only for the woman he's scared to lose."
Only if she knew. You could laugh at that senseless remark, but had held your tongue instead.
You were on your knees, thinning out a row of frost bitten greens, when the shadow fell over you. It was long and sharp, cutting through the hazy light. You didn't need to look up to know who it was; the air always seemed to grow heavy and still when he was near.
Tom stood over you, leaning against the rotted garden fence. He was wearing a dark, coarse sweater Evelyn had dug out of an old trunk, the sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms that were lean and corded with new, hard earned muscle. He looked like a local lad, a handsome farmer's son, but the way he held himself—shoulders back, chin tilted with a lingering, ghostly arrogance; it had spoiled the illusion.
"You're wasting your time," he said. "The soil is already dead."
"It's still food," you replied without looking at him, tugging at a stubborn weed. "Something you're becoming increasingly fond of, despite your protests."
You heard the soft thud of his boots as he stepped over the low fence into the dirt. Tom didn't offer to help, of course, he simply watched you; his gaze tracking the movement of your dirt stained fingers.
"I saw you talking to the old man earlier," Tom said, his tone shifting into something sharper, more dangerous. "By the well. You were smiling."
"Arthur is kind." you said, absent. "A concept you struggle with."
"There is no such thing as kindness," Tom hissed, his shadow stretching over the patch of wilted kale you were tending. He stepped closer, the heels of his boots sinking into the soft, damp earth. "In a place like this, kindness is a transaction. He wants something, they both do."
"Not everyone has a price," you said, finally sitting back on your heels. You wiped your forehead with the back of a muddy hand, leaving a dark smear across your skin. "Some people just don't want to see others starve. It's a very human trait. You should try it sometime, though I doubt you ever did."
Tom’s lip curled, a ghost of a snarl that looked gratingly beautiful on his revitalized face. "I am trying it, am I not? I have spent my morning breaking my back over a woodpile so we have the kindness of a fire tonight. My hands are blistered, my joints ache, and I smell of common sweat."
He held out his palms, showing the raw, red welts. "Is this human enough for you, (Name)?"
You looked at his hands—the hands that once had held the elder wand, now ruined by such a mundane thing—and felt a strange, unwelcome prickle of sympathy, you averted your gaze away quickly, focusing on a particularly stubborn root.
"You're doing it because you want to survive," you muttered. "That isn't kindness; that's ego."
"Everything is ego," he countered, dropping into a crouch beside you. The sudden proximity made your heart skip a beat. He was so close you could see the dark gold flecks in his eyes, the ones that only appeared when the light hit them just right.
"You're out here breaking your nails in the dirt for the same reason. You want to feel useful—you want to pretend that if you grow enough cabbages, you can ignore the fact that Harry Potter is a corpse in a timeline you can no longer reach."
You still have nightmares, almost every night. Tom knows about it and yet never brought it up for the weeks you have been living here. The mention of Harry was like a knife gutted apart inside your guts, swallowing each despair, and grief bubbles up inside like a familiar ache.
"Don't," you whispered. "Don't you dare speak of his name."
Tom didn't pull back. If anything, he leaned closer, his knee brushing against yours. "The truth is a heavy thing, isn't it? Without the kindness of your spells to numb the world."
You didn't answer, instead, your fingers dug into the soil until the cold mud pushed beneath your fingernails, a grounding sting that kept you from shattering; eyes stinging.
Hands reaching down and, to your utter shock, Tom wrapped his fingers around the base of the weed you had been struggling with, hovering above yours. It felt warm; warmth of a whole human being. With a sharp, effortless tug, he ripped it from the ground and tossed it aside.
"There," he murmured, his eyes snapping back to yours. "I've contributed to your food. Do I get a smile now, or is that reserved for Arthur?"
You looked at the discarded weed, then at him. For a moment, the war and the blood felt a million miles away. There was just a boy and a girl in the mud, trapped in a house at the edge of the world.
"You missed a bit of the root," you said, your voice trembling with a dry, reluctant humor. "It'll just grow back."
Tom let out a short, huffed breath that was almost a laugh—the first genuine sound of amusement you'd heard from him since the fall, it felt unreal in a way—to see him just a boy. Your mind had briefly wondered, whether what he was like during your age; like this, you wondered; whether he had once laughed genuinely too it felt like the ground crushing in a manner of surprise.
Tom reached out again, his thumb grazing your muddy knuckles as he moved to finish the job.
"You are a difficult woman, (Name)," he muttered, his gaze lingering on your hand.
"And you're a miserable gardener," you replied.
For a heartbeat, neither of you moved. The tension wasn't the same vicious edge of the past you have known your whole life; it was something heavier, thicker, a force that was pulling your two broken lives together because there was nowhere else to go.
Tom jerked his hand away as if your skin had suddenly burned him. He stood abruptly, the movement so sharp he nearly lost his balance in the soft mud. The boyish softness in his face was instantly swallowed by a cold, rigid mask of revulsion—not for you, but for the instinct that had kept him there, crouched in the dirt like a commoner.
He stepped back over the rotted fence, his breathing slightly faster than it had been moments ago. He wiped his hands on his trousers with an obsessive motion, trying to rid himself of the sensation of the earth and the lingering ghost of your touch.
"The sun is setting," he said, his voice returning to that clipped tone of a man who held himself above the world, though his eyes were wide, darting toward the forest as if looking for an escape from his own skin. "I should head back and let you be."
"Tom—" you started, standing up and brushing the dirt from your knees.
"No," he snapped, not looking back. Tom was already several feet away, his shoulders hunched, his stride long and hurried. "I will not be comfortable with this, and neither should you. This is nothing—I will not be comfortable with your gaze, and you would do well to remember that the man who took everything from you is still breathing the same air as you."
Tom avoided the patch of kale, and you avoided the woodpile. But the farmhouse was too small for two people determined to be strangers, especially when the frost began to settle permanently on the windowpanes.
A month later, Arthur caught you when you were washing the plates; the old man looked uncharacteristically nervous, hat in his hands as he peered over his shoulder to ensure Evelyn was occupied in the wash house.
"It's her sixty fifth tomorrow," Arthur whispered, voice thick with a rough sort of tenderness. "I'm taking her down to the creek—the fog lifts there for an hour at noon. I want her to come back to a cake. A real one. Sugar, white flour... I've been saving the tin."
He pressed a heavy, rusted canister into your hands. "Tom says he's a hand with a hearth. Make sure he helps you. A cake like that needs two sets of eyes so it don't burn in this temperamental oven."
When Arthur led Evelyn away the next morning, the house fell into a silence that felt heavy with the weight of the task. You stood in the kitchen, staring at the tin of sugar, until the back door creaked open. Tom stepped in, shaking the rime of frost from his hair. He looked at the flour on the table, then at you, his eyes narrowing.
"Arthur said you'd be helping," you said; cautious.
Tom let out a long, weary exhale, pulling off his heavy coat. "The man is persistent. He seems to think husbandry involves more than just splitting logs."
He walked to the basin to scrub his hands, his movements sharp. "Well? Don't just stand there. If we are to produce something edible from this, we should begin."
Baking with Tom Riddle was like dancing on a blade. He approached the recipe Arthur had scribbled down with the same analytical method he might have used for a complex potion during his study at Hogwarts; the imagery of it flashes in your head.
"The ratio of fat to flour is imprecise," Tom muttered, his sleeves rolled up, revealing the corded muscles of his arms as he began to cream the butter and sugar by hand. He refused the wooden spoon, using his fingers instead—a choice that seemed to irritate and fascinate him all at once.
"This recipe is more suggestion than science."
"It's a cake, Tom, not a draught of living death," you muttered, cracking eggs into a bowl.
"Precision is the only thing that separates us from the beasts," he retorted, though he didn't pull his hand away when you moved to pour the eggs into his bowl.
For an hour, the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the scrape of the bowl; the kitchen grew warm, the air thickening with the scent of vanilla and rising dough. In the heat of the small space, the animosity of the garden felt distant, replaced by a strange, domestic synchronization.
You reached for the flour at the same time he did, your hands collided over the sack—his large, calloused, and dusted with white; yours smaller, trembling slightly.
Tom didn't jerk away this time. He paused, his fingers lingering over yours for a heartbeat too long. The heat of the oven was pinking his cheeks, making him look hauntingly like the boy from the orphanage who might have once dreamed of a birthday cake of his own.
"You have flour on your nose," he said quietly.
The observation was so mundane, so devastatingly normal, that it made your throat ache. You went to wipe it, but your hands were covered in batter.
Before you could think, Tom reached out; his index finger, dusted in white, grazed the tip of your nose, brushing the powder away.
Tom's touch was surprisingly light, though the air in the kitchen had suddenly felt too thin to breathe. He didn't pull back immediately; he stayed there, his hand hovering near your face, his eyes searching yours with that same raw, terrifying curiosity from the garden.
"You were a child before this," he murmured, voice dropping into that same rasp. "A girl who liked sweets and sunlight. I forget that sometimes."
"I forget it too."
A beat passes.
"We were both children," you added, the words coming out more like a confession than you intended. You looked down at the mixing bowl, watching a slow trail of batter slide down the ceramic side. "Before the war. Before the world decided we had to be something else. You were just a boy in a wool coat, Tom. Did you ever even have a birthday cake?"
It was a gamble, you knew. Learn me, and I will learn you.
Tom's hand, which had been reaching for a damp cloth to wipe the table, stilled. He didn't look at you, but the line of his jaw tightened; the muscle jumping beneath the pale skin, and the only sound was the wind whistling through the cracks in the kitchen door.
"The orphanage didn't indulge in sentiment," he said, leaving only something hollow as he remembered old days. "Sugar was a ration, celebration was seen as a weakness. We were taught that we were lucky to have a roof and a bed, and that anything more was a sin of greed."
"It sounds lonely."
"I never wanted their sentimentality. I wanted the world to stop treating me as a mouth to feed and start treating me as something to fear. A cake is a temporary indulgence, whereas power—power is permanent."
"Nothing is permanent," you uttered, finally meeting his gaze. "We're living proof of that. Your power, your followers, your immortality—it all shattered into time. And now you're standing in a kitchen with flour on your hands, helping me bake a birthday surprise for a woman you've known for months."
"Do not mistake my compliance for a change in heart."
"You keep saying that," you said, reaching out to pick up the wooden spoon. "As if you're trying to convince yourself as much as me."
His hand reaches out, clamping over your wrist, stopping the movement. Tom's grip wasn't near violent, it was firm—the callouses of his palms rough against your skin, he looked down at where he held you, his brow furrowing.
"You want me to be the boy in the wool coat because then you don't have to be the girl who failed. If I'm human, then your tragedy is simply no more than an accident. But if I am a monster…"
"Then I am the one who let the monster in," you finished for him.
He let go of your wrist, but Tom didn't move away; instead, it stayed close enough that you could see the fine lines of exhaustion around his eyes—the mortal kind of tired that no amount of magic could fix.
"The cake," he said abruptly, nodding toward the oven. "The scent is changing. If it burns, Arthur will be disappointed, and I find that I particularly dislike the way he looks at me when I fail at a simple task."
You turned to the hearth, blinking back the sudden sting in your eyes. "God forbid the dark lord disappoints a farmer."
"Precisely," Tom muttered, though he moved to stand beside you, watching the rising dough with an intensity that had nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with the fact that, for the first time in his life, he was waiting for something sweet.
The return of Arthur and Evelyn broke the heavy tension of the afternoon like a sudden gush of cold water. Arthur had led her in with a hand over her eyes, his weathered face glowing with a youthfulness that seemed to defy the gray world outside. When Evelyn saw the cake; golden, lopsided, and smelling of caramelized sugar—she wept, her rough hands flying to her cheeks.
"Oh, you children," she choked out, her blue eyes darting between you and Tom. "You beautiful, kind children."
Tom played his part. He stood by the fireplace; a modest, tired smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he accepted Evelyn's praise with a polite dip of his head. To her, he was the picture of a devoted husband, perhaps a bit weary from the woodpile, but fundamentally good.
You watched him from the corner of your eye, marveling at the ease with which he wore the skin of a savior, Tom looked at the cake as if it were a masterpiece he had deigned to create, rather than a frantic effort to keep a lie from collapsing.
Then, a plate appeared suddenly in his line of sight—held out by Evelyn herself with that same infuriating kindness that made his teeth ache.
"No use watching from the sidelines forever," she murmured knowingly before nudging it toward him again when he didn't take it immediately. "Eat up while it's fresh."
Tom took the plate, his fingers grazing hers in a brief, human contact that he didn't immediately recoil from. He took a bite of the lopsided cake, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes widened. It was sweet—violently, unapologetically sweet—almost believed himself that it reminded him of his nonexistent home.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, Arthur hauled a dusty, glass stoppered bottle from beneath the floorboards.
"Plum brandy," he announced, his eyes twinkling. "Saved it for a day worth remembering. And I reckon, after that cake, we need something to cut the sugar."
Arthur cranked an old, brass horned gramophone in the corner; the music that emerged was scratchy and warped—a slow yet tranquil fiddle tune that seemed to skip heartbeats. Arthur poured the brandy into four mismatched glasses. It was strong, smelling of fermented fruit and smoke.
You took the glass, the liquid amber shimmering like a captured sun in the firelight; you let the first gulp scald your throat, welcoming the violent, localized burn; it was the physicality of ache you could control, a sharp distraction from the ruins of your mind.
One glass became two. Two became a desperate, liquid blur. You drank to drown the image of Harry's lifelessness, the way the light had left his eyes before he even hit the floor. You drank to scrub the smell of the Great Hall from your lungs—that cloying scent of ancient stone pulverized into dust and the copper tang of blood that had belonged to people whose names you were starting to forget.
Every swallow was an attempt to rid the guilt living under your ribs—that hollow treacherous thing that had survived while the better people died. You wanted to be as numb as the soil in the garden; you wanted to be nothing. You wanted to reach a state of grace where the faces of the dead didn't look at you with such uncertainty.
Fix it, they had whispered in your dreams. Go back.
But there was no going back. There was only the heat of the liquor and the inevitable doom of never coming home.
"Come drink," your flushed cheeks says it all. "Merlin knows you need it most."
Tom looked at the glass you pushed toward him as if it were a vial of a slow acting poison. His eyes moved from the liquor to the frenzied glazed brightness in yours.
"I do not need to lose my senses to endure this," he said, his voice a sharp contrast to the warm, drunken air of the room. "I have more discipline than to seek refuge in a bottle of liquor."
"Oh, shut up, Tom," you laughed, the sound thick and reckless. You nudged his arm, nearly spilling your own drink. "You're simply afraid of what you'll say if you drink too much."
He remained silent, then a realization dawned to you.
"You haven't gotten drunk, have you?"
"No."
You laughed at his admission, the sound high and girlish. "I remember… back at the castle—in the Room of Requirement. We used to sneak in bottles of Firewhiskey during those secret parties." A ghost of a smile touched your lips, distant and hazy. "Theodore would always turn bright red after one sip, and Hermione… she would start reciting the history of the goblin rebellions by the third. We felt so grown up. So invincible."
But the words died in your throat as the memory curdled. You could almost see the room again—the soft gold lighting, the laughter of people who were now nothing but ash and bone. The invincibility had been a lie.
The weight of it hit you all at once, the liquor suddenly tasting like buried regrets. You looked away from Tom, your throat tight, and grabbed the bottle to refill your glass with a trembling hand.
"Well," you said, your voice a forced cheer. "I suppose the Great Lord Voldemort is simply terrified of a little plum juice. Afraid you'll lose your grip on that precious dignity of yours?"
Tom's eyes snapped to yours, dark and sharp as obsidian; he hadn't like the way you said his name—the name that shouldn't exist here. He didn't like the way you were looking at him, as if he were something small and manageable.
"I am worried about nothing," he said. "Least of all the fermented dregs of a peasant's orchard."
Arthur let out a boisterous bark of a laugh from the center of the room, already swaying with Evelyn. "Listen to the lady, lad! A bit of spirit never killed a man—it only makes the winter shorter!"
With a look of profound, yet silent loathing directed at the room at large, Tom gave in. His fingers; long and elegant even when stained by the day's labor, curled around the glass. He tilted his head back and drained it in one motion, his throat working as he swallowed the fire.
He slammed the glass back onto the table, a sharp crack that punctuated the music.
"There," he rasped, the alcohol already roughening the edges of his voice. "Are you satisfied, (Name)?"
"Very much."
But the music was picking up, carrying out a fast, rhythmic tune that made the floorboards vibrate. You stood up, your head spinning just enough to make the world feel like it was made of velvet. You began to sway, your eyes half closed, letting the scratchy melody pull the tension from your limbs. You twirled once, your skirts brushing against the rough wood; a reckless drunken grace taking over.
Tom sat perfectly still, his glass empty, watching you. He looked like a man watching a forest fire—horrified by the heat, but unable to turn away from the light.
"You're staring again, Tom," you hummed, spinning back toward him. You reached out, your fingers catching the hem of his coarse sweater and tugging.
"Simply observing how reckless you're being right now," he countered, though he was already rising from the bench, his movements slightly less composed than usual.
"Stop observing," you breathed, stepping into his space and placing your hands on his chest. You could feel his heart thudding, fast and heavy. "Dance with me. Arthur is watching. We have to be the happy couple, remember?"
Tom didn't argue. He looked down at you; pupils blown wide, swallowing the gold flecks in his eyes, then he had caught your waist with a firm hand; steering you toward the center of the room, his movements stiff but undeniably powerful. The brandy made you bold; you leaned your head against his shoulder, the coarse wool of his sweater scratching your cheek.
"You're too stiff," you whispered into the hollow of his throat. "Don't be afraid to hold me."
"How else should I hold you?" Tom rasped.
"Like everything matters," your voice a slurred, soft murmur. "Because if I disappear, Tom, who will you be?"
"I have spent decades carving my name into the pages of history so that I might never be forgotten," he hissed, the liquor making his words heavy and slow. "And yet, here I am; spinning in circles like a common laborer, intoxicated by the only person left alive to witnessed how pathetic I have become."
"You aren't pathetic," and it was the most honest, gut wrenching thing you had ever said. "You're just with me."
"It's cruel," he murmured, his voice cracking. "To offer me peace that you know I cannot keep. To make me feel the weight of a life I spent fifty years trying to transcend."
"You look tired," your eyes shutting closed for a moment. "And I cannot feel anything anymore."
"I feel you. I can feel the blood in my hands, (Name). It's warm. It's loud. It's… disgusting."
"It's life," eyes fluttering opened; your hand sliding up to cup his jaw, your thumb brushing the hollow of his cheek. "It's the only thing that's actually yours."
The house was quiet now, the kind of absolute, ringing silence that only falls when the fire has burned down to its glowing remains and the wind has stopped its howling against the eaves. Arthur and Evelyn had retired an hour ago, leaving behind the lingering scent of plum sugar and wood smoke.
Tom stood in the threshold of the front door, the cool night air biting at his neck, though the brandy in his blood kept the chill at bay. He watched you.
You were huddled on the top step of the porch, a heavy wool blanket draped haphazardly over your shoulders. You should have been freezing, but the flush of the liquor was still painted across your cheekbones, radiating a warmth he could feel even from several feet away. You looked small; painfully, irritatingly small—against the backdrop of the black, encroaching forest.
Tom leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, his hands shoved deep into his pockets to hide the slight tremor in his fingers. He was looking at you through a lens he hated; recognition. He saw the way you watched the stars as if waiting for them to fall, the same way he used to watch the planes over London, waiting for the world to finally match the wreckage inside of him.
"You should come inside before the frost takes root in your lungs."
You didn't turn around, you didn't even flinch. You just tightened the blanket around your frame, your gaze fixed on the horizon where the gray of the earth met the black of the sky.
"I don't mind the cold," your voice was no longer slurred, but it had a quality that was far worse. "It's the only thing that feels honest anymore."
"You're thinking of them again."
"I'm not thinking of them," you said, finally turning your head. The fire in your eyes had been replaced by a vast, watery exhaustion. "I'm thinking about how I've spent my whole life trying to be what they needed. A soldier. A friend. A savior."
You let out a short laugh that feels pitiful.
"I long to be understood," you murmured, looking back at the trees. "But I know I will be longing my whole life. I'll die with the weight of being a stranger to everyone, including myself."
"I never wanted it… I wanted to be a monument. Something people looked at and trembled, but never reached."
"Was it worth it then? Everything?" you said. "The muggleborns you have killed… the people you took from me… everything you have taken; the endless war—was it worth it now, Tom Riddle?"
Tom went still. The name Riddle hung in the frozen air; stripping away the last of the brandy's warmth. He stepped out onto the porch, his boots crunching the thin layer of frost with a sound like breaking teeth. Only then, he didn't sit beside you; he stood over you, his shadow long, cutting you off from the starlight.
"It was worth it because it was mine," his voice trembling with a terrifying, human fragility. "The blood, the terror, the power—it was the only thing I ever truly owned. And you... you want me to say I regret it? You want me to tell you that I'd trade it all for a seat at Arthur's table and a life of kindness?"
"Kindness wasn't a choice you made, Tom; it was a language you were too small to learn," you snapped, finally standing up. The blanket slipped from your shoulder, you stepped into his space, forcing him to see the raw ruined of the girl he had spent years fighting against with.
"You claim the blood and the terror were yours, but they were mine, too. My friends. My home. My soul. You spent years trying to transcend humanity, and yet here you are—cold, hungry, and lost in time. You're no more than a lord, you're just the boy who killed everyone who might have loved him, only to end up alone."
"And I would do it again. I would burn every bridge and salt every field just to feel that moment of absolute certainty—that I was the only thing in the world that mattered."
"And was it worth Harry?" The name was a crack in the dark; you felt the sob rising; hot and poisonous. "Was it worth the look on his face when he died? Tell me, Tom. When you were carving your name into history, did you ever stop to think that you were just carving it into our hearts? Into my life? You didn't just kill them. You killed me, too."
"Then why are you still breathing?" he hissed, his hand flying out to grip your arm. His fingers were like ice, digging into your skin through the wool. "If I killed you, why are you here, haunting me? Why do you look at me as if I can be anything but a monster? You hate me because I am the only one who knows exactly how much you lost. I am the only person in this rotting place who knows who you were before you became this… this hollow thing."
"I am hollow because you gutted me!" you screamed, your voice breaking, the sound echoing off the silent trees. You shoved at his chest, your hands balled into fists against the coarse fabric of his sweater.
"I hate you because you're right—I hate you because when I look at you, I don't just see a monster, I see everything I'll never have back; I see the world you stole. And you... you're so arrogant, so pathetic! That you'd rather cling to your glory than admit you're just as lonely as I am—only I never decided to punish anyone for it."
Tom didn't move, he let you strike him; his body as rigid, as your fists lost their strength and your forehead slumped against his chest, he let out a sound; sharp, ragged intake of air.
"You want me to say it?" he whispered into your hair, it was just raw, bleeding bone. "That I watch them—two simple people; and I would give every drop of blood I ever spilled just to feel that kind of peace for one hour? To not wake up with the taste of death in my mouth? You want me to admit that I am starving, (Name). Not for power, but for the life I was too arrogant to believe I deserved."
He let go of your arm, but his hand moved up to cup your chin; his thumb pressing into the soft skin beneath your lip with a force that was almost a plea, he held your face with such tenderness you couldn't fathom. Tom's eyes were wide, glassy, and devastatingly human.
"It might not have been worth it," he said. "But it's all I have. If I regret it, I am nothing. If I apologize, I disappear. And I am too much of a coward to be nothing."
"Then, we're both cowards," the cold finally beginning to numb the pain. "You're afraid to be nothing, and I'm too afraid to be alone. That's the only reason we haven't killed each other yet."
"Because you are the only proof of my existence."
"But you're the only thing that feels real to me," you choked. "And I hate you for it. I hate that I have to look at your face to remember I'm still alive; I am not dead like them. I hate that I'm holding onto the man who ruined me because there isn’t a single soul left to hold me back."
"I would have preferred your hatred when it was pure, (Name). It was easier to bear when you wanted me dead."
"There's nowhere left to go, Tom. We are at the end of the world."
He let out a ragged breath, the heat of it ghosting over your lips. In the peripheral of your vision, the vast, black expanse of the woods felt like a boundary, the edge of a map where the ink had simply run out. You pulled away from him, creating distance.
You felt a sickening lurch in your chest—the realization that the hatred you had nursed for years, the fire that had kept you warm through the war, was finally flickering out into small pieces of ashes, blowing away. It was being replaced by something far more terrifying: a weary, shared exhaustion. You weren't a hero anymore, and he wasn't a king—you were simply two victims of his ambition, huddling together in destruction.
"I used to dream of the day I'd see you like this," your gaze focused on the ground. "Small. Human. Beaten. I thought it would feel like victory. I thought I'd feel whole again."
You let out a broken, wet laugh. "But I just feel... empty. Like you took so much of me that there isn't enough left to even hate you properly."
You headed back inside without a word, leaving him alone in the vastness of a dying world; a rotting time.
Days began to blur and numbness felt like mercy on your tongue; you had moved through the farmhouse on autopilot, performing the motions of life without any of the spirit. You helped Evelyn with the laundry, your hands turning red and raw in the icy water, and you sat across from Tom at dinner, watching him chew his bread with the same indifference.
You didn't care that Tom's gaze followed you with an inexplicable expression, nor did you care when you felt the mattress shift in the dead of night as he slipped out of the room. You knew he was going somewhere—into the woods, into the dark, perhaps looking for a way back to a world that no longer existed—but the curiosity had died with the liquor that night on the porch.
Time had become a stagnant pool, and you were simply something heavy sinking to the bottom; indifferent to the surface and the light you'd left behind.
You had decided to clean the attic one morning; the space was cramped, smelling of dry rust, and the suffocating heat of Tom's presence. He was out in the barn with Arthur, and the house felt unnervingly empty. You moved his spare sweater from the small wooden crate he used as a bedside table, then your hand caught on something hard and cold tucked beneath a stack of yellowed parchment. Pulling it out, expecting a stray bit of hardware or a stone. Instead, the dim light of the attic caught on gold.
The Time Turner sat in your palm, heavy and impossible.
The last time you had seen it, it was a shattered ruin of glass and twisted sand, a broken promise of a way home. Now, the rings were straight, polished to a mirror shine; the hourglass was whole, filled with sand that didn't flow, but shimmered with a faint light that seemed to beat in time with your own heart.
It was fixed.
Your fingers trembled as they traced the cool gold casing. He had done it. While you were sinking into the gray, he had been working in the dark, painstakingly piecing together the very thing that could undo everything. Or the thing that could take you back to the beginning of the nightmare.
The door creaked.
You didn't look up, but you felt the atmosphere change; the shadows in the corners stretching toward you. Tom was standing in the doorway, his chest rising and falling with the exertion of the stairs, his eyes fixed on your hand. He didn't speak. He didn't move. He simply watched you hold the one thing in the world that mattered more than his own life.
"How long?" you whispered. The numbness was receding, replaced by a clarity that felt like a blade sliding into your ribs. "How long has it been sitting here, Tom?"
You heard his footsteps—slow, deliberate, as he crossed the threshold, the floorboards groaned, a familiar, agonizing sound that eases you to this reality even as you held the key to another.
"Three days," he finally said. "I finished the final seal three nights ago."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Finally, you lifted your gaze. He looked wretched. The sweater he wore was frayed at the cuffs, and his hair was uncharacteristically disheveled, but it was his eyes that caught you; the raw fear lingering in them.
"I never planned to leave you."
"Then why hide it?"
"I—"
"Were you waiting for the right moment to leave me behind? Or were you just enjoying the sight of me finally being as broken as you are?" You stood then, hands trembling as you held it close to your chest.
"Because I knew that the moment I showed it to you, this version of you would disappear," he hissed, his eyes flashing with a sudden, violent spark of the old Tom Riddle. He stepped closer, his presence orphaning the light in the room.
"She only exists in this house… If we go back, you become the savior again, and I become the villain. The silence ends, and the war begins."
"The war never ended, Tom!" you screamed, the sound tearing from your throat. "It's been happening every single day in this room! Every time I look at you and have to forget that you killed the people I loved just so I don't lose my mind—that is the war!"
Tom closes the distance between you in three strides, hand reaching over to touch you but you moved further away from him; terrified eyes.
"In here, I am real. You said it yourself, (Name); we are the only two things left. If we turn those rings, we go back to a world that wants us to destroy each other. I am a coward, remember? I am a coward who would rather live in this filth with you than be a God in a world without you."
But his words rang hollow in your ears; you don't believe him.
"You didn't fix it for us, Tom." a tear finally breaking through the numbness and tracing a hot path down your cheek. "You fixed it for you. You always do."
"If we stay... we can just be. No war. No names. Just the silence. I would give up the world for this silence, (Name). Why can't you?"
"You let me think we were dead. You watched me sit on that porch and tell you I had nothing left, and you let me say it! You let me feel it because as long as I was empty, you were the only thing I could use to fill the void."
"And let myself lose you forever? Don't be so naive now… I might be a coward; but I am inherently selfish. Did you expect me to suddenly become a martyr for your happiness?"
"I expected you to give me a choice!" you sobbed, the tears finally falling in earnest now. "You took my past, you took my friends, and now you have stolen my grief—you let me find comfort in the man who took everything from me."
You felt a sickening wave of self loathing wash over you. It wasn't just him you were angry at; it was yourself. You hated that your first instinct wasn't to turn the rings immediately and vanish; you hated that you were standing there, arguing with him, pleading with him to justify the unjustifiable.
Tom was right about one thing—part of you had started to settle into the rot. You had started to rely on the sound of his breathing in the dark to know you were still alive. You had allowed the man who murdered your future to become the only thing that made your present bearable.
And you know you must be impossibly wretched, that the world had made you something so terrible, so unforgivably damned—to allow yourself of this semblance of affection, that you can never be anything more than the poison you was born with flooding your veins.
I am as much a traitor to their memory as he is a thief of it.
You took a step back, hitting the slanted wall of the attic, then you looked at him—really looked at him; not as the Voldemort you once knew, but as the pathetic, brilliant, broken boy, Tom Riddle,who was so afraid of his own insignificance that he'd rather keep you in a cage than let you be free.
Your thumb moved to the first ring. It was absolute, and the terrifying realization in his expression becoming more evident now.
"I thought about forgiving you," you admitted, the confession sounding like a death knell in the small room. "In the dark, when the house was quiet… I thought that maybe, if we were the only ones left, it didn't matter anymore. But you couldn't even give me the truth. You couldn't even let me choose to stay; you had to steal that, too."
"Don't do it, (Name)," the word was a sacrilege coming from his mouth. "Stay. I will give you everything. I will be whoever you need me to be."
The vulnerability in his voice was a knife; it was the most human Tom had ever been, and it was the most cruel thing he had ever done to you—to make you feel responsible for the soul of the man who had destroyed yours. You stared at him, and for a heartbeat, the Time Turner was the only thing standing between the two of you and the end of the universe.
Your vision was so blurred by tears that he looked like a smudge of grey against the dark wood of the doorframe—a smudge of a person, a smudge of a memory.
You looked up at him one last time. You saw the tears in his eyes—real, human tears, and it hurt more than any curse he had ever thrown at you. It was a cruel, beautiful trap, a final attempt to make you stay by showing you the soul he had claimed didn't exist.
"I'm sorry," you whispered, though you weren't sure if you were apologizing to him, or to the friends you were about to go back and mourn all over again.
With a sharp, decisive jerk, you twisted another ring. "Good bye, Tom."
Tom made a guttural sound, and lunged for you, but his fingers only grazed the wool of your sweater. The gold began to spin, the rings becoming a blur of light that outshone the gray morning; the attic began to stretch, the walls pulling away into infinity, and the scent of dry rust was replaced by the ozone of magic and the sudden, violent roar of the wind.
The last thing you saw before the world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of golden sand was Tom's face. He wasn't reaching for the Time Turner, you realized—he was reaching for you, his expression one of shattering loss—as if, in that final second, he realized that a pile of bones was nothing compared to the warmth of a hand he had never learned how to hold.
Then, the farmhouse was gone. The silence was gone, and you were falling back into the nightmare.
You felt the sensation of being pulled through a needle's eye, your lungs collapsing under the pressure of decades screaming past you in a heartbeat.
And then, you felt the impact.
You stayed on your knees, gasping, your fingers still curled around the burning metal of the Time Turner; eyes were blurred with the tears you had shed in the attic, but as you blinked them away, the shapes around you began to solidify into a nightmare of a different kind.
The shifting staircases, the vaulted, cavernous shadows, the gargoyles watching with stony indifferent eyes; you weren't back in the manor, nor you weren't in the forest.
You were at Hogwarts.
"It's nearly midnight. Surely you know that wandering the corridors at this hour is a punishable offense."
You looked up, the breath dying in your throat.
Standing over you was a boy. He was wearing uniform robes; the silver Head Boy badge pinned precisely to his chest. He looked exactly as as he did in the glimpses of the man you had known at the farmhouse, yet he was terrifyingly different; Tom seemed like a portrait before the paint had begun to wither, and the boy standing before you was the blueprint of your nightmare.
This was Tom Riddle at the height of his beauty. The Tom Riddle who hadn't yet become a monster, but was already growing to become one. Your breath hitched in a sob; you were looking at the man who had ruined your life, but he was also a stranger.
You had been sent back too far, it had sink into your head.
The Time Turner, fixed by a man with a broken soul, had done exactly what he wanted; it had returned him to the moment he was most powerful, but it had stripped you of your victory. Tom reached out a hand to help you up; his fingers were long and pale—the same fingers that had cupped your chin on the porch.
It felt like a reflex in a way you stared blankly at his hand; heart hammering an erratic rhythm against your ribs. His skin was smooth; devoid of the callouses he had earned hauling wood in the future. In the past? In nowhere, you didn't know anymore. But here, he was whole; Tom Riddle was pristine.
"You're trembling," he didn't pull his hand back; he let it linger in the air between you. "Are you injured?"
"No," you choked out. Tom's gaze narrowed, the polite concern on his face sharpening into something analytical. He retracted his hand slowly, his gaze dropping to the golden object you were clutching against your chest.
"I don't recognize your robes," he said, his tone shifting. "… I don't recognize you at all."
Your breath hitched, a sound that echoed too loudly in the corridor. It was agony to see him like this—unbroken, untouched by the frost of the farmhouse, his soul still stitched together by the very arrogance you had watched him shed. You looked at him with a gaze that had seen him bleed, seen him beg, and seen him fail; an expression so raw and heavy with grief that it felt like you were laying the corpses of your future at his feet.
The ache in your chest felt familiar. You weren't mourning the monster he would be, or even the friends he had killed—you were mourning the silence you had shared in the ruins of that forest, the only version of him that had ever been yours. You couldn't bear to tear your gaze away from him; at the back of the throat, your voice is choked by the disquietude.
"Do I know you?"
"No, I suppose, you don't."
The forming expression upon his face contemplates, he was not convinced by the dread of your voice; you lie so easily smooth on the tongue, it only felt right. But even then, no matter how many timelines or past you will go through; Tom Riddle always sees the lie.
"Then who are you?"
You know what you must do, the reason why it all began; your endless misery. What would you have done then? If you weren't the person you had become now—if you never allowed yourself to learn him; to see him in a different light despite everything you have been through.
Theodore once told you—you sound like you're always on the verge of tears. Somewhere, a piece of you was always standing on the precipice, and you would peer over the edge to see solitude staring back at you. Elsewhere, time stares back at you; it beckons you with its soft hands and velvetlike voice.
Somehow, you retrace your steps, parallel paths converge, and found yourself on the ground with a dagger in your hand. Emptiness inside consumes you whole; but the longing—the longing weighs heavier on your chest, settled on the deeper parts you wished you had buried.
Your wand was drawn towards him, hand trembling but you stood firm on your position. Tom stood across; gaze holding yours in the same way you remembered; though it wasn't anger nor terror. A certain kind of realization—an understanding of the what the situation was becoming to be.
"I have seen you before," he spoke. "I have been having dreams—fragments of memories inside my head; I was dreaming about a time that had never been experienced. I didn't know it was real… but then I saw your face."
You wanted to hate him, so desperately so. You had spent lifetimes rehearsing the hatred, sharpening it until it was a blade, but looking at him now—at the unblemished skin and the eyes; the blade turned inward. Insensate with longing, you had felt it all at once. It wasn't enough, it was an endless hunger for something you wish you never had.
"I have to do this," your voice shakes, you could feel the way tears finally spilled over your cheeks. "You may never learn to understand, but I have to do this."
"It was you, wasn't it? You are real, it was no longer a dream."
"As real as I can be, Tom."
"Then you must do what you have to."
"Why are you letting me?" you asked, knowing the answer already. Tom took a step forward, and didn't stop until the tip of your wand was pressed firmly against the center of his chest, right over the steady beat of a heart that was currently whole. He didn't flinch.
"I think, in the deepest corner of my psyche, I was waiting for you."
From the shadows of his robes, his hand emerged, fingers curling around a hilt of silver and bone. Then, Tom had held it out to you, handle first, the blade catching the cold light like a sliver of a fallen star. He took your hand; the one not holding your wand, and forced your fingers to close around the hilt. Tom's skin was so warm, and the very air surrounding you felt haunted; he was touching you, and you were going to touch him; and you felt everything.
"I'd rather you do it with your bare hands," Tom pulled you closer, then. "Do it, so that when I close my eyes, the last thing I remember was the way you looked at me when you thought I could be saved. Give me your mercy, (Name) (Lastname)."
"Mercy," you were breathless. "You don't even know what you're asking for."
The silver hilt was slick with the sweat of your palms, the metal freezing against your skin while his touch remained tender. You looked at him; searching for the monster, for the cold blooded killer who had dismantled your world piece by piece. But he wasn't there yet. All that was left was this beautiful, terrifying boy who was looking at you with a devotion that felt like a sacrilege.
"I am asking you to be the only thing you ever were to me," Tom whispered. "My beginning and my end."
You didn't want to go back to the war; you never wanted to be the only savior—you only wanted to stop the aching, to finally quiet down the screaming inside your head; the dead appearing in your eyes.
Then, you surged forward, only then, this time, your lips crashed against his in a kiss that was clumsy, salt stained, and passionate; a collision of two human beings that should never have met. It was the first time you had ever tasted him, and it was everything you had never imagined; as the blade slipped between his ribs, you knew it would be the last.
The sound of the blade piercing his heart was swallowed by the quiet gasp he let out against your mouth, yet he persist to move his lips against yours. Tom then, clings to you, his fingers digging into your shoulders; trying to steady himself before his strength buckled. And you went down with him; your knees hitting the floor with a thud, but you didn't let go.
You cradled his head in your lap, your hands trembling as you tried to stem the crimson tide blooming across the fabric of his clothes. The silver dagger lay forgotten on the floor, its work finished. Tom's breath came in jagged. He looked up at you; his pupils blown wide, mirroring the dark, starlit sky outside. A small melancholic smile ghosted over his lips—a look of genuine peace that the older Tom had never been allowed to possess.
"I have been cruel to you, haven't I?" he rasped. "Long before I even knew you."
You let out a sob, tears falling fast as you smoothed his hair back, desperate to memorize the warmth of him before the cold took hold.
"It's over now, Tom. It's over."
You could feel his hand falling away, hitting the floor with a flat sound. Leaning down, you had pressed your forehead against his, your hair masking the stillness of his face. You kissed his lips one final time, the scent of him fading into the smell of winter air.
Tom looked the way Saints are portrayed in the final moments of their martyrdom; blood like holy oil anointing his lips, his throat, trailing down and across his skin.
"I'm sorry," you whispered into the hollow of his neck, your voice breaking into a million pieces. "I'm so, so sorry."
🍓Hello lovely! Sorry for taking so long to answer this, but I wanted to be sure yours was the first one I got to out of them all!
A - Affection: Answered Here
B - Best friend: Answered Here
C - Cuddles: Malleus LOVES to cuddle. Seriously, it's one of his favorite hobbies. He didn't think he'd like it all that much, but he really does! He runs warm so he's really nice to cuddle up to as well, except for summer when it's blazing hot outside. He's a bit stiff when he's cuddling you, but he relaxes into you like melting butter.
D - Domestic: Malleus would LOVE to settle down and start a life/family with you. It's his biggest dream to be treated like normal, and starting a life with you is just the perfect way for him to feel like a normal, loved guy. Now, he's not exactly GOOD at the whole... having a life with someone thing yet, but he'll get there. You just have to teach him how to clean, cook, do laundry, and pretty much everything else that comes with domestic life.
E - Ending: If he had to, he would probably just ghost you. He doesn't want to see the look of hurt or anger on your face, especially since you were so kind to him for so long. He can't handle facing you to break things off, so he sends Lilia and a long and well-crafted letter and proceeds to avoid you like the plague. It's... pretty bad.
F - Fiance(e): Oh he wants to marry you REAL quick, so you'll have to push the breaks on that one. He just really loves when he loves, so he doesn't know how to stop himself from getting excited. He absolutely wants to marry you, and he will only wait a few years before he starts asking again. He brings up the idea of it frequently until you seem ready for it, at the very least.
G - Gentle: Ohhhh, Malleus is so gentle with you -- physically speaking at least. He handles you like you're made of glass, which you very well may be when compared to him. He could hurt you easily, and he wants to avoid that as much as possible. Emotionally... he tries, he doesn't want to hurt you, but he has a tendency to just say whats on his mind and make you feel bad about things he doesn't mean to.
H - Hugs: YES! Malleus loves skin-to-skin contact so much, and the easiest way to get that outside of handholding is hugs. He only gives you hugs, but he gives them to you all the time. He sees you between classes? Hug. You're visiting him in Diasomnia? Hug. Sees you at lunch? Hug. They're so warm and comforting too, like you'll always be safe in his arms.
I - I love you: He says I love you very fast. He's not lovebombing you or trying to manipulate you by jumping in too fast, he just feels that strongly about you that quickly. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and he wants you to know how much he cares for you as quickly as possible.
J - Jealousy: Malleus is tricky to talk about when it comes to Jealousy. On one hand, yeah Malleus gets jealous and he gets jealous fast. He's like an angry cat watching its owner play with a dog from the window. He's got an intense aura that chases most people off without him having to say anything. On the other hand, he doesn't really get jealous often because no one wants to piss off Malleus Draconia.
K - Kisses: Malleus, much like other forms of affection, loves kisses. He is NOT good at them. He is all teeth and nose and way too fast and eager, but it's really cute. He wants to kiss you all over and be kissed all over.
L - Little ones: As I mentioned before, yes. Malleus really does like kids -- he spent a good portion of his life helping raise Silver and Sebek, so his affections for kids stem from a young age. He really wants some of his own, and it's honestly a dealbreaker if you don't want them.
M - Morning: Mornings with Malleus can either be slow, gentle, and quiet. Basking in each other's presence and relaxing in bed until it's near afternoon. Or they can be chaotic and full of things to do. Depends on his schedule. But, regardless, Malleus makes sure that you are comfortable and happy over anything else.
N - Night: Malleus is a night owl. He loves the quiet and peace that night brings. He loves to take you on walks outside around campus or stay up way too late talking to each other in bed about everything and nothing at the same time.
O - Open: Answered Here
P - Patience: Answered Here
Q - Quizzes: Answered Here
R - Remember: Malleus has quite a lot of memories of you that he adores. Your first date, walking around campus with you, the ball at Noble Bell. His favorite, though, is probably the first time he proposed to you. You'd been together for a little over a month, and he decided to pop the question because he knew he would want you for life. You didn't freak out or yell at him or break if off with him on the spot. Instead, you smiled and told him "Not yet." For some reason, that little smile of yours and the 'yet' made his heart soar, and he knew that you were his one.
S - Security: Answered Here
T - Try: Malleus is a very go-big or-go-home person, however... he doesn't know how to plan dates. He doesn't know the first thing about romance or being sweet, so he's really just stumbling in the dark and accidentally hitting all the right targets. You think he's so sweet and loving. Lilia thinks it's a miracle he's lasted this long.
U - Ugly: Malleus' bad habit is assuming you're always on the same page as him. You are not always on the same page as him, and it causes arguments from time to time because he thinks he can speak for you when he cannot.
V - Vanity: He's relatively aware that he's good-looking, but he doesn't really have too big of an ego about it. He cares about power more than beauty, but he does know that he is attractive and is proud of that fact. It's just not something he thinks too hard about.
W - Whole: Malleus feels so empty when you aren't around. You consume a lot of his thoughts, so he's constantly wondering what you're up to and how you're feeling. Whenever you're gone, he feels a little piece of his heart ache in sadness.
X - Xtra: Malleus shines his horns. In fact, he takes care of them better than anything else in his life. They're a part of the royal look, which is one reason why he takes such good care of them. The main reason, though? He thinks they look pretty all shiny. He's a dragon, after all, he likes shiny things a lot.
Y - Yuck: Answered Here
Z - Zzz: He sleeps like a corpse. Just completely stiff and still, even if you're sleeping beside him. He just doesn't move at all. He also sometimes sleeps with his eyes open? Very unsettling, that Malleus.
What are your thoughts on Jon-Bran-Tyrion & their relationship in TWoW & ADoS?
I have read that in GRRM original-idea [?] Jon was to rival Tyrion [because of their love over Arya] as well as Bran for the sake of Northern Power [& Arya apparently too, but not in the same sense??]
[No idea what Bran & Tyrion's relationship was suppose to/could look like, don't think GRRM has mention smth]
That being said, I can get behind Tyrion vs Jon, alright. But Jon vs Bran? How is that suppose to look like/work?
Even if we ignore that they think of each other fondly & miss each other, and that I don't see a reason why this would change all of a sudden... Or that Jon will likely gain the support of the North in TWoW, since he rather fit the "perfect image of an Lord", since he is a able-bodied, traditional [swords-] man, grown & proven as Leader/Lord Commander, has the same education as Robb did, is the eldest Son of Eddard, etc....
[Although I guess Lords like Manderly could prefer Rickon, so they can grap power as his custodian/regents? And the whole being-dead-but-not-anymore-&-what-about-the-oaths thing could be a little tricky & stuff😅] while Bran will likely remain longer behind the Wall, won't be able to rally allies & bannermen [Althouse I have read the speculation of Bran, The Blizzard and The Battle of Ice, my main concern is again the pacing:where Bran's plot seems on overdrive, while Jon's & all those around & in Winterfell are on hold in order for Bran to come back. It's the same problem for me with all those "speculations" about Dany & arriving way to early in Westeros] ...
But the thing that makes it so unbelievable for me is: the fricking age gap?! Put aside their feelings for each other, who is more likely to gain poltical support & all of that, Bran will be like 11 & Jon 18-19? Like... a rivalry between a elementary school student & a high school graduate? 😂🙊
I think for certain that there will be some kind of conflict between Jon and Tyrion. Them shaking hands on the Wall and calling each other friends is foreshadowing a friends to enemies arc, IMO.
As for Jon and Bran, it's hard to see this happening, but I am not ruling out the possibility - meaning that I won't be surprised if it happens. As you mentioned, a Jon/Bran rivalry/bitter estrangement was one of the major parts of the story in the original outline.
By the end of A Game of Thrones,------------------------------------- ---------------------------------g--------------- onto the iron throne with a bit----------------premature death, Bran sits free.--Yet his seat is hardly a comfortable one. In the North, Jon Snow is his bitter enemy. Beyond the narrow sea, Daenerys Stormborn prepares her invasion and on the far side of the Wall, the others are watching with cold dead eyes and gathering their strength.
Can this still happen? I think so. I have always said that GRRM likes his themes of dysfunctional families, conflict among family members and the human heart in conflict with itself and again, I don't see why the Starks should be the exception.
But I think it is a mistake to generalize about “the Westerlings,” just as it would be to generalize about “the Lannisters.” Members of the same family have very different characters, desires, and ways of looking at the world… and there are secrets within families as well.
GRRM SSM, May 01, 2001
The reason Sansa even exists as a character in the first place is because he wanted family conflict among the Starks.
Arya was one of the first characters created. Sansa came about as a total opposite b/c too many of the Stark family members were getting along and families aren’t like that.
Why would Jon and Bran have a rivalry? That I cannot speculate on, yet. We still have a lot of story to cover. But in the next book, my speculation is that both Jon and Bran would have changed a lot.
Bran is the current Lord of Winterfell/Heir to the North/Robb's Heir and King in the North. Robb's decree legitimizing Jon Stark could be a possible issue between them.
GRRM has said that death and resurrection changes a person and Jon is going to be spending time in a wolf. A resurrected Jon Snow coming back more wolfish and more hungry. Remember this?
He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade. A hunger … he could feel it. It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought. - Jon, ASoS
GRRM ties in his desire for Winterfell to a deep hunger that then connects to Ghost - his hunger for Winterfell intermingling with Ghost's hunger...
Remember the kings in the North of yore, like Ice Eyes. I doubt Jon Stark is going to hold back much. He's going to be doing some really messed up stuff.
Meanwhile, Bran's heavily involved in the magical stuff beyond the wall. Has connections to Bloodraven, the Children of the forest, can influence timelines (Hodor), unearth past truths and will be one of the most powerful greenseers. Blood sacrifice and human sacrifice is a big part of the dark magic of the north. Maybe they fight over how to defeat the Others? I think Bran's connection to the children of the forest is how they win again this time around - and his relationship with Jon suffers because of that?
Bran ends up King on the Iron Throne and Jon Snow ends up in the lands beyond the wall - just the opposite of what we would expect for these two characters considering where they are now and what we know of them (R+L=J) etc. How does this happen?
Anyways, according to GRRM, TWoW is a very dark book and if there is a Jon-Bran rivalry, we may see the seeds of it being planted in this book.
There are a lot of dark chapters right now in the book that I’m writing,” he said during a Q&A at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, according to Entertainment Weekly. “It is called The Winds of Winter, and I’ve been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming. Winter is the time when things die, and cold and ice and darkness fill the world, so this is not going to be the happy feel-good that people may be hoping for. Some of the characters [are] in very dark places.”
This is why I find all the Dark!Dany stuff slightly hilarious. Is Dany going to do things that go against the Geneva conventions (lol) in the next book? Yeah, I think so. She is going to come back from her sojourn at Vaes Dothrak and be like I have had it with these effing slavers and go all Aegon the Conqueror on them (About time I say, she should have done it a while ago). But I am pretty damn sure most of our characters are going to become darker in the next book. Tyrion is already on a downward spiral, Jon will surely go on a rampage against the Boltons, Bran most probably eating Jojen paste over there and learning dark magic, getting taught by Bloodraven, Sansa participating in the slow poisoning of her little cousin in the Vale and have you read Arya's Mercy chapter? That stuff is dark.
As for the rest, I think we should ignore the age gap like GRRM is planning on doing ( GRRM sees his young people as adults anyway - "Arya has the experiences of a 40 year old, If a 12 year old has to conquer the world then so be it" etc.) and I do think he will include some time gaps in the next two books allowing for travel etc. I am pretty sure Arya will end the books at 14.
Bran, Dany and Arya's plots have to be in overdrive in the next book out of necessity. Bran has to advance a lot in his plot, be used to build up the Others as a big threat, give us more info about the Children, Bloodraven, what is actually happening, Hodor etc. - there's just so much stuff here that GRRM has to write. Same with Dany. Dany has to wind up in Meereen, land in Westeros and start her campaign. Same with Arya. I think that's why they will get the most chapters, and time in the next book.
