As His Equal

Summary: Charismatic and brilliant, Tom Riddle is nothing short of Hogwarts' finest pupil. But behind the façade lie dark secrets, family madness, and a tortured soul. When an experiment lands him in the Forest of Dean, early 1998, he sees the fruits of his labors firsthand– only this time, with a soul not yet numbed by dark magic. After all, no one is born evil. (Retelling of Book 7, AU.)

Disclaimer: I neither own the intellectual property of the Harry Potter universe, nor do profit from this work produced here.

Warnings: cursing.

A thousand sparks exploded around him, whirling like the Furies of Hades. Tom let out a sharp cry of surprise as the world began to twist and spin, spin out of succession, flashing like his life before his eyes at the moment of death. He saw a cottage, unfamiliar, the house of his grandfather and uncle, too familiar by far, a great chamber like the burnt and gutted insides of the Great Hall, oh, this had been a mistake, a grand mistake, he was going to vanish into oblivion and no one would ever find him again–

WHAM!

He slammed into something solid and fell hard on his back, legs struck with a splintering pain by the force of the blow. For several seconds he lay there, winded, staring up at the stars…

The stars?

Slowly, he began to take an inventory of his surroundings. The ground beneath him was cold and not altogether level; the pinpricks of white light against the dark were framed by the twisted branches of old trees; the moon gleamed a waxing white crescent above him. So. He was in the woods. Somewhere. There was snow on the ground, therefore wherever he'd ended up was terribly far to the north, or…

Or, his plan had worked.

Tom sat up straight at that, mindless of the snow soaking through his robes. Was it possible? Had it worked? He made to check his watch, and then realized how ridiculous that was; the watch was a piece of clothing, it only told the time it had been wound to.

The stars. The stars wouldn't lie. He looked up at the sky again and found Orion, who was in an entirely different position than he ought to have been.

A shaking breath escaped him. So. He'd done it. He'd actually done it. Tom was feeling rather pleased with himself, until he realized that he was still lost and alone in the woods, on a cold winter's eve, and he'd quite forgotten to bring along a wool cloak. Well, no matter that, he'd just apparate to Hogsmeade and-

His train of thought was cut off suddenly as he heard a noise in the trees– a sort of clanging, like metal striking stone. Warily, he stood, drawing his wand from the pocket of his robes– thank Merlin it hadn't fallen out, that had been stupid of him not to secure it– and creeping through the trees towards the noise. A flicker of movement caught his eye; he looked to the right, but saw nothing save the shadows and the trees.

There were voices now, along with the noises; he made his way towards them and presently came to a sort of clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a pool, and at the side of the pool were two young men of about his age. "-loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other," said the first, who was dark-haired and seemed to be wearing spectacles. "With you gone…"

He trailed off; the second boy– a redhead– seemed to be crying on a large, flat rock. A great studded sword (Tom supposed that was probably what had made the noise) lay half on the stone, half in the snow beside him. He eyed the sword curiously; he was sure he had seen something like it before, perhaps in a painting or a textbook.

"She's like my sister," the bespectacled boy continued. "I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It's always been like that. I thought you knew."

The redhead turned away, sniffling, and Tom rolled his eyes. Pull yourself together, man. He realized that the sword was not the only object of focus in the picture; a sort of necklace or something was laying on the stone. It was too large to be a pendant, too small to be a pouch–

He shrank back as the bespectacled boy turned and began walking towards the trees, but there was no need; he merely picked up a bag sitting in the snow and retreated again. The redhead had stood and was speaking at last, but now Tom had lost interest, for in the shift of shadows at their movement the moonlight had at last fallen upon the necklace, and now he could see what it was. His breath caught, stunned.

It was the locket. Slytherin's locket, the one his mother had sold out of desperation all those years ago- and, by blood, his locket. He'd only ever seen drawings of it before, sketches in dusty textbooks in the restricted section, but how often had he traced over the ink designs with his fingers? How often had he spent delving into the mysteries and supposed enchantments that his ancestor had placed over the gilded emeralds? Yes, this was the same locket, he was sure of it. It was his, his by blood, his by birthright.

And it seemed that miserable fool of a redhead had just attacked it with what he now recognized was the sword of Gryffindor. Fury blazed through him; he had no qualms about house rivalries, but this, this was taking it too far. Some part of him wanted to rush out and demand his inheritance, at the point of a duel if he had to, but another, more sensible part reminded him that these boys did not yet realize he was here and would probably be careless enough to leave the locket lying around at some point or another. He could steal it back then.

The boys had finished talking, apparently; in what Tom assumed to be a reconciliation, they hugged, and then parted. "And now," the bespectacled boy said, "all we've got to do is find the tent again."

The redhead nodded with a choked laugh and picked up the sword and locket. Tom quickly shrank back into the shadows and waited until they'd passed him; when they were a suitable distance away, he followed quietly, careful to keep his footsteps on the muffling snow. The stealth wasn't really necessary in any case; the pair was too busy laughing and joking to notice his pursuit. Eventually they came to a tent and slipped inside.

Tom sighed and leaned up against a tree, resigned to waiting. He shivered in the cold air and cast a heating charm. All he had to do now was linger here until they fell asleep, and then creep into the tent and steal back the locket-

"Ouch- ow- gerrof! What the- Hermione- OW!"

He started as shouting burst from within the confines of the tent. That's the redheaded boy.

"YOU COMPLETE ARSE, RONALD WEASLEY!"

Now that voice was feminine; with each word came the slap of flesh smacking flesh, as if someone were being struck. Was the boy being attacked by a witch?

"YOU CRAWL BACK HERE AFTER WEEKS AND WEEKS- OH, WHERE'S MY WAND?!"

Merlin's beard, she sounded ready to hex him. Not good. Tom felt his blood ran cold; perhaps they were fighting over the locket. If she attacked him and disapparated with it, he might never come across it again!

"Protego!" came a voice; the bespectacled boy. Maybe it was time to switch tactics; if the boys were together against the witch, he could offer to join with them and take the locket once they'd overwhelmed her. "Hermione- calm down-!"

"I WILL NOT CALM DOWN! GIVE ME BACK MY WAND! GIVE IT TO ME!"

"OY!"

The three voices froze at Tom's call, and he began to wonder if he'd made a mistake. There was no time to consider it, however, for immediately all three speakers poured out of the tent, wands held aloft. With one look at him, all three went pale. "No way," the redhead whispered.

Tom raised his own wand and pointed it at the witch. "You leave him alone," he ordered.

And in reward for his helpfulness, all three disarmed him, the force of the spell flipping him over backwards into the snow.

Tom let out a sharp yell as his body collided painfully with the snowy ground for the second time that day. Ahead of him, the three seemed to be in a mild panic. "Oh Merlin. Oh Merlin," the witch was whimpering, and the bespectacled boy was saying, "It can't be. There's no way-"

Tom pushed himself to his knees, fuming. "What the bloody fuck was that for?!" he demanded angrily, spitting out blood and snow.

The three looked so shocked that Tom would have laughed if he hadn't been so irritated. "H-how did you find us?" the redhead– Ron, wasn't it?– demanded from the side. "We didn't say-"

"It can't be," the bespectacled boy said again. "There's no way that Vol-"

"DON'T!" Ron bellowed, whirling around.

"What?"

"There's a jinx on the name- I'll explain later- Just don't say it!"

"Fine, fine, I won't!"

"Look," Tom snapped, standing, "I don't know who you are or what your problem is, but I'll have my wand back now, if you please."

"Not a chance," said the bespectacled boy sharply.

"I wasn't asking," he returned, trying his darnedest to be intimidating despite the fact that he was essentially defenseless. "Wand. Now."

"Why, so you could blow us all up?" Ron retorted furiously.

That was odd. Tom frowned, startled. "Blow you up? Whatever for?"

The three shot each other looks that clearly read of unnerved fear. Good, he could use that. "Of course, I wouldn't advise testing me," he added smoothly. "Come now, hand the wand over."

Rather than doing that, the bespectacled boy lowered his wand an inch- just an inch. "You… are Tom Riddle, aren't you?"

Tom paled slightly, but managed to answer coolly, "Who wants to know?"

"Er… Harry." He didn't elaborate.

"Well, Harold, you and your friends here seem a bit barmy to me. So just do as I say and we'll part as unlikely acquaintances." He glanced coldly towards the redhead. "And I'll be taking the locket, too. It's a family heirloom. Goodness knows how you miserable Gryffindors got hold of it, but it's mine and I'd like it back."

More unnerved glances. He was beginning to tire of this. The girl stepped forward and said hesitantly, "Er… Tom. Just how old are you, exactly?"

He eyed her suspiciously, but decided the information probably couldn't hurt. "Sixteen."

"And… could you tell me what year it is?"

She knew.

He heard a low gasp as the redhead figured it out, and a slight crunch in the snow as Harold shifted his feet uncertainly. "…No," he said finally. "Could you?"

"Oh, Merlin's bloody boots," Ron mumbled. "You can't be serious."

"It's 1998, Tom," the girl said in a very strange voice. "And… we're in the middle of a war."

The tent was warm enough, but old and sparsely furnished. Tom sat cross-legged on the bed nearest the stove and tried to eavesdrop.

The three strangers– he'd learned that the girl's name was Hermione, and the bespectacled boy was "not Harold, just Harry"– had refused to return his wand, and had actually threatened him into moving inside the tent. There, the girl had done some rather impressive magic to stop him from moving beyond the edges of the bed, before dragging the dark-haired boy off and leaving the redhead to stand as guard. This "Ron" was now glaring at him with a rather disturbing amount of animosity, while he strained to catch whispers coming from the other side of the tent:

"-Came out of the locket?"

"-Can't be; Ron killed it, I saw it die…"

"-He actually swore, that doesn't seem very You-Know-Who-ish-"

In light of all this, Tom had decided to wait. Well, "decided" was stretching it a tad– there really wasn't much else he could do. Despite their baffling behavior, he'd managed to piece together a few key points of information:

First, he'd done it. He'd actually done it. He couldn't help but feel absurdly proud of himself; time travel was all just theory to those crackpots at the Ministry, but he, a Hogwarts sixth-year, had made the jump. Forward, no less, which was supposed to be impossible.

Second, whatever he'd done, here in this time, he was involved in a war, most likely on the opposite side of these three students. He could only assume that this was why his experiment with time had brought him here, of all places. Tom wasn't quite sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, it meant he might actually be accomplishing a few of his goals. On the other, war seemed a bit extreme. The old pureblood families always suffered the greatest losses in wizarding wars; it was just bloody stupid to risk wiping out a whole wizarding culture with that kind of social violence. Surely there were better paths to go about achieving one's ambitions.

Third, the bespectacled boy– Harry– somehow knew this other him personally. He wasn't sure how, but the way he'd reacted to Tom meant that somewhere, somehow, he'd met him before. Tom wondered if it were perhaps the diary. That could explain why he recognized him on sight.

Unless I've managed to make myself completely immortal, he mused. Ageless and young forever. He frowned slightly. Well, even if I have, I wouldn't want to be sixteen forever. Even death might be better than that.

He laughed grimly at his own joke, and Ron shot him a look. "Sorry," Tom said, not feeling very apologetic. He rolled his shoulders and cocked his head, trying to listen in a bit more on Harry and Hermione's conversation, but there was no need. Even as he did so, the two stood up and walked over.

"So. What's the plan?" Ron said viciously, still not lowering his wand.

"Well, we can't let him go," Harry said uncertainly.

"Fine. So we kill him."

Tom straightened up. "What?"

"We're not going to kill him, Ron," Hermione said sharply.

"I haven't done anything to you!" Tom added angrily.

The three all turned to him with suddenly ferocious eyes. "…Well. Not yet, I haven't?" he tried to amend, uncertain.

Harry sighed. "Look, we can't just off him, Ron; we'd need to talk to someone who understands time and all that a lot better first. Besides… he has a point."

"Like fuck he does! Harry-"

"He hasn't technically done anything. Yet." He ran a hand through his shock of black hair. "Trust me, I'd like to do the honors myself just as much as you would, but…"

"It'd be wrong," Hermione said firmly. "Like- like going back in time and killing a baby Hitler."

"I'm not seeing the issue here."

"We don't become murderers to stop murderers, Ron!"

Tom stiffened at that. "I haven't killed anyone," he lied.

All three of them snorted derisively at that. He was beginning to wonder if it were choreographed.

"What about Myrtle?" Ron said acidly. "Although I suppose you wouldn't count her as a person."

"Who?"

"The girl with the glasses," Hermione replied coolly. "The one your basilisk murdered in the girl's bathroom on the fifth floor."

A chill ran through him. "That basilisk wasn't mine," he said, as calmly as he could manage. "That half-breed freak-"

Wham!

He hadn't even realized Harry had hit him until the anti-escape charms stopped him from falling off the bed. "Harry!" a voice shrieked, and he scrambled back, looking up to see that the girl was doing her best to hold the dark-haired boy back.

"Don't you ever call him that again!" Harry hissed. "Hagrid is a thousand times the man you'll ever be, you filthy, conniving little liar!"

Tom blanched, his voice temporarily failing him. The young man seemed genuinely unhinged. "A-Alright! Alright! I'm sorry!"

"You opened the Chamber of Secrets! You killed Myrtle and got Hagrid expelled! You're the reason so many muggleborns are dying, you're the reason my parents are-" He cut himself off suddenly and paced away, still shaking with anger.

I'm the reason his parents are dead?

Tom was beginning to realize just how much danger he was in. If he was responsible for this young man being orphaned, and currently it was only two on one in favor of not executing him in cold blood here in the middle of nowhere, he couldn't afford to lose one of his only allies. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I didn't…" I didn't know? That was not going to help his case. I didn't mean to? Even worse.

He heard the man let out a low sigh through his nose, like a bull about to charge. Tom winced, but thankfully, Harry only took one deep breath, and then another, and didn't turn around.

"Let me explain to you how this is going to work," Hermione said quietly, though her hand had gone white around her wand. "You are not going to leave this tent. You are going to answer us when we ask you a question, and you are going to answer honestly. Believe me, we will know if you are lying. You will not attempt to contact anyone, not that you could even if you tried. You will not be getting your wand back. When we are not questioning you, you will be under a silencing charm. And you will consider yourself very, very lucky, because believe me, there are a lot of people who would do anything to see you dead right now. Do I make myself clear."

"…Crystal," Tom said warily.

"Good. Silencio."

His voice vanished and died in his throat. Hermione turned to Ron and said, "Alright. We need to talk."

"Right," he agreed seriously.

She gave him a dour look. "About how you found us."

"Oh!" He blushed, and said again, "Right. Yeah."

Harry cleared his throat and nodded to Tom, who rolled his eyes. Hermione bit her lip, and then gave a nod; they went to another part of the tent, and the girl drew aside a sort of curtain to separate the room. A moment later, all sound from beyond it muffled and faded into silence. Tom waited for what seemed like ages, before the curtain was swept aside and the sense of sound restored. The girl brushed past him to a bunk on the opposite side of the tent, climbed into bed, and pulled up the covers.

The two boys followed. "About the best you could hope for, I think," said Harry, as Ron handed him a wand.

"Yeah. Could've been worse. Remember those birds she set on me?"

"I still haven't ruled it out," the girl's voice came from the other side of the room, but Tom saw Ron smirk as he began to rummage through his rucksack. He went to change beyond the curtain; as he did so, the girl suddenly sat up. "Oh, bollocks."

"Pardon?" said Harry, startled.

"We can't just leave him there," she hissed, casting a furtive glance to the young man in the far bed. Tom raised an eyebrow, seeing as he couldn't talk. "Someone has to keep watch!"

"Oh. Right," Harry agreed uncertainly. The girl bit her lip.

"Look, Harry, I can do it if you don't feel comfortable- frankly, I wouldn't be surprised-"

"No," he countered sharply, and then said, "I'll take first watch, Hermione; you get some rest."

"Harry-"

"I'm sure about this, Hermione. We'll question him in the morning. Just try to get some sleep, okay?"

She gave a breathy laugh at that and said ironically, "Sure. With him here, I'll sleep like a baby." Her face suddenly fell, and she looked to Harry with remorse. "Oh, Harry- I'm sorry-"

"It's alright. Just… rest, Hermione."

She bit her lip and nodded, before lying back down again. A moment later, Ron came out from behind the curtain; he glanced to Tom, nodded to Harry, and went to sleep in his own bunk. The bespectacled young wizard pulled up a chair in front of Tom's bed and watched him, almost unblinkingly.

Tom, frankly, had had enough, but there was little he could do about it. Instead, he gave a shrug of his shoulders which the matron at the orphanage would probably have called snarky, lay down, and rolled over to face the wall.

He didn't sleep, of course, not until three hours later, when the guard-shift changed. All throughout that time, he simply lay there, wondering and waiting. Waiting for whatever it was that Harry Potter was surely planning, for the wrath in the gaze of the bespectacled boy upon his back was something Tom knew to be nothing other than pure and utter hatred.

A/N: So just a crazy idea I had; what if Tom Riddle himself were part of the hunt to kill the Horcruxes? Probably won't finish this, but I thought it was interesting enough to post the first chapter.

Also, I know that Tom is a bit OOC here; that's intentional. He doesn't act like Voldemort because he isn't Voldemort, not yet. I think Rowling's assertion that the reason he can't love is because of how he conceived is sort of irrational; similar situations happen often enough in our real world without producing sociopaths. So I decided it would make more sense if he were prone to insane behavior but only got to the "Lord Voldemort" point because of his messing around with dark magic.

Fun fact: that's often how evil works in the real world too. It's a slippery slope, my friends...

Tell me what you think!