The Uneventful Life of Tom Riddle (the almost Dark Lord)
Tom Marvolo Riddle is your average man with your average time travelling wife. Outright sociopath, hopeful world dominator, habitual kitten killer but not a genocidal mass murder – which his therapist tells him - is a mild improvement.
It is days like these. Irritable, mundane, hatefully uneventful days that he wishes that he had stuck to the whole world domination idea. On such days, he envisioned a sweet dream. It involved dramatic classical music, limbs flailing at crescendos, and his glorious self, envisioned in black robes as soiled as his heart, prancing through a street of blood and ruptured organs. How did he give up a career of psychopathy for this?
The death orchestra faded to the back of his head as he gazed back down at the babbling student in front of him. Dear Merlin how long had she been talking? Had she even noticed his unresponsiveness since she first started? But the puffy eyed dimwit, with her tousled blonde hair and painful voice continued on.
"…and you see Professor – with all the stress I've been going through. I didn't have time to write your essay on Exploding Parsnips. I can barely think without pulling my hair out! How will I ever know my dear Dimitri will never so much as look at me again? He'll never want to speak to me now that he knows-"
"-Parsnepits"
"-that I- I'm sorry what did you say Professor?" the girl asked, confusion glazing her eyes. Riddle thanked Salazaar that she had stopped for a moment to breathe.
"Parsnepits… Parsnips are a vegetable. Actually they go quite well with- never mind. Continue Halloway" he said before he regretted it and started mentally berating himself.
"Right sir. Well I guess the whole thing in a quaffle is that for many personal reasons Professor Riddle, I wasn't able to complete your essay... Am I in trouble?" she finally finished looking at him with the most horrendously wet kitten eyes. This only made him want to strangle her more.
"It is fine. You are dismissed" he said curtly.
Yes go before I eat you. I would happily murder you slowly. Have you stuffed and roasted and eat every piece of your body then compliment the cook.
The girl, unable to see the blatant murder in his eyes, beamed generously at him. She stood from the chair at his desk, making it screech unnecessarily loud as she did, and before he could react she flung herself over it and captured his unwilling body in an embrace.
"Oh thank you! Thank you sir! I promise it won't happen again!" she squealed in delight. Riddle was half afraid she would start jumping.
"Yes. Yes. Please let go. And don't let this happen again" Tom muttered, hastily pushing her away like dirty laundry.
"I won't Professor! Last teenage drama! I swear!" she responded, unperturbed by his awkwardness. Smiling brighter than the god damn sun, she quickly picked up her bag and walked to the large wooden exit.
Riddle exhaled deeply and let himself collapse into his chair, exhausted by the terrifying ordeal, as he watched the nightmare disappear…
-but at the last moment she turned back with a smile.
"You know Mrs. Riddle was right" she said with a sneaky grin.
Tom's eyes dashed up quickly in horror. "What?" he breathed.
"Mrs. Riddle. Well she told me sir, that you were really therapeutic and I can totally understand it now. You're a really good listener. I feel like I could just pour out all my hurts and worries and you'd understand. But that is why I told you about the whole cofuddle with Dimitri and Gregory and Michael and… well I really needed to get it off my chest and you were perfect" she explained without a breath. She gave him one last infuriating smile. "Thank you Professor, Mrs. Riddle is really lucky to have a man like you"
At the sound of the door closing, Tom Marvolo Riddle inhaled sharply, thinking of the conniving, manipulative woman he called a wife.
That bitch.
That night sparked the beginning of what had been dubbed by his devious bitch of a wife and his unintelligent monkey of a therapist – as the kitten killings.
September was becoming particularly cold this year, all the leaves were already dying and it was not two weeks through. He regretted not taking his robe as he walked the cold floors of the corridors. He had lived at Hogwarts for a total of fourteen years now and could walk its paths and secrets with a blindfold. One season his wife had dared him to prove it and so he willingly let her blindfold him and give him a destination. The image of his wife's disappointed face when he proved to her he wasn't bluffing was too fragrant in his mind as he too hastily tripped over her set trap and fell face first in her planted beetle mixture. She had cackled so ridiculously that he had called her a witch for months and only scowled when she responded with an airy 'Darling I thought you knew'.
Though the memory was hellish the skill was still particularly helpful as he didn't want to get caught at this ungodly hour, in his striped flannel pyjamas, with a brown parsnip sack containing a silenced and petrified cat. And Merlin forbid anyone saw his purple and green disco socks.
He quickly made his way to the portrait of the Green Haired Whore, hissed gently to unlock it (ignoring the 'Here to open me wide again Riddle' that she playfully whispered), and escaped through the dark tunnels to Salazaar Slytherin's Secret Study. Honestly, the man may have been a bit eccentric but his penchant for secret rooms was a bit odd. Riddle had found it in his fourth year when he walked past the portrait that tantalisingly called him and hissed back 'Slut' and it surprisingly clicked open. A benefit was, even his wife didn't know about this room and – as amazing of a shag that she was – he needed an escape from her fire sometimes.
Tom wordlessly lit the room and with an exasperated sigh placed the sack on a desk that more than likely cost more than his entire life's earning, times his wildest dreams. He uttered the reversal spells and immediately the sack started shifting and mewling. Reaching in the sack, he handled the brown hideous cat with one hand and raised it to his face.
"You have a face only a mother could love" he told it uncaringly. It meowed in reply. With his free hand he took his dagger from his trouser pockets and flicked it repeatedly and lazily to unsheathe it. The leather binding clattered on the floor. The cat meowed again.
"And I'm sorry to do this – but your mother. The human mother not – whatever cat mother you had. Got on my nerves particularly today and well – I can't kill her. Long story, has to do about being a dark evil wizard and well – not being a dark evil wizard – though I guess cat killings is a bit dark and evil but they say killing people is much worse. Do you think you're as sentient as a human cat?" he asked. The glossy brown cat eyes looked back at him and meowed again.
"Well I suppose not. Your vocabulary is quite limited- maybe if you were a snake I wouldn't kill you. I like them a lot better because – uhhh that is a long story too. Never mind. Just forget it. Right. Back to cat murder" he continued and raised the knife to the too trusting cat's jugular.
Slowly and tantalisingly he ran the blade across its fur, small cuts of hair falling onto his hand and onto the priceless Arabian carpet. He'd clean it later.
Riddle took a deep breath in, he imagined the blood, the hisses and screeches, the scratches he may possibly get when the poor creature realised a knife was going to slowly and painfully force entry into its veins, the helplessness, the screams, the begging, the all hail the might Lord Vold- the door to the study burst open with a loud bang.
Tom quickly turned, not letting the knife or cat out of his grasp and hissed venomously at the door only to see his red messy haired wife, with wand out, eyes blazing and in matching striped pyjamas flare at the entry.
"Ginny?" said Tom.
"Tom?" said Ginny.
"Meow" said Cat.
"Tom" she growled with squinting eyes. She collected the scene in her mind and stood straight, combing a hand through her bed hair.
"How did you get here?" Tom asked, thinking he should probably be more upset – now his wife only didn't know about the Secret Swimming Pool, the Secret Self-Replenishing Pantry and Secret Torture Chamber.
"The Green Haired Whore let me in"
"But- but Parseltongue?"
"I told her I was your wife and if we got kinky she could watch"
Tom let that comment slide past his mind and silence continued to reign. Ginny's eyes went from the cat, to the dagger, to Tom, to the cat again.
"Tooooom" she groaned, like he was a little boy who had come home all muddy from play, "Tell me that is not Aveline Halloway's cat"
Tom looked at the brown, and probably confused creature.
"Umm.." he began but Ginny put a hand up to stop him.
"Never mind. I don't want to know" she said shaking her head and looking down to the ground, "Just come back to bed soon, you have double classes with the second years first thing in the morning"
She casually walked out and Tom waited for the portrait to sound its closing.
Tom blinked once. And then twice. The cat meowed. Honest to Helga that woman could run into him masturbating to dead house gnomes and simply tell him that dinner was ready.
Tom supposed, there was a certain kind of ill in the mind of a woman who would willingly chain herself to a sociopath like himself. But then again, she could just be thankful it was cats and not her families and loved ones from an alternate reality.
He looked back at the cat, which still hung in his hands quite clueless.
"Well" he acknowledged it, "I guess we'll just continue".
He might've stopped if he had known Aveline Halloway would spend another hour in his office the next day consulting him on the matter of her missing cat.
Riddle hated dinner parties. First of all one shouldn't be able to associate the name Lord Voldemort with dinner parties, but secondly it always highlighted how mundane every other normal person in the world truly was.
More than once he imagined the reactions of these so called 'polished' individuals' reactions if his wife just for once introduced themselves with "Good Evening, I am a time travelling witch of an alternate reality that was sent back in time to kill the man who brought round the apocalypse – but I ended up sticking around and marrying him – it's funny how life does that to you isn't it?".
On the flip side of the Galleon it did give them a reason to leave Hogwarts. Hogwarts was his home, his job and as he suspected - his prison. The place where his watchful wife could best keep a wary eye on him, if one day massacring Hogsmeade tickled his fancy (which it often did). The place where Dumbledore had set a plethora of spells, barriers and enchantments to ensure he stayed in line.
He also suspected that his wife knew that he knew this and so from time to time she would turn a blind eye to his strange activities. If he sneaked off at 2 in the morning and didn't return until 5, she didn't mention it later, even if she turned up at 3 in his (supposedly) impenetrable hideouts to check up on him.
That was the beauty of her he supposed. Never had she wanted to change who he was, loving him for the wicked monster he was and the occasional tolerable man he could be. She merely prevented him from doing too much damage to himself or others. Tom breathed out dreamily.
He still remembered first setting eyes on her. It was one of those special moments in life in which you first lay eyes on someone and realise they are going to change your life. That life from this day on would never be the same.
Her furious red her. Her fiery eyes.
He remembered gazing on that fateful face and realising that - he had never hated or loathed anything as intensely as her.
Despite the strong reaction, he tried to ignore her at first. A transfer student in sixth year? A suspicious last name? He supposed there was a war going on and people are shuffled about in the midst of it. She was small and insignificant and meant nothing to him. He didn't have to worry about her.
But then the bitch tried to kill him. And that did capture his attention.
He immediately retaliated with an attempt to murder with a vat of boiling bat droppings - revenge for the time she bat bogey hexed him. She tried poisoning his pumpkin juice. He mocked her for her cowardly and predictable method as he threw her off the astronomy tower. She proved him wrong when she waited in his bed with the sword of Gryffindor. He surprised her with an imperiused Professor. She surprised him with a transfigured Hippogriff.
A few more attempts at murder, an event involving the giant squid, a pair of tweezers and an eye patch, and everything finally climaxed in an epic duel in the Room of Requirement. They cast Unforgivables, childish hexes, limb tearing hexes and any other spell with the chance to maim, injure and kill, in a dance of hate and destruction… only for him to lose his virginity to her among the rubble. When they had walked out of that room, sweaty, tired and clothes disarrayed, to be caught by a wide eyed first year, Riddle didn't even have the energy to stun the gossip spreading bugger.
Ginerva took all his energy, so much so that ruling the world seemed impossible while keeping her around. She told him eventually of where she had come from (or he might have invaded her mind). He knew what he would become and what he would do and initially it didn't deter him. He merely thanked her for letting him know he had succeeded in the future and continued on with his merry plans for death and destruction.
But then she dug into his skin and into his veins until every thought and glance was about her. He hated that the most about her. How could she make him hate her so much yet always want to be with her? How being nothing in her eyes could feel worse than being nothing to the world. He gave up his initial dream rather mundanely at breakfast in the Great Hall one day.
"Ginny" he had asked her, "Do you think that back in your world, I would have had a chance at you as Lord Voldemort?"
Her pumpkin juice shot out through her nostrils. She then proceeded to throw up for the rest of the morning. Every time she looked at him she gave a dramatically terrified look.
"Alright fine, fine" he said as he held back her hair while she retched into a toilet, "I won't become Lord Voldemort".
After all, Lord Voldemort doesn't just willingly enter a girls' bathroom just for anyone.
A life of killing and murder still made him tingle to his toes, but thinking of that life without his equally insane witch had suddenly made that dream rather dull. A part of him wondered if he had become the Dark Lord would she have still stayed with him- caught him in the midst of torn of limbs and spilling intestines and still look at him with that quizzical face and her long drawn out 'Toooooomm'. But he didn't try. And that proved that Tom Riddle was capable of thinking of someone other than himself. He had ruined her life before but maybe this time he could make it bearable- well somewhat – not so bad at least? - well he could try.
And so Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle married Mrs. Ginerva Molly Riddle almost directly after they had graduated Hogwarts. She had told him that she was glad her named changed to Riddle. When he asked why she explained that her fake last name was never hers and she could never use Weasley again, at least now she had a name she felt she could own.
Dumbledore, wishing to keep Tom under his claws encouraged Dippet to give him an internship to Professor Grabley, the current Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. They became the only staff couple that lived in the castle, and worked together to find creatures for the Professor to use in his classes. Sometimes they spent days or months away, travelling the world and seeing exciting knew wonders, but Hogwarts always called them home with strange and exotic creatures at hand.
"Tom" Professor Grabley said sternly one day, "I know you're good at your job, but I can't give an actual Dementor to my students".
He and Ginny returned it to Azkaban the next day and decided to drop off the one eyed troll in Switzerland while they were at it.
And so life continued, and became slightly drearier when he was promoted to teach DADA (after this accident with a Snow Trollop and an old rusty cage). Now he stayed in the castle most days and nights, marked papers, sat at detentions, patrolled corridors, dealt with stupid blonde students and their undeserving cats.
So when Ginny had asked him if he wanted to go to a Malfoy dinner party he begrudgingly answered with an affirmative.
He sat with his back rigid and his face stone as his old minions chatted about pointless things in life. Quidditch scores. Diets. The stock market. This was exactly why he wanted to make a career out of mass murder. How could anyone find watching numbers go up and down every day entertaining? The worse part of the night, wasn't actually the elaborate fruit display that was meant to resemble Abraxas Malfoy's head but the talk about his wife's swelling stomach and the infernal spawn in it.
"Are you excited Cassie?" asked his wife. He glared at her with screaming eyes. The last thing he wanted to talk about were developing foetuses.
"Oh yes" the bloated cow replied, "Everything is perfect so far, I just hope it is a boy of course"
He watched his wife's face twitch at that but she masked it with a polite smile.
"Though there is no problem, whatsoever with having a beautiful girl Cassie, I don't think you have to worry" she told the horse who didn't catch his wife's stab and just fluttered and smiled as gracefully as a baboon in a tutu.
Thankfully, the conversation moved on from unborn spawn and moved onto less frightening topics. However his wife didn't forget it, as she didn't forget most things that displeased her.
"He becomes a feckless coward" Ginny told him as they were undressing for sleep.
"Who dear?" he asked, lost in thought about what he would do about the growing amount of cat hair he had everywhere.
"Abraxas' son. Yes it is a boy but he is a git. Thinks giving cursed items to 11 year olds is fun" she answered bitterly. Merlin she was just sexy when she was angry.
"Relax cariad, you don't know if it will be a boy or a girl, changing time can do many things and the wonder of conception is that given another chance the same sperm is not likely to reach the same ovum" he drawled, "They could be having a hermaphrodite for all we know".
Ginny huffed as she made her way under the covers. Tom joined her his mind far to beaten by his cat hair problem to think of anything.
"Tom?" she whispered, once the lights were out and his breathing was slow.
"Yes?" he asked in reply.
"I think it's time we had a baby" she answered.
Tom stopped for a moment as if she had casually asked him "Hey you're a psychopath and I probably have a cog or two missing in my brain, wouldn't it be great if we reproduced?"
He turned to look at her and saw her hopeful giant eyes stare back at him, her thin lips slightly parted so he could feel the warmth of her breath on his face.
"Okay" he replied and moved over to lie on her, cradling her head for a kiss and beginning their usual ministrations.
He cast the contraception charm wandlessly and wordlessly as he always did.
A/N: So I was absolutely pulled, entranced and enticed into the world of Gin-n-Tonic. I always loved a bad boy and you can't get better than evil overlord bad boy. And in my midst of my devouring of (the sadly very little) Ginny and Tom fiction I realised – ha what would life be like after these stories (where Ginny goes back to the past and stays with Tom).
Of course, keep reading and you can find out…