Gilded Cage
Tom Riddle x Y/N, one shot
Synopsis: Bound by a freak magical accident to the soul of the brilliant and cold Tom Riddle, a girl spent her childhood as his invisible shadow and most precious secret; now, as Tom’s power grows and her ghostly form begins to fade, he will stop at nothing—defying death, morality, and the laws of magic—to anchor her to his world forever.
Warning: Dark Romance, Violence and Blood, Child Abuse (background), Moral Ambiguity, Manipulation, Grief and Trauma
The London market was thick with the smell of damp earth and rot, a grey morning that mirrored the drab walls of Wool’s Orphanage. Seven-year-old Tom Riddle walked with a focused, solitary gait, his hands buried in the pockets of a coat that was two sizes too large. He had been sent on an errand, a task he performed with a silent, resentful efficiency.
As he turned a sharp corner away from the main thoroughfare, he saw a man. The man was breathless, his movements jagged with a panicked sort of cruelty. He hauled a heavy, stained burlap sack toward a pile of refuse, dumping it onto the cold cobblestones with a sickening, heavy thud. Before the man retreated into the shadows, he drew back a heavy boot and delivered a final, vicious kick to the centre of the bundle.
Tom stopped. He did not call out; he did not run for help. He stood like a statue, watching.
The impact caused the coarse neck of the sack to spill open. A small girl, no older than Tom himself, slumped forward. She was a map of tragedy—her skin a mottled landscape of deep purples and angry reds, her small frame broken by a violence Tom only understood as a tool for the strong.
Slowly, painfully, she lifted her head. Her eyes, clouded with a haze of pain and fading life, searched the empty alley until they locked onto his.
Tom looked back. He didn't see a person; he saw a flickering candle. He watched the way her small fingers twitched against the grit of the pavement, and how her breath hitched, rattling in a chest that could no longer support the weight of the world. She stared at him, her gaze a silent, dying plea for a mercy he did not possess.
He watched until the light in her eyes finally extinguished, leaving them hollow and fixed on nothing. He watched until her last breath escaped in a thin, ghostly wisp.
Once the stillness was absolute, Tom didn't blink. He didn't feel the sting of tears or the weight of guilt. He simply turned away. He adjusted the collar of his coat against the biting wind and continued his walk back to the orphanage, his footsteps steady and rhythmic, leaving the girl and the sack behind in the dirt.
The iron gates of Wool’s Orphanage creaked shut behind him, but Tom didn’t hear them. He climbed the stairs, his shoes clicking rhythmically against the wood, and bypassed the other children in the hallway. They avoided his gaze as they always did, sensing the coldness that clung to him like a second skin.
He entered his small, sparse room and shut the door. The click of the latch was the only sound in the tiny space.
Tom sat on the edge of his narrow bed, his back perfectly straight. He didn’t drop his head into his hands; he didn't tremble. Instead, he simply existed in the stillness. The image of the girl in the sack flickered in his mind for a brief second—the way her eyes had been so wide, the way the purple bruises had looked like ink spilled on parchment—but he didn't find it upsetting. He found it curious.
Death was so quiet. It was a cessation of movement, a finality that he found oddly orderly.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, stolen thimble he had taken from the market earlier in the week. He placed it on his bedside table, aligning it perfectly with the edge of the wood. His mind moved on to his evening studies, his lessons, and the way the shadows were beginning to stretch across the floorboards.
To Tom, the girl was already a ghost of a memory, a discarded thing in a city full of discarded things. He sat in the gathering dark, perfectly calm, waiting for the dinner bell, unaware that the air in the room was beginning to grow unnaturally cold.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
The walls of Wool’s Orphanage were porous things, letting in the damp chill of London and the muffled sounds of crying children, but lately, they had begun to feel thick. For three days, a prickle had lived at the base of Tom’s neck. It was a phantom weight, the sensation of a gaze so heavy it felt like a physical touch. He would whip his head around in the dining hall, eyes narrowed and predatory, only to find the other orphans staring into their thin gruel. He would turn quickly in the corridors, but the shadows remained empty.
By the fourth day, the irritation had boiled into a cold, sharp rage.
Tom retreated to his room and threw the bolt. The afternoon light was a sickly grey, casting long, skeletal fingers across his floorboards. He stood in the center of the room, his small chest heaving slightly.
"I know you are here," he said, his voice low and jagged. "Show yourself. I will not be trifled with."
Silence met him—the heavy, oppressive silence of the house.
Tom closed his eyes. He didn't have a wand, and he didn't have a name for the power that lived in his blood, but he knew how to pull on it. He reached deep into that cold well inside himself and commanded the air to reveal. He pushed his will outward, a wave of invisible force that made the dust motes dance frantically and the windowpane rattle in its frame.
The air shimmered. It rippled like water disturbed by a stone, and suddenly, a shape coalesced.
A sharp gasp fractured the quiet.
A girl stood before him, but only for a heartbeat. As soon as her form solidified, she scrambled backward, her feet never quite touching the floorboards. She moved with a strange, fluid grace, passing through the solid wood of his closet door as if it were nothing more than mist.
Tom’s eyes widened, but he did not move. He crossed the room in three strides and yanked the closet door open.
She was there, huddled beneath his two spare shirts. She was crouching, her knees pulled to her chest, her head tucked low to hide her face. But Tom saw enough. He saw the curve of her jaw and the specific shade of her hair.
The market. The sack. The rattling, final breath.
The memory surged in his mind—the smell of the refuse and the cold indifference he had felt as her eyes went dark. But here she was, transformed. The girl in the alley had been a skeletal, broken thing, a map of bruises and shattered bone. This girl looked... whole. Her skin was pale but luminous, her cheeks held a soft fullness, and her limbs were no longer twisted by violence. She looked healthy, save for the fact that she was translucent, glowing with a soft, pearlescent light.
"Come out," he commanded. He didn't ask; he dictated.
She flinched, pulling further into the shadows of the small wardrobe.
"I said, come out."
He softened his voice just a fraction—not out of kindness, but out of a calculated need to lure her. It took several long minutes of him standing there, a silent, dark sentinel, before she finally moved. She didn't walk; she drifted, floating inches above the floor until she stood in the center of the room, bathed in the fading sunlight.
"Why are you following me?" Tom asked, his eyes scanning her ghostly form. "What are you?"
She looked at him then, her eyes wide and hauntingly familiar, though the glassiness of death was gone. She looked puzzled, her brow furrowing as she reached out a hand that shimmered like a heat haze.
"I don't know," she whispered. Her voice sounded like wind through dry leaves. "I don't remember... anything. Just you. I woke up in the dark, and your face was the only thing I could see."
Tom stepped toward her, and instinctively, she drifted back. "You’ve been stalking me for days. You are a nuisance. Go back to wherever you came from."
A look of profound sadness washed over her features. She looked down at her hands, which were beginning to fade at the edges. She tried to move toward the door, to drift through the wall, but as she reached the threshold, she was jerked back as if an invisible tether had been snapped taut.
She let out a soft, frustrated sigh. "I can't leave, Tom."
He stiffened at the sound of his name on her lips. "Don't call me that. And what do you mean, you can't leave?"
"I've tried," she said, her voice trembling. "I go to the gates, I go to the street... and I am pulled back. I am bound to you. I don't know why, and I don't know how, but wherever you go, I am forced to follow."
Tom looked at her—this girl he had watched die, this witness to his own coldness. She was a tethered spirit, a living poltergeist tied to his very soul. He felt a flicker of something—not guilt, but a strange, possessive curiosity.
"I don't care about your memories or your confusion," Tom snapped, his voice cutting through the chilly air of the room like a blade. "You are a distraction. I have no use for a lingering shadow that stares while I sleep. Leave me. Now."
She flinched as if the words had physical weight, her luminous form flickering like a candle caught in a draft. Her lips parted as if to protest, to explain the invisible tether that felt like a lead weight in her chest, but one look at Tom’s dark, uncompromising expression silenced her.
A wave of profound hurt washed over her features, making her glow dim to a dull, bruised grey. Then, with a soft, shuddering exhale, she didn't move toward the door or the window. Instead, she simply dissolved. The pearlescent light retracted into her center until she vanished entirely from his sight.
Tom stood still, his eyes scanning the empty air. He could no longer see the curve of her shoulder or the way her translucent hair caught the dim light, but the room didn't feel empty. The air remained unnaturally cold, and that prickle at the base of his neck—the heavy sense of being watched—remained.
She had obeyed his command to leave his presence, but she hadn't gone far. He could feel her drifting somewhere within the stone walls of the orphanage, a silent, invisible observer tucked away in the rafters or the shadows of the hallway, bound to the rhythm of his heart whether he permitted it or not.
He sat back down at his desk, picking up a book, but for the first time in his life, the silence of his room felt crowded.
That afternoon in the dusty light of Room 27 was Tom’s first interaction with Y/N, the moment the girl from the sack became the ghost in his shadow.
In the years that followed, the orphanage grew smaller, but Tom grew larger. He moved through the world with a terrifying, quiet gravity, and Y/N was the moon that circled his dark planet. At first, he viewed her with the same clinical detachment he gave his stolen thimbles and yo-yos—she was a tool, a weapon that didn't require a wand.
When Mrs. Cole or the matrons sought to "discipline" him for his coldness or the strange things that happened in his presence, Tom would simply look at the corner of the room. He didn't have to speak. Y/N would feel his pulse quicken, feel the sharp edge of his resentment, and she would act.
He told himself he was merely using her. He watched with a smirk as the Matron’s keys vanished from her hip, or as the woman’s tea turned to ice the moment she touched the cup. Y/N had a particular distaste for the woman; she didn't need Tom’s orders to breathe a freezing frost down the Matron’s neck or to slam a door just as the woman passed. It was a symphony of chaos, and Tom was the conductor.
But as the years bled into one another, the lines of the contract blurred. Tom found himself seeking her out, not for a task, but for the silence they shared. She was the only thing in the world that knew the truth of his power, the only witness to his rise who couldn't—or wouldn't—judge him.
By the time Tom was eleven, his indifference had curdled into something far more dangerous: possessiveness.
He didn't just want her around; he required her presence. If she drifted too far down the hallway to watch the other children play, he would feel a hot, restrictive ache in his chest—the physical manifestation of their bond—and he would call her back with a mental snap of his fingers. He hated the way she looked at the others with a lingering, ghostly curiosity.
She belonged in his room. She belonged in his shadow.
He would sit at his desk, his homework spread before him, and watch her out of the corner of his eye as she practiced making herself solid enough to touch the objects on his shelf. He never told her that he had watched her die. That secret remained locked behind his teeth, a foundational stone of his ownership over her. He had seen her at her most broken; therefore, he was the only one who could truly claim her wholeness.
To the world, Tom Riddle was a brilliant, solitary boy. To Y/N, he was the center of the universe. And to Tom, Y/N was no longer a haunting—she was his first, and most precious, piece of property.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
The platform at King’s Cross was a cacophony of steam and sound, a sensory assault that made Tom’s jaw tighten. He stood among the crowd, a small, dark figure in a sea of vibrant robes and screeching owls. But his stillness was a lie. Internally, he was braced against the frantic energy of the girl beside him.
Y/N was practically vibrating. She wasn’t walking; she was a blur of translucent light, darting toward a stack of trunks only to be yanked back by the invisible cord that connected them. Every time she reached the limit, Tom felt a sharp, electric tug at the center of his chest. It was a physical warning, a reminder that their souls were stitched together with jagged thread.
"Stop it," Tom hissed, his voice barely audible over the whistle of the train. "You are making me look like a fool."
Y/N drifted back to his shoulder, her eyes wide and reflecting the scarlet sheen of the Hogwarts Express. "Tom, look! The owls—they can see me! One of them blinked at me!"
"I don't care about the livestock," he snapped, gripping the handle of his trunk until his knuckles turned white. "If you don't compose yourself, I will find a way to bind you to the floorboards of the orphanage and leave you there."
It was a hollow threat—he knew, and she knew, that the distance would likely kill him before he even reached Scotland—but it served its purpose. She lowered herself until her feet hovered just above the grime of the platform, though her fingers still twitched with the urge to touch the magical steam.
The trouble began on the stairs of the carriage.
As Tom began the ascent, a group of older students pushed past, their laughter booming in the narrow space. One of them, a boisterous boy with a heavy trunk, swung his luggage dangerously close to Tom’s head.
Instinctively, Y/N surged forward to shove the boy back. Her protective streak was a wild, unrefined thing, and in her haste, she forgot the tether. She flew past the limit with the force of a gale.
Tom didn't just stumble; he was launched.
The cord snapped taut, and Tom felt as though a hook had been driven into his heart. He was jerked upward, his feet leaving the metal steps as he was dragged toward Y/N’s shimmering form. He collided with the boy in front of him, sending them both sprawling onto the floor of the train in a heap of limbs and robes.
"Watch it, first-year!" the boy grumbled, shoving Tom off.
Tom scrambled to his feet, his face flushed with a rare, hot embarrassment. His eyes found Y/N immediately. She was hovering near the ceiling of the corridor, looking down at him with a mix of horror and sheepishness.
I'm sorry, her voice drifted into his mind, no longer a whisper of leaves but a direct, echoing thought. He was going to hit you.
Tom didn't answer with words. He reached into that cold space where their bond lived and pulled. It was a mental lash, a command for her to return to his side. Y/N gasped as she was dragged down from the ceiling, her form flickering violently until she was tucked into the shadow behind his heels.
"You will stay within my reach," Tom thought at her, his mental voice dripping with venom. "You will not move unless I permit it. You will not breathe unless I allow the air into your lungs. If you humiliate me again, I will ensure the next seven years are a slow, agonizing death for us both."
He found an empty compartment at the very end of the train and slid the door shut. He didn't sit; he stood by the window, staring at the blurred reflection of the girl standing behind him.
"This is a world of rules," Tom said aloud, his voice regaining its calm, terrifying cadence. "I intend to learn every one of them so that I may break them. You are no longer a girl, Y/N. You are a secret. My secret."
Y/N didn't flinch. Instead, she tilted her head, a small, knowing smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. She didn't look like a prisoner in a golden cage; she looked like the only person in the world who knew the punchline to a joke Tom was still trying to tell. She drifted closer, her pearlescent glow reflecting in the dark glass of his eyes, and reached out a hand. Her fingers stopped just short of his sleeve, the air between them humming with the static of their bond.
"I'm your only friend, Tom," she whispered, her voice light and teasing, entirely unfazed by his dark proclamation. "And you're stuck with me. Literally. And you don't scare me anymore."
Tom didn't snap back. He didn't even look at her. He simply turned to watch the London skyline disappear through the window, his expression unreadable. To anyone else, he looked cold, indifferent, and solitary. But he didn't pull away from her shimmering presence, and he didn't command her to vanish back into the shadows.
"I don't need friends," he replied, though the venom was gone from his tone, replaced by a weary sort of acceptance. "I need shadows that know their place."
"My place is right here," she countered, drifting even closer until she was almost leaning against his shoulder.
Tom let out a breath that was almost a sigh—a sound he would never admit was one of relief. He watched her reflection in the glass as she began to marvel at the moving clouds, her amusement bubbling over in soft, silent giggles. He told himself he kept her close because she was a tool, a secret weapon, a piece of property. But as the train sped toward Hogwarts, he found that the crowded compartment felt just a little bit more tolerable with her translucent weight anchored to his soul.
The Great Hall was a cathedral of light and magic, but Tom walked through it as if he were already its master. Above him, Y/N was a silent whirlwind of translucent joy, her eyes wide as she took in the thousands of floating candles. She dived through a banner, laughing when the velvet didn't even ripple, and circled Tom’s head like a halo of pearlescent mist.
Tom remained a statue of indifference. He didn't look up, even as his name was called.
He sat on the stool, the heavy, tattered leather of the Sorting Hat dropping over his eyes. For a moment, the world went dark.
“Ah,” a small, gravelly voice whispered in his ear. “A thirsty mind. Plenty of courage, too... and a thirst to prove yourself. But what is this? You haven’t come alone, have you, Tom Riddle?”
Tom stiffened, his hand gripping the edge of the stool. In the darkness of the hat, he felt a flicker of movement. He tilted his head just enough to see Y/N through the frayed hem of the fabric. She was hovering inches away, her face full of pride, her eyes fixed on him with unwavering devotion.
The Hat went quiet for a long time. It wasn't talking to Tom anymore. He felt the brim of the hat shift, almost as if it were looking at the ghost girl. Finally, the Hat sighed, a sound of profound pity that made Tom’s blood run cold.
“SLYTHERIN!” it shouted to the hall.
Tom stood, his expression composed, and began the walk to the green-and-silver table. Usually, this was the moment Y/N would be pestering him, poking at his ear, or making fun of the older students' ridiculous hats. But as he sat down, he realized the air behind him had gone still.
Y/N had tucked herself into his shadow, her form so dim she was nearly invisible. She didn't look at the enchanted ceiling. She didn't look at him. She was a silent, faded stain on the stone floor.
Tom’s triumph felt suddenly hollow. He ignored the polite applause of his new housemates, his eyes fixed on the empty space beside him where she should have been hovering. He wanted her to be his shadow, yes—but this version of her, this hollowed-out quiet, felt like a door slamming shut in his face.
The Slytherin boys’ dormitory was cold and smelled of lake water. Tom had arrived before the others, claiming the bed furthest from the door. He locked the door with a flick of his fingers, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on the corner.
"Come out," he said. His voice was soft, lacking its usual edge.
Y/N coalesced slowly. She looked smaller than she had this morning, her edges blurred and fraying like old lace. She wouldn't meet his eyes.
"You were quiet," Tom said, stepping toward her. When she flinched, he stopped. He forced his features to relax, his voice dropping to a tone that was almost... gentle. "The Hat spoke to you, didn't it? Tell me what it said."
Y/N trembled, her form flickering. "I’m scared, Tom."
"Tell me," he repeated, his possessiveness flaring. "I will not have secrets kept from me in my own room."
She looked up then, her eyes shimmering with ghostly tears. "It warned me. It said that if the professors saw me—if they knew I was bound to you—the Ministry would come. They would take me away, Tom. They don't allow... things like me. Especially not Muggles. They’d find a way to sever the tether."
Tom’s jaw tightened. The thought of the Ministry touching his property, breaking his bond, ignited a cold, murderous fury in his chest.
"They will not touch you. I will ensure it," the words vibrating with a quiet, lethal promise. "The Ministry is a collection of fossils and fools. They see what I allow them to see, and I allow them to see nothing."
He sat on the edge of his four-poster bed, the green velvet curtains casting a submerged, emerald light over his pale skin. He looked at Y/N, whose form was still shivering, her pearlescent light dimming into a sickly grey. It grated on him—this display of weakness. He needed her sharp. He needed her capable.
"Enough of this," he said, his voice regaining its transactional clarity. "If you are to remain hidden, you must become more than a hovering nuisance. You must master the physical. If you cannot touch the world, you cannot defend yourself—or me."
He gestured vaguely toward the heavy leather trunk at the foot of his bed, which stood open, his neatly folded school robes spilling out.
"Use the magic I gave you," he commanded. It was a lie, of course—the magic was hers, born of her death and her tether—but he liked the framing. It made the power feel like a gift he had bestowed upon her. "Make yourself dense. Move my clothes to the chest box. I want them organized by weight."
Y/N’s flickering slowed. She looked at the pile of heavy wool and then back at Tom. The profound, tragic fear in her eyes began to recede, replaced by a familiar, flickering spark of annoyance.
She drifted toward the trunk, her feet finally making a soft, ghostly thud as she allowed herself to become heavy enough to graze the floorboards. She reached for a robe, her fingers passing through the fabric twice before she let out a frustrated huff and concentrated. With a sudden surge of effort, her hand solidified, and she hoisted the robe into the air.
"I know what you’re doing, you know," she murmured, her voice like the rustle of silk. She tossed the robe into the wardrobe with more force than necessary. "You aren't 'training' me, Tom. You’re just too lazy to unpack your own trunk."
Tom didn't look up from the book he had pulled onto his lap, but the corner of his mouth quirked—a rare, sharp movement that was the closest he ever came to a genuine smile.
"I am a prefect in the making," he replied smoothly. "I have much more important things to do than fold socks. Besides, you need the practice. You’re still leaking light at the edges."
Y/N rolled her eyes, a gesture so human it almost made Tom forget she was a corpse he’d met in a gutter. She picked up a stack of silver-trimmed ties, her translucent fingers tightening around them.
"You’re a tyrant," she whispered, though there was no heat in it.
"I am a realist," Tom corrected.
As she worked, moving back and forth between the trunk and the wardrobe, the oppressive chill of the room began to lift. The "tether" in Tom’s chest settled into a comfortable, low-level hum. He watched her from the periphery of his vision—his shadow, his ghost, his secret.
She was right, of course. He was using her. But as he watched her small, glowing hands meticulously arrange his things, he realized that the Hat’s warning hadn't just angered him—it had terrified him. Not because he feared the Ministry, but because for a split second, he had imagined the silence of a room that was actually empty.
He turned a page of his book, the sound crisp in the quiet dormitory.
"When you're finished with the robes," he said, his tone back to its cold, imperious baseline, "the books need to be alphabetized. And don't think I didn't notice you hiding that stolen quill in the rafters. Bring it here."
Y/N let out a long, dramatic sigh that made the candles flicker, but she didn't stop working. She stayed in the light of his emerald curtains, a permanent fixture in a world that would never understand why Tom Riddle never felt alone.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
Years later
The wind at the height of the Astronomy Tower didn't feel like air to Y/N; it felt like a physical embrace.
She wasn't bound by the clumsy physics of the living anymore. With a sharp, joyful kick, she launched herself away from the stone battlements, soaring out over the Black Lake. For a few glorious minutes, she forgot she was a ghost. She forgot the smell of damp earth and the heavy weight of the tether that usually anchored her to Tom’s side. Here, in the open sky, she was a streak of pearlescent light against the bruising clouds of a Scottish afternoon.
She dove toward the water, her fingers grazing the surface—not breaking it, but sending a shimmer through the reflection of the castle. She had become an expert at her own invisibility. Over the years, she had learned to weave her own ghostly essence into the ambient magic of Hogwarts. She layered concealing spells like fine silk, masking her glow until she was nothing more than a trick of the light or a sudden, unexplained chill.
She spent an hour drifting near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, watching a pair of Hufflepuffs whisper over a forbidden stash of firewhiskey. She hovered behind a gargoyle, eavesdropping on Professor Slughorn’s hushed conversation with a Ministry official about "extraordinary potential."
Tom will want to hear about that, she thought, a small smile playing on her lips.
Suddenly, the tether in her chest gave a sharp, insistent tug. It wasn't the violent jerk of their childhood; it was a rhythmic, pulsing pull—a summons. Tom was in his private chambers, and he wanted her back. Now.
She didn't grumble. Instead, she banked hard to the left, flying back toward the castle with a speed that made her edges blur. She slipped through the stone walls of the Head Boy’s suite, phasing through the heavy oak door as if it were a shadow.
The room was warm, lit by a crackling fire and the low glow of a green-shaded lamp. Tom was sitting at his desk, surrounded by maps and ancient, leather-bound volumes. He didn't look up as she coalesced, but his hand—the one holding a silver quill—stilled.
"You're late," he said. His voice had deepened over the years, losing its boyish reediness for a smooth, velvet authority.
"I'm exactly when I meant to be," Y/N countered, drifting over his shoulder to look at his notes. She let herself become solid enough to feel the warmth of the fire. "Slughorn is worried about the Ministry's new 'Internal Security' audit. He was sweating, Tom. It was quite pathetic."
She began to rattle off the secrets she had gathered—the whispers in the corridors, the names of the students who were beginning to fear him, and the exact location of a hidden passage she’d discovered behind a tapestry on the fourth floor. She spoke with a bright, eager energy, her translucent face glowing with the pride of a job well done.
Tom finally turned in his chair. He looked at her—really looked at her. In the firelight, she looked less like a phantom and more like a girl, her skin radiant, her eyes wide and full of a devotion that no living creature had ever offered him.
"You were outside again," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "I felt you over the lake. You were flying too high, Y/N. Too fast."
"The concealing spells were perfect, Tom. No one saw—"
"I saw," he interrupted, standing up. He was a head taller than her now, a figure of dark elegance. He stepped into her space, his expression stern. "If a stray spell hit you, or if a passing owl disrupted your focus... I cannot protect you if you are a mile away from my reach. You are careless with your existence."
It was a scolding, sharp and familiar, but Y/N didn't flinch. She looked up at him, tilting her head with a shy, knowing smile. She let her form soften, her gaze dropping to the silver badge on his chest before looking back into his dark, searching eyes.
"I just wanted to feel the wind," she whispered, her voice a soft, melodic hum. "I wanted to see the world so I could bring it back to you."
The cold, hard line of Tom’s jaw wavered. He stared at her, the lecture dying in his throat. He reached out, his hand hovering just an inch from her cheek. He couldn't feel the warmth of her skin, but he could feel the static of her magic, the vibration of the soul that was literally stitched to his own.
His expression crumbled, just for a second, into something desperately human. He didn't see a tool or a secret weapon. He saw the only person who had ever truly known him—the only one who had watched him become a monster and decided to stay.
"You are a plague on my focus," he murmured, his voice lacking any real bite. He let his hand drop, but his gaze remained fixed on hers, softer than he would ever admit to another living soul. "Stay here. In the shadows. I have found a text about the deep foundations of the school... I want to show you."
He sat back down, and Y/N drifted into the seat beside him, her shoulder overlapping with his. Tom Riddle, the boy who would be King, reached out and adjusted the lamp so the light fell across the pages for her to see, too. He wanted to rule the world, yes—but as he looked at the girl who lived in his shadow, he realized he had no intention of doing it alone.
They spent the night in that gilded cage of a room, weaving ambitions out of ink and whispered theories. Y/N had grown remarkably adept at manipulating the world around her. As Tom read, she amused herself by making her magic tangible; she conjured a miniature, ghostly illusion of the Hogwarts castle that floated above the desk, its tiny towers spinning in a slow, ethereal dance. Occasionally, she would brush a solid finger against his hand just to see him twitch—a reminder that she was more than a memory.
As the fire burned low, casting long, skeletal shadows against the stones, the playful air between them shifted. Y/N watched the way the orange light hit the sharp planes of Tom’s face, and the question she had asked a hundred times before rose to the surface of her mind, unbidden.
"Tom?" she asked, her voice small and brittle.
He didn't look up from the parchment, but his quill paused. "Yes?"
"Why was my soul tethered to you?"
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating. Tom’s eyes remained fixed on the Latin script before him, but his mind was elsewhere—back in a damp, rot-scented alleyway in London. He could still see the seven-year-old girl in the burlap sack, the way her life had flickered like a dying candle, and the way he had watched with a cold, predatory curiosity.
He knew the answer. He had always known. It wasn't destiny or a grand magical design. It was a freak accident of a young boy’s uncontrollable, hungry magic. When her soul had tried to flee her broken body, his magic—already warped by his desperate need for possession—had reached out and snagged it. He had caught her like a stray bird and caged her within his own orbit before she could cross the threshold of death.
He had stolen her afterlife before he even knew what a Horcrux was.
But he would never tell her. He looked at her now, seeing the trust in her luminous eyes, the way she leaned into him as if he were her only anchor in a void. If she knew that he was the reason she was trapped, that he was the silent witness to her final, agonizing moments who had done nothing but watch... the tether would become a chain.
"I don't know," he lied, his voice perfectly steady, perfectly hollow. He finally looked at her, his expression a mask of practiced mystery. "Some souls are simply meant to be entwined, Y/N. Perhaps the universe knew I would have use for a shadow like you."
He reached out and, for the first time that night, he placed his hand directly over hers. He couldn't feel her pulse, but he felt the hum of his own magic reflected back at him. It was a secret he would carry to his grave—a foundation of blood and indifference that he would never risk breaking. Not for the world, and certainly not for her.
"Don't dwell on the past," he whispered, his grip tightening just enough for her to feel it. "The 'why' doesn't matter. Only the fact that you are mine."
Y/N searched his face, looking for the truth she sensed was hidden behind his dark irises, but Tom Riddle was a master of his own history. She eventually sighed, leaning her ghostly head against his shoulder, choosing to believe the lie because the alternative was a loneliness she couldn't imagine.
And in the quiet of the Head Boy's room, Tom sat perfectly still, holding onto his ghost, his secret, and his first true piece of property.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
The Slytherin dungeons were a place of cold stone and green-tinted shadows, but Tom’s private prefect chambers were an oasis of controlled silence. The only sound was the rhythmic scratching of his quill against parchment as he finished his Advanced Arithmancy essay. The fire in the hearth crackled, casting a warm glow over his sharp, handsome features.
Without a sound, the air beside him shivered. Y/N appeared, leaning casually against the edge of his heavy oak desk.
She reached out, her fingers—now capable of moving physical matter—idly tracing the spine of one of Tom’s leather-bound books.
"Are you ever going to take me out of this castle, Tom?" she asked, her voice no longer a whisper of wind, but clear and melodic. "Actually out? Hogsmeade, the town... anywhere. I’m tired of being cooped up in the boys' dormitory all the time."
Tom didn't look up from his parchment. "The castle is the safest place for you. Outside, the tether might stretch. I won't risk it."
"It’s not just the boredom," she sighed, drifting a few inches off the floor to sit on the corner of his desk, right over his notes. "I’ve seen... disgusting things in the dorm. Things I’d very much like to forget."
Tom’s quill stopped mid-stroke. A dark blot of ink bloomed on the parchment. He looked up, his dark eyes narrowing into predatory slits. "What things?"
Y/N rolled her eyes, unfazed by the intensity that made most seventh-years tremble. "Oh, please. You know what teenage boys are like. They think they’re being quiet at night, but I have eyes, Tom. And ears. Half of them are jerking off under their silk sheets, and I have to float outside the window and stare at the Giant Squid just to maintain a shred of my dignity."
Tom’s grip on his quill tightened until the wood groaned. A cold, sharp heat flared in his chest—a mixture of disgust and a violent, protective possessiveness. The thought of those "lesser" boys exposing themselves, even unknowingly, in the presence of his spirit was intolerable.
"Which boys?" he asked, his voice dropping into that dangerous, silken register. He leaned forward, attempting to loom over her, to use the physical intimidation that worked so well on the rest of the world.
Y/N didn't flinch. She simply tilted her head, a playful smirk dancing on her lips. She had grown used to his moods, his shadows, and his demands. She knew the monster better than anyone, and she had learned long ago that his bark was far worse than his bite when it came to her.
"I'm not telling you," she said lightheartedly. "You'll just hex them into the hospital wing, and then I'll have to deal with a grumpy Tom for a week."
Tom stared at her, the muscles in his jaw working. He wanted to demand names, to purge the dormitory of anyone who had dared to be "disgusting" near her, but he forced himself to breathe. He remembered the Third Year. He remembered the agonizing month of silence when he had lost his temper and she had "ghosted" him—vanishing into the stone walls of the castle and refusing to manifest, no matter how much he bled his magic into the air to find her. That month had been the most hollow of his life.
He couldn't lose her again.
He sighed, the tension leaving his shoulders, though his eyes remained dark. "You are mine, Y/N. I don't care if they can't see you. The fact remains."
"I know, Tom," she said softly, reaching out. Her hand felt like a cool mist against his cheek, but he leaned into the touch, closing his eyes. "I'm always here. Whether you like it or not."
"I like it," he admitted, his voice barely audible. "But if I catch one of them... I won't be so lenient."
She sighed and floated away in the room.
The silence in the chambers was brittle. Tom watched Y/N as she drifted aimlessly, her translucent form passing through the heavy velvet curtains and out again, a restless shimmer of light. She didn't complain again, but her sigh echoed with the weight of centuries, though she had only been dead for ten years.
Tom looked down at his books. Knowledge was his greatest pursuit, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to focus when the air in the room felt charged with her melancholy. He knew the risk. Hogwarts was a sanctuary, but it was also a prison of eyes. The Grey Lady, the Bloody Baron, the Fat Friar—they were everywhere, and should they spot a spirit tethered to a student, a spirit that didn't belong to the castle's history, the questions would begin. And Dumbledore... Dumbledore was always looking for a reason to peel back the layers of Tom’s life.
But he couldn't stand the way she was flickering, her light dimming with every passing minute of boredom.
"Fine," Tom said, the word snapping like a twig in the quiet.
Y/N stopped mid-air, spinning around to face him. Her eyes were wide. "Fine? Fine what?"
"We will go," Tom said, closing his Arithmancy text with a decisive thud. He stood up, smoothing the front of his perfectly pressed robes. "I have a late-night pass for the grounds. We will go as far as the Black Lake. But you must stay within my shadow. If I sense another spirit, you vanish immediately. Am I understood?"
Y/N didn't respond with words. Instead, the room erupted into motion.
She let out a joyous, melodic laugh that seemed to vibrate the very stones of the dungeon. She flew across the room, a streak of pearlescent light, circling the chandelier until the crystals chimed against one another. Her energy flared, her form becoming so dense and bright that she looked almost solid, almost alive.
Before Tom could warn her to settle down, she was in his space.
She didn't just drift near him; she threw her arms around his neck. For a spirit, she possessed a startling amount of strength when she was happy. Tom felt the sensation of her embrace—it wasn't warm like a human's, but it was electric. It was like being submerged in a cold, rushing stream, a million tiny needle-pricks of magic dancing across his skin.
He stiffened instinctively, his breath hitching. He wasn't a man who enjoyed being touched, but this was different. This was his magic reflecting back at him. He reached up, his hands hovering over her back, feeling the resistance of her form.
"Thank you, Tom! Thank you!" she whispered against his ear, her voice buzzing in his brain.
He didn't pull away. For a fleeting second, he allowed his eyes to close, grounding himself in the strange, chilly weight of her. His possessiveness flared again, but this time it wasn't a snarl; it was a silent promise. He would give her the world if it meant she stayed this vibrant, this tethered to him.
"Stay close," he muttered, his voice sounding uncharacteristically thick. "If you wander, I’m locking the door next time."
"I won't," she promised, pulling back just enough to beam at him, her face radiant. "I’ll be your shadow. I promise."
Tom adjusted his prefect badge, his expression returning to its mask of cold composure, though his heart was thudding a rhythm he couldn't quite control. He opened the door to his chambers, stepping out into the darkened corridor of the Slytherin common room, with Y/N invisible but pressed tightly to his side, her presence a cold flame guiding him into the night.
The walk from the castle to Hogsmeade was a study in contrasts. Tom moved like a shadow, his gait measured and his eyes constantly scanning the perimeter of the path, while Y/N was a firework. As soon as the village lights flickered into view—yellow and warm against the blue-black of the Scottish highlands—she seemed to vibrate with a kinetic, restless magic.
"Stay within five paces," Tom hissed, his voice barely a murmur, but his hand was white-knuckled inside his cloak, gripping his wand as if he could use it to anchor her to the earth.
Y/N didn't hear him, or perhaps she chose not to. She was a streak of silver in the dark. As they entered the main thoroughfare, she dove toward a stall selling enchanted sweets. She didn't just look; she passed through the wooden counter, her form shimmering through the jars of Acid Pops and Chocolate Frogs.
A group of villagers stood huddled near the Three Broomsticks, laughing loudly. Y/N, emboldened by the crisp night air, flew straight through the center of them. The laughter died instantly. A woman shivered violently, rubbing her arms.
"Dreadful chill," the woman muttered, looking around with a confused frown. "Felt like someone walked over my grave."
"Y/N," Tom warned, his heart hammering against his ribs.
He hated this. He hated the lack of control. In his chambers, she was his; here, she was a part of the world again, a wild thing that he could only loosely leash. He could feel the tether in his chest—it felt like a thin, vibrating wire of ice that grew tauter the further she drifted. If she went too far, he feared the wire would snap, leaving him hollow and her lost to the ether.
But then he saw her face.
She was hovering near a florist's stall, though the flowers were mostly dried husks in the winter cold. She was spinning slowly in the air, her arms outstretched, her eyes closed as she breathed in the smells of woodsmoke, ale, and pine. She looked so achingly alive that for a moment, the memory of the burlap sack and the muddy alley felt like a lie.
She looked happy. Truly, purely happy.
Tom stood in the shadows of an alleyway, watching her. He ignored the suspicious glance of a passing wizard. His entire world was narrowed down to that one luminous figure dancing between the stalls. He felt a strange, painful contraction in his throat. He told himself it was the cold, or perhaps the frustration of her disobedience, but deep down, he knew it was the realization that he would do anything to keep that expression on her face.
He would build her a kingdom of ghosts if she asked for it.
Y/N suddenly zoomed back to him, her face flushed with ghostly color. She didn't stop until she was inches from him, her energy buzzing so loudly he could hear it.
"Did you see, Tom? The lights! And the people! I forgot how much... how much noise there is!"
"You're being reckless," he said, though the bite was gone from his tone. He reached out, his hand passing through the space where her shoulder was, catching only a hint of her resistance. "The tether is pulling. If we stay much longer, I won't be able to hold you."
"Just a little longer," she pleaded, her eyes shining. "Let’s go to the edge of the woods. I want to see the trees without the castle walls in the way."
Tom looked at the dark treeline and then back at her. The risk was astronomical. If she vanished into the woods, he might never find her in the dark. But the way she looked at him—with a trust he knew he didn't deserve—broke his resolve.
"To the trees," he conceded, his voice low. "And then we return. No arguments."
She beamed, and for a second, the darkness of the town seemed to retreat. She didn't fly ahead this time; she stayed right at his shoulder, her invisible hand tucked into the crook of his arm as they walked toward the forest, a boy and his beautiful, broken secret.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
A few days later
The scratching of quills against parchment was the only sound in the Advanced Arithmancy classroom, a rhythmic, hypnotic pulse that Tom usually found soothing. He sat with his back perfectly straight, his own quill moving with surgical precision. But then, the world tilted.
It wasn't a sound, but a sensation—a jagged, white-hot shriek that tore through the center of his chest. The tether, usually a low-frequency hum, suddenly vibrated with such violence that Tom’s hand jerked, sending a thick blot of ink across his perfect equations.
His heart hammered against his ribs, not with fear for himself, but with a sudden, sickening vacuum where Y/N’s presence usually resided.
"Mr. Riddle?" Professor Vector started, noticing him rise abruptly.
Tom didn't answer. He didn't need to. A commotion erupted in the corridor outside—shouts of alarm and the heavy thud of running feet. He moved with the grace of a predator, his Head Boy badge catching the light as he shouldered past his classmates.
"Make way," he commanded, his voice a low, dangerous snap that cleared the hallway faster than any spell.
He followed the psychic trail of agony to the second-floor girl's lavatory. The air outside the door tasted of ozone and ancient dust. Tom stepped inside, slamming the door shut and engaging the locking charm in one fluid motion.
The scene was a wreck. Water hissed from a cracked pipe, pooling on the floor. In the center of the room, a younger boy lay sprawled against the porcelain sinks, his eyes rolled back, his breathing shallow and rattling. Tom didn't even check the boy's pulse. His eyes searched the shadows, the rafters, the mirrors.
"Y/N?" he hissed.
The room was empty. But the tether was screaming. It was no longer a pull; it was a frantic, fading signal. He closed his eyes, reaching into the cold void of his own magic, and felt her. She wasn't in the castle. She was moving, a streak of raw, unbridled pain flying toward the dark, jagged treeline of the Forbidden Forest.
Tom didn't take the stairs. He found a window in the West Tower and used a cushioning charm to hit the grass at a dead run.
The Forbidden Forest swallowed the light of the afternoon, replacing it with a suffocating, emerald gloom. The air here was thick with the scent of damp pine and rotting mulch. Tom tore through the underbrush, his cloak snagging on thorns, his breath coming in sharp, ragged plumes. He followed the silver-white throb of her soul until he reached a clearing where the trees grew so close they looked like the bars of a cage.
There she was.
Y/N wasn't floating; she was collapsed against the gnarled roots of an ancient oak, her form flickering so violently she looked like a dying star. She was weeping, but no tears fell—only a soft, luminescent mist that dissolved before it touched the ground. Her hands were clutched to her head, her fingers digging into her ghostly temples.
"I remember," she choked out, the sound like the cracking of winter ice.
Tom slowed his pace, his boots crunching softly on the fallen leaves. He felt a cold dread settle in his stomach. How much?
"The belt," she whispered, her eyes wide and fixed on a horror he couldn't see. "The smell of stale ale and the way the floorboards creaked before he reached the door. I can feel the weight of his boot, Tom. I can feel my mother’s silence—the way she looked at the wall while I screamed."
She looked up at him, and for the first time in years, she didn't see her anchor. She saw a witness to her shame. "Why is it coming back? The grey walls, the cold... the way he looked at me like I was a thing to be broken."
The forest around them seemed to lean in, the shadows stretching toward her. A low wind moaned through the high canopy, shaking a rain of dead leaves over her shimmering form. She looked small—exactly like the seven-year-old girl in the alley, despite her older appearance.
Tom reached her, dropping to his knees in the dirt. He didn't care about the mud staining his expensive trousers. He reached out, his hands trembling slightly as he framed her face. He couldn't grasp her firmly, but he poured his own magic into her, trying to stabilize her flickering form, trying to drown out the memories with the sheer force of his will.
"Listen to my voice," he commanded, his tone a desperate, sharp iron. "That world is gone. Those people are dust. You are here, with me. You are mine, Y/N. Do you hear me? You belong to the present."
"It hurts," she wailed, her form turning a bruised, angry purple. "It's so heavy, Tom. Why did they hate me so much? What did I do to deserve the sack? The dark?"
Tom flinched. The 'sack.' The memory of her final moments was scratching at the door of her mind, threatening to tear down the beautiful lie he had built. He pulled her closer, his chest aching with the physical strain of the tether. He wasn't just holding a ghost; he was holding the evidence of his own greatest sin.
"You did nothing," he whispered, his voice cracking. He pressed his forehead against hers—cold meeting cold. "You are more than their cruelty. You are the shadow that walks with a King. Forget them. Let me be the only thing you remember."
He stayed there in the rotting heart of the forest, his arms wrapped around a girl who was mostly smoke, waiting for the screaming in her soul to go quiet. He watched the shadows of the trees, his eyes predatory and dark, silently daring the universe to try and take back the soul he had stolen. She didn't remember the alley yet—she didn't remember him watching her die—but as she cried into his shoulder, Tom knew the foundation of his world was beginning to crack.
The air in the clearing was static-heavy, the silence of the Forbidden Forest pressing in like a physical weight. Tom held Y/N, his arms wrapped around a form that felt increasingly like trying to catch smoke in a gale.
As her sobs subsided into a hollow, rhythmic trembling, Tom felt a new sensation through the tether. It wasn't the jagged edge of her pain, but a terrifying, smooth slide—a thinning of the thread. He looked down at her hands, which were draped over his dark sleeves. The pearlescent glow was no longer vibrant; it was translucent, almost grey, the color of a fading morning mist.
The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow.
The return of her memories was re-syncing her soul with the moment of her death. By remembering who she was, she was remembering that she was supposed to be gone. The magic he had poured into her for years—his own dark, hungry essence—had acted as a preservative, a golden sap trapping a prehistoric fly. But she was a Muggle soul, a fragile thing never meant to withstand the radiation of high-level sorcery or the weight of a decade in the world of the living.
She was leaking out of existence.
"I feel... light, Tom," she whispered, her voice so thin it barely stirred the air. Her eyes were still clouded with the images of her father’s house, but the terror was being replaced by a strange, glassy peace. "The cold isn't so sharp anymore."
"Don't," Tom snapped, his fingers tightening around her shoulders. "Don't you dare feel light. Stay heavy. Stay with me."
He poured more magic into the bond, a desperate, forceful surge that made the grass around them turn black and wither. He saw her form flicker, a momentary surge of brightness returning to her eyes, but it was like pouring water into a sieve. The more she remembered of her life, the less she had to hold her here.
She didn't know. She thought it was just the exhaustion of the memories. She didn't see the way her legs were beginning to dissolve into the shadows of the tree roots, or how the tether between them was fraying into a million tiny, glowing wisps.
Tom’s mind, usually a cold and orderly library, became a frantic battlefield of theories and forbidden lore. He couldn't lose her. Not now. Not when he was so close to the power he had dreamed of. The thought of a world where he walked the corridors of Hogwarts—or the streets of London—without that familiar, ghostly weight at his shoulder was an obscenity.
He looked at her, his expression a mask of terrifying resolve.
"You are going to be fine," he said, his voice a low, vibrating lie. "We are going to the library. I will find the anchor. I will find a way to stitch you to the marrow of my bones if I have to."
A Horcrux, his mind hissed. A vessel. A permanent home.
He had researched the concept of soul-splitting, but he had always envisioned it as a way to preserve himself. Now, the path shifted. If he could not keep her as a ghost, he would house her in an object. Or perhaps, if his theories on the Dark Arts were correct, he could bind her to his own life force so completely that death itself wouldn't know which soul to claim.
He stood, pulling her up with him. She stumbled, her feet passing through the top layer of soil before she caught herself.
"Tom?" she asked, sensing the sudden, sharp shift in his aura. "You look... different."
"I am focused," he replied, his eyes dark and fixed on the castle towers in the distance.
He didn't tell her that her edges were disappearing. He didn't tell her that her very essence was being reclaimed by the void she had escaped in 1934. He simply took her hand—solidifying his own grip with a surge of will—and began the long walk back to the school.
Every step was a battle. He could feel her slipping, the tether stretching thin as a spider's silk. He began to recite the incantations of binding under his breath, a rhythmic, dark chant that kept her form anchored to his side.
He would graduate. He would rise. And he would find the ritual to make her eternal. Even if he had to tear the world apart to find the thread, he would never let her go back to the dark. To Tom Riddle, love was not a release; it was a permanent, unbreakable cage.
And as the sun set behind the mountains, casting a long, blood-red shadow across the grounds, Y/N followed him, unaware that she was a dying flame, and he was the one holding the match.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
The Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library was a graveyard of forbidden thoughts, and Tom Riddle was its most diligent gravedigger.
For three weeks, the Head Boy had barely slept. He sat at a small, isolated table hidden behind the stacks of Magick Moste Evile, the light of a single, guttering candle casting a flickering, sickly yellow glow over his features. His cheekbones had become sharper, his eyes sunken into dark hollows of obsession. Before him lay a sprawling map of ink—transcriptions of ancient Sumerian soul-binding rituals and fragmented notes on the alchemy of "Fixed Spirits."
Beside him, Y/N was a soft, fading blur.
She hovered near the tall, arched window, watching the moon rise over the Astronomy Tower. She felt... strange. It wasn't pain, exactly, but a profound sense of hollowness, as if the gravity of the world were slowly losing its grip on her. She reached out to touch the spine of a book, but her fingers passed through the leather like a cold breeze.
She turned to look at Tom. He was muttering under his breath, his quill scratching so hard against the parchment that the tip snapped. He didn't even swear; he simply picked up another and continued, his movements frantic and jagged.
"Tom," she whispered. Her voice was a mere vibration in the air, a sound like dry grass brushing against stone. "You’ve been here for three days. You’ve missed your patrols. The professors are asking questions."
Tom didn't look up. "Let them ask. They are children playing with matches. I am looking for the sun."
"You're scaring me," she said, drifting closer. She tried to place a hand on his shoulder, but she felt the shield he had erected—a shimmering, invisible barrier of his own magic that kept her tethered to his physical space. It was warm, but it felt restrictive, like a cage made of sunlight. "Why are you doing this? I’m fine. The memories... they’ve stopped coming so fast."
Tom finally looked at her. For a split second, the mask of the brilliant Head Boy slipped, revealing the terrified, possessive seven-year-old from the orphanage. He saw her—really saw her. She was so transparent that he could see the titles of the books on the shelves behind her through her chest.
His heart lurched in a way that felt like a physical wound.
"You aren't fine," he hissed, his voice raw. "You are disappearing, Y/N. You are leaving me, and I will not allow it. I did not pull you from that gutter just to watch you dissolve into nothing."
Y/N froze. "Leaving you? What are you talking about? I'm right here."
Tom realized his mistake—he had let the truth bleed out through his desperation. He quickly smoothed his expression, but the fire in his eyes remained. He reached into the air, his fingers twitching as he adjusted the invisible threads of the tether, pulling her a few inches closer to his side.
"The magic of this castle is... unstable," he lied, though his voice lacked its usual silken conviction. "Your memories are causing a temporary fluctuation. I am simply finding a way to stabilize your form. A permanent anchor."
He returned his gaze to the book, his eyes landing on a passage about The Living Vessel. The text described a way to house a soul not in a ghost, but in an object of great personal significance—an object that would be sustained by the life force of the caster.
A sacrifice, the book warned. A life for a life to seal the bridge.
Tom’s eyes narrowed. He thought of the man in the alley—the one who had kicked the sack. He thought of the world full of "disposable" people who had no purpose. If a life was required to keep Y/N anchored, he would provide a dozen. He would turn the world into a slaughterhouse if it meant she remained his shadow.
"I don't need an anchor, Tom," Y/N said softly, unaware of the dark path his mind had just taken. She floated down until she was eye-level with him, her face full of a heartbreaking, innocent concern. "I just need you to come to bed. You're going to make yourself sick."
"I am never sick," he replied, his voice regaining its cold, iron edge. He reached out and, using a surge of will, managed to catch her hand. For a fleeting second, it felt almost solid. "And I am never wrong. You will stay, Y/N. By my side, or in my heart, or bound to the very ring on my finger. But you will stay."
Y/N looked at their joined hands—the solid, living boy and the fading, ghostly girl. She felt a shiver of dread that had nothing to do with her memories. She didn't understand the magic he was hunting, but she understood the look in his eyes.
It wasn't the look of a friend. It was the look of a man who was preparing to go to war with Death itself. And she realized, with a quiet sort of horror, that in Tom Riddle’s world, even a ghost wasn't allowed to be free.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
For weeks, the shadows had seemed to grow teeth, biting into the corners of the room as Tom’s obsession deepened.
Y/N hovered at the edge of the desk, her form a flickering, bruised violet. She looked down at the open tome Tom had been scouring—Animae Cruentis, a book bound in something that looked far too much like human skin. Her eyes, wide and translucent, scanned the jagged Latin.
A life for a life. The bridge is paved in bone.
Her gaze shifted to the pile of scrap parchment beside it. In Tom’s precise, elegant script, she saw a list. Names. Students she had seen in the corridors. A girl from Hufflepuff. A boy from his own house. Calculations of their worth, their "utility," and the volume of life force they could potentially yield for a soul-grafting ritual.
"No," she whispered, the sound like the snapping of dry kindling.
Tom didn't look up. He was hunched over a different scroll, his eyes bloodshot, his skin the color of curdled milk. "The calculations must be exact, Y/N. The vessel needs to be prepared. I’ve settled on the diary. It’s close to the pulse. It’s perfect."
"Tom, look at me!"
The command was a ripple of cold that made the candles sputter. Tom finally lifted his head, his expression a terrifying blank slate of clinical detachment.
"You’re going to kill them," she said, her voice shaking with a resonance that made the glass inkwell on the desk vibrate. "You’re planning to murder people to keep me here. You’re talking about sacrifices as if they’re ingredients for a potion."
"They are," Tom replied, his voice chillingly level. He stood up, the chair scraping against the stone floor with a sound like a scream. "What is a life compared to your existence? These are children who will contribute nothing to history. Their only value is that they are alive, and you... you are the only thing that matters. I will not watch you fade because of some misplaced moral tremor."
"I don't want it!" Y/N shrieked. The room seemed to contract. The emerald curtains at the windows whipped violently as if a gale had been trapped inside the stone walls. "I won't be the reason you become a monster. If the price of staying is blood, then let me go. Let me fade!"
Tom’s face contorted, the mask of the brilliant student shattering to reveal a raw, jagged fury. He stepped toward her, his hand reaching out as if to seize the very air she occupied.
"You do not get to choose!" he roared, his voice booming in the small chamber. "I found you! I kept you! You are mine, Y/N, and I do not lose what is mine! If I have to burn this castle to the ground to keep your soul anchored to this earth, I will do it without a second thought!"
"You're mad," she whispered, backing away, her form blurring into a frantic, static-heavy haze. "You’re a monster, Tom. You’re already the thing I was afraid of."
"I am the only one who cares for you!" Tom countered, his magic lashing out, a dark, oppressive weight that pinned her against the cold stone wall. "I am the only one who sees you! Without me, you are nothing but dust in a London alleyway! I saved you!"
The mention of the alleyway—the dark, the cold, the sense of being discarded—hit Y/N like a physical blow. The grief, the betrayal, and the sheer, unadulterated horror of his coldness boiled over. She didn't think. She didn't cast a spell. She simply exploded.
The magic she had borrowed from him for years, the power she had cultivated in the shadows, surged outward in a violent, prismatic wave.
CRACK.
The heavy oak desk was sheared in half. The bookshelves groaned as the volumes were launched like projectiles. Tom, caught in the center of the emotional blast, was lifted off his feet. He hit the far stone wall with a sickening, heavy thud, his head snapping back against the masonry.
He slumped to the floor, his eyes rolling back, a thin trail of blood beginning to leak from his temple.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Y/N stood in the center of the wreckage, her form glowing with a terrifying, incandescent light. She looked at the boy she had loved, the boy who had become her world, now lying broken among the ruins of his own ambition.
A sob racked her translucent chest, but it was a sound of finality. She couldn't stay. Not like this. Not as a trophy in a madman's collection.
She turned, her form dissolving into a streak of pale, mourning light. She passed through the heavy door, then the stone walls of the castle, flying out into the dark, freezing night of the Highlands. She didn't know where she was going; she only knew that for the first time in a decade, she was running away from the only anchor she had ever known.
Behind her, in the darkened room, Tom Riddle lay unconscious, the tether in his chest fraying, the silence of the room finally, truly empty.
The air outside the Head Boy’s chambers was a shock of ice, but Y/N didn't feel the temperature; she felt the vibration of her own panicked pulse. She was a streak of frantic, violet light, tearing through the stone veins of the castle. Her mind was a kaleidoscope of Tom’s bleeding temple and the jagged, murderous lists on his desk.
"Monster," she whispered, the word echoing off the suits of armor. "He’s a monster."
But as she rounded the corner of the Grand Staircase, she realized she wasn't alone. The portraits—usually dozing or whispering in the dark—were wide awake, their painted eyes tracking her luminous, erratic flight.
"A poltergeist!" a 14th-century knight cried, reaching for his painted sword. "Alert the Headmaster! A dark spirit is loose!"
"No!" Y/N shrieked, skidding to a halt in mid-air. Her form flickered violently, her edges sparking with the raw, unstable magic she had just unleashed on Tom. "I’m not—I’m a student! Please, just listen!"
She reached out a hand toward a portrait of a kindly-looking witch, her fingers trembling. She wanted to explain, to beg for help, but her touch was no longer a ghost’s sigh. It was a live wire. As her translucent hand grazed the canvas, a spark of blue-white energy jumped from her fingertips.
The oil paint hissed. A small, orange flame bloomed on the corner of the witch's silk gown.
"Fire!" the witch screamed, scrambling to the edge of her frame. "She’s burning us! The ghost is a pyromaniac!"
"I didn't mean to!" Y/N cried, her voice cracking into a shrill, haunting frequency. Desperate to fix it, she swiped at the flames with her hands, but her panic only fed the magic. Instead of smothering the fire, her touch acted like bellows. The orange lick of flame roared into a hungry blaze, leaping from the witch’s frame to the heavy velvet curtains nearby.
The corridor was suddenly bathed in a hellish, dancing orange light.
"Stop it! Please!" Y/N begged, her hands moving in clumsy, frantic circles. She tried to conjure water, a trick Tom had taught her, but the memories of her father’s belt and the cold alleyway were clogging her focus. Instead of water, a burst of concussive force erupted from her palms, shattering the stone balustrade and sending a rain of debris down into the moving staircases below.
Paintings everywhere began to flee their frames, a chaotic exodus of two-dimensional figures screaming for Dumbledore, for Dippet, for anyone.
"I'M NOT A MONSTER!" she roared, the sound echoing through the castle like a thunderclap.
She turned to the fleeing figures, her eyes glowing with a terrifying, incandescent light. She tried to grab a passing ghost—the Fat Friar—to make him listen, to make him stay, but her fingers passed through him with a violent, electric crackle that sent the spirit reeling.
"Stay! Just listen to me!"
But they wouldn't. To them, she was a shimmering, screaming nightmare, a manifestation of the very darkness they feared. She saw the reflection of herself in a suit of armor—a jagged, terrifying silhouette of light and fury. She looked exactly like the thing Tom wanted her to be: a weapon.
The guilt and the terror merged into a single, high-pitched shriek. It was a sound that didn't belong to the living or the dead. It was the sound of a soul breaking.
With a final, violent surge of energy, she launched herself upward. She didn't use the corridors; she phased through the ceiling, through the floorboards of the owlery, and out into the vast, indifferent sky. She flew higher and higher, the air thinning, the castle becoming a toy at her feet. She didn't stop until the moon was the only thing looking back at her—a cold, silver eye in the dark.
With a soft, dying sob, she collapsed into the vacuum of the night, disappearing into the silver haze of the moonbeams.
In the Head Boy’s chambers, the silence was absolute.
Tom Riddle’s eyes snapped open. The room was dark, save for the dying embers in the grate and the flickering light of the fire in the hallway. He groaned, his hand going to the sticky, drying blood on his temple.
He reached out. Not with his hand, but with the tether.
The hollow ache in his chest was a physical void. The connection was there—a thin, vibrating wire of silver that stretched out of his heart and disappeared through the stone wall—but it was slack. The rhythmic, comforting hum of Y/N’s presence was gone.
He scrambled to his feet, his breath catching in his throat. He threw open the door, ignoring the smoking ruins of the corridor and the distant sound of teachers’ voices.
"Y/N?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
He searched the shadows. He searched the rafters. He reached into the dark, pulling on the tether with every ounce of his will. He could feel her—she was still on Earth, still tied to the blood in his veins—but she was far. Too far to reach. Too far to hear.
For the first time since the orphanage, Tom Riddle felt the crushing, suffocating weight of being truly alone. He stood in the wreckage of his ambition, his eyes fixed on the distant, silver moon, and realized that in his quest to keep her forever, he had finally driven her into the one place he couldn't follow: the light.
The Grand Staircase was no longer a place of architectural wonder; it was a throat choked with smoke and the high-pitched wails of the painted dead.
Albus Dumbledore stood at the center of the carnage, his auburn hair silvered by the coating of stone dust that hung in the air. His wand was a blur, weaving complex cooling charms to suppress the magical fire that had eaten into the heavy tapestries. Behind him, Professor Galatea Merrythought was corralling a swarm of frightened third-years back toward their dormitories, her voice sharp with a fear she couldn't quite hide.
"It was a wraith!" a portrait of a fat, balding wizard shrieked from a scorched frame. "A banshee with the face of a girl and eyes like white fire! She tried to murder us all!"
The student body was a sea of whispers and pale faces. They huddled in the shadows of the arches, their eyes darting toward every flickering candle flame, terrified that the 'dark spirit' would return. The atmosphere was thick with a new, jagged paranoia—the kind that Dumbledore knew would not be easily soothed.
"Quiet!" Dumbledore’s voice didn't need to be loud to command the room. It carried a weight of authority that silenced the sobbing portraits. He looked at the shattered stone balustrade and the peculiar, scorched signature of the magic left behind. It didn't look like a spell; it looked like an explosion of raw, untethered emotion.
He turned his head, his blue eyes searching the crowd. "Where is the Head Boy? Where is Mr. Riddle?"
But Tom Riddle was already gone.
He moved through the back corridors of the castle like a wraith himself. He ignored the prefects shouting for order and the frantic ringing of the school bells. His steps were long and predatory, his face a mask of such terrifying stillness that even the ghosts who saw him pass flattened themselves against the walls to avoid his path.
He didn't care about the fire. He didn't care about the broken stone or the questions Dumbledore would surely ask when the sun rose. Those were the concerns of a student, a boy playing at being a leader. He was beyond that now.
He reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the cold night air biting at the drying blood on his temple. He stopped, closing his eyes, and centered his entire being on the center of his chest.
The tether was there.
It was no longer the vibrant, humming chord of their youth. It felt like a frayed wire, vibrating at a frequency so high it was almost a pain. It pulled upward, toward the sky, toward the silver, indifferent disc of the moon. He could feel her grief—a vast, cold ocean that threatened to pull him under. She was out there, drifting in the vacuum of her own terror, convinced she was the monster the portraits had called her.
"You are not leaving me," Tom whispered, his voice a jagged promise to the dark.
He didn't have a broom. He didn't have a plan. But he had the bond. He reached into the deepest, darkest well of his magic—the part he had been hiding from the world—and pulled. He didn't pull her back to him; he used the tether to launch himself after her.
With a violent crack of displaced air, Tom disappeared from the forest floor.
He moved through the night sky not with the joy Y/N had felt, but with a grim, relentless efficiency. He followed the silver thread through the clouds, his cloak snapping like a whip behind him. The higher he went, the thinner the air became, the cold beginning to crystallize on his eyelashes.
Finally, he saw her.
She was a tiny, flickering spark against the vastness of the moon, a wisp of purple and white light that looked as fragile as a breath on a mirror. She was huddled into herself, her knees pulled to her chest, drifting in the silent, star-strewn void.
Tom slowed his ascent, hovering a few feet away. The tether between them was glowing now, a bridge of white-hot silver in the darkness.
"Y/N," he said. His voice shouldn't have carried in the thin air, but through the bond, it sounded like a bell in the quiet of her mind.
She didn't move. "Go away, Tom. They’re right. I’m a monster. I burn everything I touch."
"Then we will burn together," Tom replied, his voice devoid of his usual manipulation. It was just a cold, hard fact. He drifted closer, reaching out across the void. "The world is full of things that deserve to be ash. Why do you care what a few pieces of canvas think of you?"
"I almost killed you," she choked out, her form flickering as if she were about to dissolve.
"And yet, I am here," Tom said, his fingers finally brushing the edge of her translucent sleeve. The static of her panic buzzed against his skin, but he didn't pull back. He gripped her, his magic acting as an anchor, forcing her form to solidify against the vacuum of the night. "I told you. You are mine. Heaven, hell, or the moon—it doesn't matter. I will always find you."
He pulled her toward him, and for a moment, they were the only two souls in the universe, suspended in the cold, silver light. Y/N looked at him—at the blood on his face, at the madness in his eyes—and realized that the tether wasn't just a magical accident. It was her destiny. She couldn't be a monster without him, and he couldn't be a King without his shadow.
The descent back to earth was silent. Tom held her close, his cloak wrapped around her shimmering form as if to hide her from the stars. He knew the world below was waking up to a nightmare, but as he looked at the girl in his arms, he didn't feel fear. He felt a dark, intoxicating triumph.
The hunt was over. But the war for her soul was just beginning.
The forest floor was a tapestry of silver and shadow as Tom descended, his boots hitting the damp earth with a finality that felt like a gavel. He didn't head for the castle gates. Instead, he steered them toward a secluded hollow where the roots of a dead rowan tree twisted like skeletal fingers.
He knelt, pulling a small, black-clad book from the inner pocket of his robes. It was blank, its pages pristine and hungry.
"The fading has to stop," Tom said, his voice a low, rhythmic vibration. He laid the diary on the flat stone of the hollow, his movements precise despite the tremor of exhaustion in his hands. "I can feel the thread fraying, Y/N. If I don't anchor you now, there will be nothing left of you by dawn."
Y/N drifted beside him, her form so thin that the moonlight passed through her as if she were made of glass. She looked at the book—a mundane, leather-bound thing—and then at Tom. She saw the desperation he tried to hide behind a mask of clinical focus. She saw the boy who had watched her die, and the man who was willing to commit any atrocity to keep her from doing it again.
"Will it hurt?" she whispered.
"No," Tom lied, his eyes fixed on the inkwell he was unscrewing. "It will feel like falling asleep in a room that finally has walls. You will be safe. No one can touch you. No one can see you unless I allow it."
He began to chant, the incantation a jagged, ancient string of syllables that seemed to drain the light from the clearing. He used his own blood, still wet from the gash on his head, to trace a series of runes onto the first page of the diary. The tether in his chest began to pull—not outward toward the moon, but downward, toward the paper.
Y/N felt the vacuum. The book began to glow with a faint, pulsing light, matching the rhythm of Tom’s heart. She knew that once she entered that ink, she would be his in a way that surpassed even the tether. She would be his memory, his secret, his soul’s silent partner.
She looked at him one last time—the sharp line of his jaw, the dark intensity of his eyes. She knew the risks. She had seen the sacrifices he was willing to make. But in this cold, terrifying world, he was the only thing that had ever truly belonged to her.
She gathered the last of her energy, pulling every stray spark of her essence into a singular, concentrated point of light. She didn't speak. She drifted forward, her form solidifying for one final, desperate moment.
She pressed her lips to his.
It wasn't the warmth of a living kiss. It was the sensation of a thousand winter stars exploding against his mouth—a flash of absolute, blinding cold that tasted of ozone and ancient grief. It was a kiss of gratitude, of fear, and of a devotion that had long ago transcended morality.
Tom’s eyes widened, his breath hitching in his throat as the electric shock of her kiss surged through him, fusing with the ritual’s magic.
"I trust you," her voice echoed in his mind, fading even as the words formed.
Then, the light snapped.
With a soft, rushing sound like the turning of a thousand pages, Y/N’s form collapsed inward. She was drawn into the diary in a swirl of pearlescent mist, the runes on the page flaring a brilliant, violent green before turning a deep, permanent black.
The clearing went silent. The wind died down.
Tom sat back on his heels, gasping for air. He reached out and touched the cover of the diary. It was warm—impossibly warm. He could feel her through the leather, a steady, calm pulse that was now perfectly aligned with his own. The fading had stopped. The tether was no longer a frayed wire; it was a sealed circuit.
He closed the book and tucked it against his chest, right over his heart.
"I have you," he whispered to the shadows.
He stood up, straightening his robes and wiping the blood from his face with a flick of his wand. The Grand Staircase was still a ruin, and Dumbledore was still waiting with questions, but as Tom Riddle began the long walk back to the castle, he didn't look like a boy in trouble.
He looked like a man who had just hidden his most precious treasure in the one place no one would ever think to look: inside his own dark, meticulous history.
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
The air in the basement of the London flat was thick enough to chew, a stagnant soup of copper, sulfur, and the heavy, sweet scent of lilies—the smell of a funeral before the body is cold.
Tom Riddle, no longer the golden Head Boy of Hogwarts but a shadow that moved through the back alleys of Knockturn Alley, stood over the ritual circle. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms corded with tension and stained with the remnants of a dozen different lives. For months, while he worked at Borgin and Burkes, he had been a butcher of souls. He had harvested the vitality of the unwanted, the blood of the "useless," and the bone of the forgotten. He had done things that would turn Y/N’s spirit into a shriek of horror if she ever saw the cost.
But he had buried those bodies deep. He had washed the blood from his hands until the skin was raw. All that mattered was the vessel.
The diary sat at the center of the altar, its pages fluttering as if caught in a localized gale.
"Now," Tom whispered, his voice a jagged, rhythmic command.
He tipped the final chalice—a mixture of essence and ancient, dark alchemy—into the stone basin. The reaction was violent. A flash of blinding, visceral light erupted, turning the shadows of the basement into a flickering strobe of white and green. The stone floor groaned. The air hummed with a frequency that made Tom’s teeth ache.
Then, the light began to solidify.
It started with the skeleton—a flash of ivory rising from the liquid. Then came the intricate weaving of muscle and the delicate, blooming network of veins. It was a masterpiece of forbidden art. Tom watched with a predatory, reverent intensity as the skin knit itself together, a pale, porcelain landscape that covered the raw machinery of life.
The final gasp of the ritual was a rush of air that snuffed out every candle in the room.
In the sudden, heavy dark, the only sound was a soft, wet thud.
Tom lunged forward, his wand tip glowing with a low, amber light. In the center of the basin lay a girl. She was no longer a wisp of purple light or a streak of silver mist. She was solid. Her skin was the color of cream, her hair a dark spill across the stone, and her chest... her chest was moving.
A slow, shallow rise. A soft, rattling fall.
"Y/N," he breathed, the name a prayer and a possession.
She was naked, her form as vulnerable as a newborn’s, and completely unconscious. Tom didn't hesitate. He reached down and gathered her into his arms. The sensation was an electric shock to his system. For a decade, he had felt nothing but the cold static of her ghost or the warm hum of the leather diary. Now, he felt the friction of skin, the weight of bone, and the terrifying, beautiful heat of a living body.
He felt the silk of her hair against his neck and the puff of her breath—actual, warm breath—against his collarbone.
He wrapped her immediately in a heavy, fur-lined cloak he had prepared, shielding her from the damp chill of the basement. He didn't look back at the remains of the ritual—the broken glass, the spilled blood, the evidence of his descent. He carried her up the narrow, creaking stairs to his flat, his movements careful, almost tender, though his eyes remained dark with the secrets he would never tell her.
He laid her on the bed in his sparse, immaculate room. The rain hammered against the windowpane, a rhythmic, London sound that had once heralded her death, but now served as the heartbeat of her new life.
Tom sat on the edge of the bed, his hand hovering over her face. He traced the curve of her jaw, his fingers lingering on the pulse point at her neck. It was steady. It was real. He had cheated the void. He had stolen a soul and grown it a house.
She would wake up soon. She would remember the fight in the hallway, the moon, and the diary. She would ask him how he did it. She would look for the kindness in his eyes.
And Tom, the man who had murdered his way to this moment, would smile. He would tell her it was a miracle. He would tell her it was love. He would tuck her into his life like a stolen gem, and he would ensure that she never, ever saw the stains on the floor beneath her feet.
"You're home," he whispered into the quiet room, his shadow stretching long and dark across the floor. "And this time, I’m never letting you go."
⋇⋆✮⋆⋇
The next morning
The first thing Y/N felt was not the magic. It was the weight.
For a decade, the world had been a suggestion, a veil she drifted through. Now, it was a crushing, solid reality. The sheets beneath her were coarse linen; the air in her lungs was thick and tasted of rain and old wood; the heartbeat in her ears was a thundering, rhythmic drum that she realized, with a jolt of terror, was her own.
Her eyelids felt like lead. When she finally forced them open, the dim light of the flat felt like a physical blow.
"Tom?" she croaked.
The sound of her own voice—vocal cords vibrating, breath catching in a throat that was no longer mist—made her gasp. She tried to sit up, but her limbs were uncoordinated, heavy as stone.
Immediately, a pair of arms were around her. They weren't the static-charged fields of magic she remembered. They were warm. Hard. Solid. Tom pulled her against his chest, and for the first time, she felt the scratch of his wool coat against her cheek and the steady, thudding heat of his heart.
"I'm here," he whispered into her hair. His voice was a low vibration she felt in her very bones. "You’re safe. You’re whole."
Y/N let out a sob—a real, wet sob that left tears on her skin—and buried her face in the crook of his neck. She clung to him with a desperate, weak strength, her fingers digging into his shoulders. "I thought... the moon... the dark..."
"It’s over," Tom said, his grip tightening until it was almost painful. "The diary served its purpose. I’ve brought you back. No more fading, Y/N. No more shadows."
She pulled back just enough to look at him. He looked older, his face sharper and more beautiful in a way that felt dangerous. But his eyes—they were fixed on her with a hunger that made her shiver. "How?" she whispered. "The ritual... what did you have to do?"
Tom’s expression didn't flicker. He reached up, his thumb tracing the line of her new, soft lower lip. He thought of the three men in the alleyway whose lives had been the fuel for this skin. He thought of the dark things he had promised the void to get her back.
"A simple matter of advanced alchemy," he lied, his voice as smooth as glass. "A gift from the world to me, for my persistence."
Y/N wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that this miracle was clean. She leaned her head back against his shoulder, closing her eyes and listening to the rain against the window. "I don't want to lose this, Tom. I don't want to go back."
"You won't," Tom promised.
Over her shoulder, his gaze drifted to the corner of the room where his traveling cloak lay, concealing the heavy, dark volumes of lore he had been studying. He thought of the name he was building in the shadows—Voldemort. He thought of the war that was coming, the blood that would need to be spilled to ensure his seat at the head of the world.
He knew she wouldn't understand. She was a creature of light, a girl who wept for burnt paintings. She would hate the man he was becoming. She would shrink away from the things he was prepared to do to the "lesser" creatures of this world.
But as he felt the warmth of her breath against his neck, a cold, final resolve settled in his chest.
It didn't matter if she liked it. It didn't matter if she eventually grew to fear him. He had spent ten years stitching her soul to his, and he hadn't done it to let her walk away into a world he didn't control. He would build her a palace out of the ruins of his enemies. He would keep her fed, clothed, and beautiful, tucked away in the heart of his dark empire where the sunlight could never reach her.
She was his first Horcrux, his first treasure, and his only weakness. And he would guard her with a cruelty that the world had never seen.
"Sleep now," he murmured, pulling the fur-lined cloak tighter around her. "The world is different now, Y/N. But you have nothing to fear. I am the only master here."
Y/N drifted back into a heavy, natural sleep, anchored by the heat of his body. She didn't see the way his shadow grew long and jagged against the wall, or the way his hand hovered over her throat—not to hurt, but to marvel at the pulse he now owned.
The girl was alive. The monster was born. And in the quiet flat in London, the door was locked from the inside.
Bonus Scenes
Picture from Pinterest, not mine. Masterlist