Tom has only ever gained the allegiance of the serpents and of Harry. But everyone loves Harry, the other children, the matron, the stray animals that sniff around the orphanage looking for scraps, and even the crows.
Harry stands in the middle of the field, head thrown back in wonder as the crows drop their treasures at his feet.
Coins. Shiny candy wrappers. A gold watch. A ring with a glittering stone. Various trinkets. All precious in Harry’s eyes.
Harry smiles at Tom, a goofy grin that makes Tom’s pulse race. “Come on, Tommy,” he calls, “take whatever you want!”
The world loves Harry but Harry loves Tom best. That's just how it's meant to be.
“You’ve been quiet lately,” Dumbledore said, handing Harry a cup. “Either you’re deep in thought, or plotting something truly catastrophic. I’m hoping for the former, but I’ve been wrong before.”
Harry gave a tired smile. “Just trying to make sense of things.”
“Ah.” A pause. “The hardest truths are rarely about the world, but about ourselves.”
Harry said nothing, but his eyes gave him away. Dumbledore looked into his ward’s green eyes and saw the familiar conflict of grief that didn’t come from hatred.
Familiar, he thought, looking at his boy who has grown into a young man. The way love twists when it’s tethered to someone the world says you must destroy.
He had seen that look before, in a mirror, a lifetime ago.
He offered softly, “Regret, Harry, rarely comes from love itself. Only from what we do—or don’t do—because of it.”
Tom Riddle is a storm. A unique, immovable force, but Albus has weathered through something similar before, in another man, across another impossible divide.
If his boy chooses differently… perhaps it will matter. Perhaps it will mean something.
Unforgivable.
He should not be able to throw off an Imperius like an old cloak. Not at fourteen.
But Harry Potter is a force unto himself—stronger than an Unforgivable. The strongest magic there is. Your magic.
Strike him with the Killing Curse; he lives.
(“Kneel.”)
Command him with the Imperius; he resists.
(“Kneel.”)
Break him with the Cruciatus… He screams beautifully. Yet his pain is not enough—not what you want. Not really.
(“Kneel.”)
Finally, gravity and brute force drop him to the dirt where what’s left of your father’s bones lie.
Avada-green eyes flash up at you like a curse. Death glare, indeed.
And you know: It’s not enough. Will never be enough to force him to his knees.
“Sit still, Darling,” Voldemort chided softly before once more checking if he got the play of light and shadow right. Harry sighed, throwing himself back over the armchair he was supposed to sit regally in, his arm hiding his eyes from view.
“This is booooring, Voldemort! Boring! The absolute worst!” he exclaimed theatrically. Voldemort refrained from rolling his eyes – doing so would be unbecoming – but it was a close thing. They’d had this kind of argument five times in the last hour alone. At least.
“Hatchling,” came Nagini’s low hiss from where she was draped over the backrest of Harry’s chair, “Did you forget your promise? Nagini will show you the best sun spot if you do as Voldemort says.” “No, I didn’t forget,” came Harry’s mumbled reply. How he managed to mumble while speaking parsel was beyond Voldemort, but he also hadn’t found the will to uncover this particular mystery, yet, and was therefore perfectly happy to ignore it.
“Not mutch longer, my love,” Voldemort soothed his little horcrux, “I’m almost done. Now sit properly.” Thankfully, he did, although with mutch ado and many grumbled protests – all of them ignored by Voldemort, who simply waited until Harry sat as he had before so he could add the last finishing touches.
“There,” he set the brush aside, “All done.” A satisfied smile curved his mouth as Voldemort looked proudly at his painting of Harry, adorned with Voldemort’s remaining horcruxes. The diadem on his head. The ring on his finger. The locket around his neck. The cup in his hand. And of course Nagini, draped over the chair.
Sadly, they hadn’t managed to retrieve his diary from Dumbledore’s office, yet, but one day soon they would. Voldemort doubted Dumbledore would destroy it further, so long the man still thought he could learn something from it.
Yes, one day soon he would be able to paint his soul all together. And if Voldemort looked forward to that day, well, that was his business and his business alone.
Continuation of Regret and Flame.
Trigger warnings: imagined suicide.
Harry stood at the precipice looking over the edge of the rocky overhang where a steep drop awaited, and beyond, a pit of seemingly unending darkness.
“There is no way to leave,” Tom said, watching Harry stare over the side of the mountain. “I have tried.”
Harry gaze's traced the sharp peaks of rock, and he imagined falling and being speared upon them, the basalt black spires shiny with blood.
“You didn’t…” he said, glancing back at Tom, still sitting beside the dying campfire.
Harry watched his eyes narrow.
“Of course I did. I tried everything I could.”
“What happened?” Harry’s gaze traced over Tom’s form as though he might be able to spot some physical evidence of it or some deformity the man was hiding.
“After losing consciousness, one always returns back to the mountain, whole.” He hesitated a moment before continuing, his gaze faraway, and his voice softer. "Or, nearly so. You do lose something, don't you, when you come back too many times?"
Harry could imagine that Tom had spent quite a bit of time talking to himself, and perhaps it was a difficult habit to break now. Without the manic glee of drowning his prophesied enemy, Tom just looked tired, shoulders lax and blueish circles under his eyes that Harry hadn’t noticed before. It was strange to see. Even in death, Voldemort had never looked this defeated.
“What is your plan to escape then?" Harry demanded. "I know you’re working on one.”
Tom looked up with a startled expression, fully meeting his gaze for the first time in hours, but the expression fell away quickly, and he looked back away. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he thought, saying nothing for a long moment.
“To escape hell,” he said finally, shaking his head. “Even I—”
“Says the guy who spent every waking moment of his life trying to escape death,” Harry laughed. “There’s no way—”
“Careful, Harry, of what you speak so freely about in places like these.”
Harry glanced around, but saw only the encroaching dark sky and the jagged spires of rock that surrounded them.
“One never knows what listens in.”
Ever since Harry had joined that insipid quidditch team, Orion had nursed the belief that they were joined at the hip. Insufferably, wherever Harry went, there he was, like an infernal pimple that refused to go away. Or a jack-in-the-box like the commercial he saw once on the telly, popping out of its decrepit hull whenever you least expect it. As if it wasn’t enough that he had to share Harry with a sport that was barbaric (at best), he had to further divide his attention to appease an ingratiating fool.
“Harry,” Orion crooned, his hand still curved on the ridge of Harry’s spine, “are you coming to Hogsmeade on Friday?”
There are twenty seven bones in the human hand. In a silent rage, Tom envisioned the fragility of them beneath Black's skin, how malleable they were to steady, unrelenting pressure. The mindless chatter of the Great Hall only served to exacerbate his bloodlust.
Endlessly polite, Harry smiled mildly. “Did you guys have any plans?”
“We’re making a day of it and going to Madame Rosmerta’s. You should join us, since you’re part of the team now.”
Before Harry could say anything to cosign this liaison, Tom shot Orion a quelling glare. “If Harry decides to attend Hogsmeade on Friday, it will be on my arm. And if I have my way, Black, which I usually do, you won’t be within sufficient range to see it.”
Adequately rebuffed, Orion shrank in his seat.
Harry, however, wasn’t as easily subdued. “I believe it’s my decision who I choose to spend time with.”
“As it should be darling,” Tom remarked. “It was merely a suggestion.”
Harry gave him a skeptical once-over, likely deducing that it wasn’t suggestion at all. For now, Tom had to play the long game—slowly, slowly, catchy monkey. Like a skittish animal, Harry was an impending flight risk. And with time, his soul will learn to be less sociable, especially when the chosen company had nothing noteworthy to offer. Until then, Tom will smile (with gritted teeth) and posture at civility, but he drew the line at allowing cretins to encroach on his territory.
When Harry turned his head, entrenched in his poached eggs, Tom gave Orion another withering glance. Fleeting—to avoid the attention of the sable-haired boy finishing breakfast—but it was enough, brimming with just the right amount of venom to sail his point home, and fortuitously, for said cretin to withdraw his hand.
Tom let out a pleased hum. He crossed his legs at the ankles and continued to skim The Daily Prophet in peace.
“Tom, please don't do this,” Harry begs from blood-stained lips. “If you split your soul, there’s no way to come back from it.”
“That's exactly why I'm doing this,” Tom says, turning his head away to dismiss the irritating apparition.
When Tom was a child, he had cherished this specter that appeared only to him. He had felt unfathomably special when examined under Harry’s bright green gaze.
Over time, Tom has grown tired of Harry’s constant attempts to halt his inevitable rise.
Harry lingers in Tom’s peripheral vision, looking pained. Tom has already decided that Harry’s pleas will not work on him. He’s finally accepted that Harry isn't real, merely the manifestation of his childhood loneliness.
But Tom is not a child any longer. Once he creates his Horcrux, he will be a God.
Tom begins chanting, the circle of runes glowing around him. Harry cries out and soon Tom’s screams join him as he feels himself torn asunder, arranged into something greater.
When Tom opens his eyes, he is sprawled out on the ground. Harry is gone and Tom aches. He has never felt so empty.
It started because they were too tired to study and too wired to sleep.
Ron had his feet on the table, Hermione’s hair was in a frazzled cloud from exam stress, and Harry had been staring at the same line in 1001 Hexes for Household Use for twenty minutes.
Then Ron found the scrap of parchment.
“What’s this rubbish? Bloody hell, it’s Flames,” Ron snorted. “You didn’t seriously do this with McLaggen, did you, Hermione?”
“Absolutely not,” she sniffed, but she was already grabbing a quill. “Let’s do you and Lavender.”
“Please no—”
“Too late!”
And somehow, that’s how the next half-hour passed: Ron, Hermione, and Harry collapsing into giggles as they paired every ridiculous combination of classmates—Seamus and Crabbe: Marriage. Luna and Goyle: Affection. Ron and McGonagall: Enemies ("eh, she loves me, really.")
Eventually, Hermione turned to Harry, eyes glinting.
“Your turn. Who’re we doing?”
Harry groaned. “We are seventeen. This is a game for third-years.”
“You laughed when Neville and Snape got Lovers,” Ron pointed out.
Harry folded.
“Fine. Just not Malfoy.”
“Coward.”
“Do Cedric,” Harry said, trying to sound casual.
They did.
Harry James Potter
Cedric Diggory → Friends.
“Wholesome,” Hermione noted.
Ron leaned over. “What about Tom Riddle?”
Harry froze.
“…What?”
Hermione grinned. “What about Riddle?”
Harry blinked. “Tom Riddle?”
“You stare at him more than your textbook, mate. Something you want to tell us?”
“No! He’s— He’s insufferable.” Harry said, too fast.
Harry James Potter
Tom Marvolo Riddle → 6 unmatched letters.
They counted through:
F – Friends
L – Lovers
A – Affection
M – Marriage
E – Enemies
S – Sweethearts
They stopped at 6.
“Marriage,” Ron read aloud, face frozen.
Hermione burst into cackles.
“Burn it,” Harry muttered, face hot. “I swear, burn that paper.”
“Flames, yeah? Looks like someone’s got the hots for Riddle.” Ron said helpfully, and got a pillow to the face.
Later that night, long after Ron had passed out snoring into a Chocolate Frog wrapper and Hermione had mumbled something about elf labour in her sleep, Harry sat hunched over his desk like he was plotting a heist. He even straightened his glasses.
And then, with all the solemnity of someone preparing a formal duel invitation, he wrote:
Harry James Potter
Tom Marvolo Riddle
→ Marriage.
He stared at the word. Utter rubbish. Stupid. Didn’t mean anything. Obviously. Unless he was a thirteen year old girl— which he was not.
He folded it up anyway and tucked it into his bag. Not expecting to see it again the next evening, slid beneath his pumpkin juice at dinner by a sleek black owl.
Unfolded, in clean, elegant script:
You forgot to carry the 2 in your first count. We’re actually “Affection.”
But I won’t hold it against you, eager as you clearly are to marry me.
