Written for Round 6 of QLFC as the Keeper of the Arrows (prompt: write about a dark character demonstrating the virtue of temperance.).
Also written for Caesar's Palace Prompts (prompts: rancorous, formation, beast, phantasmagoria, vengeful, otherworldly, hatred)
A huge thanks to Gamemakers and madworlds for beta-ing! I love you guys.
WC: 1,493
Tom Riddle first met the Devil in a doorway that was only a few feet high. He remembered a beam of light coming towards him, an overwhelming white, a great expanse of nothing, the feeling of everything. He remembered a shrinking, a twisting, a whirring, a silence.
Now, he was here. He bent at the waist and went through the opening, tucking his robes behind him with his bony fingers. To the other side, then. What a pity that it had to end this way, though he knew he would find a way to begin again.
It was 1981 when Tom Riddle willingly knelt before another for the first time.
"Oh, hello, there," an unfamiliar voice said. Tom looked up and came inches away from a wide grin. "You like my teeth? I got them whitened yesterday."
The grinning man, or dwarf, given his height, moved aside with a flourish. Tom crawled through the rest of the door and brushed invisible dust off as he stood. "Clever, making the door shrink as I walked through it."
"Yes, I am clever. Only a few people have ever outsmarted me before." The man reached up to take Tom's hand, but Tom swiftly tucked it into his robes. "Oh, don't worry, I won't hurt you any more than you can hurt yourself. Shall we take a walk?"
"Where are we going?" said Tom. He looked around at the sparse scenery. It was King's Cross station… just whiter. This was the space between afterlife and life?
"We're going to wait for your train."
"I'm not getting on," Tom said, shaking his head. "I have unfinished business."
"Pah," said the man. "How many of us have finished all our business when we die? Very few, let me tell you. I see the wickedest men of the world, and none of them are ever done. And I see the good, the pure; they hold back too much in life. They don't indulge themselves. They waste away for a future that will end in a blink of an eye of time. Is temperance a virtue?"
Tom took a seat on a bench. He would rather not stray from where he had entered this world, whether there was an entrance or not. "I would rather wait here."
"Well, fine by me, I suppose," the man said before joining Tom.
"And who are you? I do have an idea."
The little man swung his legs back and forth. "Some know me as the Devil. I know myself as the manifestation of mankind." He turned towards Tom and flashed him another grin.
"Stop rocking the chair," Tom ordered.
The Devil ignored him. "I know your life, Tom. It hasn't been much of a riddle at all. You indulged so many of your whims, and look where you are… with me."
"I was not simply a wild youth, Devil." Tom pressed his lips together into a hard line. "I sacrificed much to make my life what it is."
"What it was."
"I gave up fun, a normal life. I gave up friends and the ability to ask for help. I gave up meals. I gave up my soul."
"All for greed, I'd say."
"Would you call realizing a vision greed?" Tom suddenly stood up from the bench, knocking it over with a sweep of his arm.
The Devil lay on the ground for a moment, his feet dangling in the air. Tom was sure he caught a look of surprise, then boredom, on the Devil's face. With a wave of his hand, the Devil moved the bench upright once more.
"You knocked me over the Muggle way," said the Devil. "You are a Muggle, aren't you? Your lineage is not so pure…"
"You're not real," Tom retorted.
"This is what you wanted? To be next to me, waiting for your next train?" The Devil hopped off the bench and touched Tom's wand pocket. "Aren't you curious to know what waits on the other side?"
"I thought incomplete souls couldn't cross over," said Tom.
"Oh, you got me. That's right. You haven't crossed over yet… that is, boarded the train. You're roaming the world as a body-less spirit, but the world looks different when you're dead, doesn't it?"
"If I did what I wanted, I wouldn't be here," said Tom. He lost himself in memories of days past as he closed his eyes.
He saw himself, a child, looking up at an angry cook with a rat in her hand. Little Tom insisted that he hadn't done it; it was a mistake, entirely! He hadn't meant to imagine the rat into being. He hadn't meant to imagine the snake that ate it. The cook screamed that she had seen him take the rat and snake out from his left and right coat pockets and set them in the kitchen. At that moment, he had wanted nothing more than to set the snake on her.
He didn't.
He saw himself in a different place and time, a little bit later. Tom wanted to run from the orphanage to a place that was warmer, where there was enough food for seconds and where there were enough arms for hugs. He crouched on the ground and curled into himself. His arms clutched his legs and he rocked back and forth, as if willing himself to imagine his departure.
He didn't.
The scene changed to a brighter image. A young woman barely growing into her curves and out of her gangly limbs skipped on the green lawn, a puppy trailing clumsily behind her. "I'm free!" she said to a dandelion seed floating in the wind. Tom wanted to go after her. He wanted to tell her that he wanted to be free, too, and that he was one day going to be a great Wizard and that she should really go to Hogsmeade with him if she wanted to get him early.
He didn't.
Younger Tom was charismatic. He could have almost anything he wanted, when he asked sweetly enough or demanded harshly enough. But what he couldn't get was more time. He looked longingly out the window at the trail of students heading to the Quidditch match. He couldn't go, not now when he needed to study. Times were going to change, and he needed to keep up if he was going to lead the future. He wanted to have a normal life, really. But how could he, when he was anything but? His horcrux would be made soon.
Suddenly, his vision turned to a more recent memory and most familiar memory. Each time his soul split, he felt a little thinner, like something about the colors he saw had faded, or like his voice didn't sound his anymore. He didn't want this, no. But he wouldn't wanted more not to sacrifice what he needed.
Tom blinked and was at the station again, staring at the Devil who again sat on his throne of a bench. Only a few seconds had passed. "And you say I'm impulsive? Greedy? Indulgent?" Tom murmured.
"Are people who seek power not so?"
Tom frowned. "Do you not condemn yourself?"
"I am condemned, yes."
"You did make me kneel as soon as I crossed the doorway," said Tom.
"Yes, I did."
"Were you acting out of temperance?"
"I quite wanted to crush you with that doorway, and heaven knows this bit of your soul has been through enough that I could do it."
Tom took a step towards the Devil. "I want to make a deal with you."
The Devil swung his legs high into the air and rocked the bench like a swing. "And when did I say I was open to a deal? What could you possibly offer me, when your soul is so fractured?" He paused. "But, go on."
Looking into the Devil's eyes was like looking into those of a basilisk. "I could give you more than just my own soul. You saw the number of followers I have, or will have again. If you take me back, I could promise you that and more."
The Devil tapped his chubby fingers against his chin one at a time. "That does sound like a good deal for me, but I wouldn't be in character if I didn't try to negotiate. Exactly how many souls?"
"I can't possibly know now," said Tom. "It all depends on how much strength you give me."
"And what if I made you stronger than any other?"
"Then, I'll get you five thousand."
"Five hundred thousand. After all, you'll have eternity to do it."
Tom Riddle's eyes gleamed. "I'll shake on it."