first of all, thank you to cella (otomriddle) for giving me the prompt even though it was more of a joke than anything else, and thank you, thams (brassclaw), for letting me use your character/concept.

prologue

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His parents were dead. Thomas and Mary Riddle were laying on the drawing room's floor, their eyes wide open starting at nothing and their faces getting paler and paler with each minute that passed. And everything Tom could do was to cry more and more, waiting to end up in the same situation as the couple as soon as possible.

His son – it was still weird to think like that, to think that his nightmare of many years was real and was just standing there, a few meters from him – kept talking. The boy had a strong voice that reminded him of his father's, Thomas, but from time to time his words seemed to come out of his mouth sounding like a hiss that snaked through the air and made shivers travel down his body. The boy cursed him, talked about how his life had been up to that day, reminded him of how much of a coward he was and how he, Tom Marvolo Riddle, was doing a good deed by wiping the world of his magicless family. But Tom was not listening to it anymore as the only sound he could hear was the beating of his heart, his own hurried breath and the whispered pleads that escaped from his lips amidst his sobs.

"Please, please, please," said the young man, mocking his father's tone. "Did my mother beg you not to go when you left her? Did she ask you to stay? And did you listen to her?"

The man was in no condition to answer to that question. He raised his head to look at the boy, who seemed to be taller and scarier from that point of view, while Tom was still kneeling next to his mother's body. Soon he felt his son's fist hitting his face, making him land on the floor once again.

"Of course you didn't listen to her," the wizard hissed, before staying in silence for a moment. "But… I would be bringing myself down to your level if I did the same, wouldn't I?"

Tom laid with his face against the wooden floor, waiting for any action. He heard the footsteps and saw the boy's feet while he walked around the drawing room. The man felt an invisible force pull him from the floor until he was kneeling again and holding him in place.

"Do you know what this is?" the boy asked, swinging a silver chain in front of his father's face. By the end of the chain there was a silver hour-glass hanging. "Oh, of course you don't, I'm sorry. This is a time-turner. We, wizards, use it to travel back in time… Complicated little things to be found, the time-turners, but luckily I have a friend who is quite fond of shiny and rare objects." His son smiled, shaking his head. "There are several books talking about how careful we must be near these objects… They are too delicate, too magical. Once broken, they can take a wizard to anywhere in time. Interesting, isn't it?"

The boy – Tom, he was his namesake – took a few steps closer, slowly swinging the hour-glass as if it was a pendulum in front of the man.

"There you are, begging for me to let you live," said the young man, stopping close enough to make another shiver run down Tom's back while he kept trembling and crying.

The lips on the wizard's face stretched in a crooked smile right before he walked away and the invisible force that held Riddle in place vanished, letting him fall to the floor once again. When he raised his head, he saw his son stopping on the other side of the room, still smiling.

"And I, being a merciful wizard, will oblige."

The boy threw the hour-glass in the man's direction. Its delicate glass broke into thousands pieces as it hit the floor and a white smoke rose from the dust that was now all over the wooden floor. Before Tom could even think about what could happen, he felt something pulling him back, just before the floor and the rest of the room vanish around him.

The first thing Tom noticed was the pain all around his body. It felt as if he had fallen down his horse and spent nights without sleeping to worsen the fatigue. The smell of burnt wood and smoke was what he noticed right after the pain… It was not the smell of his home – the scent of flowers or paints or books -, it was something different and it made his heart race, even though he couldn't do anything but stay still, feeling what seemed to be a stiff mattress under his back and too scared to open his eyes.

"Step out of my way!" He heard a voice speaking, a man's voice, before the muffled voice of something hitting the floor. "You want me to help but keep not cooperating!"

When he felt someone touching his arm, Tom's immediate reaction was to widen his eyes and cower on the other side of the bed, both because of the pain and the weird feeling that ran through his skin with the touch: it was as if something rusty had been dragged along his forearm.

"Calm down!"

There was a man right in front of him. He looked younger than Tom and had long red hair that were held in a messy ponytail. But what caught his attention the most were his clothes: he wore what seemed to be a shabby, yellow tunic with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows. It was not the kind of clothing one would expect to see someone wearing outside of a theatre play.

"You broke your arm, sir," said the stranger, pointing at Tom's left arm. "I'm taking care of it, you just need to let me take a look."

Still in silence and cowering in the corner, Riddle watched the other for a long time, before looking at his own arm. It didn't look broken… It was not in any weird angle, there were no lumps or anything that could indicate a severe fracture. But it was hurting, a lot.

"Who are you…?" asked Tom, looking at the young man once again.

"My name is Evert," he said, stretching out his hands to encourage the other to show his arm.

"What happened?" the man asked, feeling his throat go dry as he remembered the terrible sensation of falling and having the whole world whirling around himself. It didn't take long for the image of his parents, dead and sprawled on the floor, came back to his mind. Tom did everything he could not to show his discomfort, even though he could feel his eyes water and his throat close with the memory. He didn't know that man, he didn't know how he ended up there and he didn't want to give away any details to anyone but the police… Thinking a little more, maybe not even the police.

"I was harvesting some herbs when I heard a noise roaring across the woods… It was as if lightening had just hit the ground, because everything trembled," Evert explained. "I went to see what had happened and didn't see anything different. Well… I found you. It looked as if you had been beaten by at least ten trolls."

"Trolls…?" mumbled Tom.

"Yes, you looked horrible. I brought you here to take care of you… Actually, I thought it would take longer for you to wake up," he said. "Now, can you show me your arm and let me finish what I've started?"

The man took a deep breath, still trying to understand what had happened. The young man's story didn't make much sense and he was still lost… Not to mention he had no idea if his son, the wizard who had killed his parents, was still around.

"Good. I think that just one more potion will be enough," said Evert, looking at his arm. "And we'll have to immobilize it."

After that, things seemed to happen too fast. In a moment Tom was ready to ask what he meant by 'potion' and, on the other, he was pressing himself against the wall again, trying to get as far away as possible from Evert, trembling and feeling his heart beating way faster than it was supposed to beat. All this reaction, that didn't take longer than ten seconds, happened because Evert put his hand in a pocket of his tunic and pulled out a sculpted wooden stick.

Riddle knew that thing. He had just seem one of those killing his parents and, after that, being pointed at his face. Aside from that, he still remembered Merope Gaunt holding one of these wands and pointing it at him.

"What the bloody…?!" Evert grunted, staring at the man with furrowed brows and the wand still in his hand. "You need to stop jumping around, man!"

"No!" Riddle screamed, raising his hands and whining as he felt the pain in his forearm while he cowered more and more against the wall. "No, no, no…"

Tom could hear the other's footsteps and, when he gathered enough courage to look up, all he could focus on was the wand. Evert, as he approached, kept silent.

"Are you afraid of this?" the young man asked, raising his wand. "Alright.' He threw the wand at the top of the table on the centre of the room and raised his empty hands. "No wand."

Evert approached the fireplace, crouching before it and dipping a wooden bowl into a cauldron that was resting on the fire, before getting up and walking up to Tom once again.

"Come on," he said, trying to give the bowl to the other. "You need to drink it if you want your arm to heal."

"You're like him," Riddle whispered, listening to his words coming out shaky and low, almost being drowned by his sobs. "You're like him…"

"Ahm, look." Evert showed him the greenish liquid inside the bowl, before taking it to his lips and taking a sip, pulling a face right after. "The taste is terrible, but it won't kill you.

Tom kept denying it. That boy had to be mad to believe he would accept drinking any kind of potion… The last time he drank something offered by someone with magic, he ended up losing a whole year of his life and spending the rest of it wishing he could die or go back in time to change things.

"You're stubborn, aren't you?" Evert huffed, leaving the bowl on the floor and waving for a piece of cloth, which came floating to his hand. He dipped the cloth in the potion. "Alright, you don't want to drink it. You're lucky it works in other ways. Give me your arm, I promise I won't hurt you."

Riddle shook his head again, but now the young man seemed to lose his patient. Evert pulled his arm, being careful not to hurt him, and, even though the other kept contorting his body in order to try to free himself, applied the wet cloth there. The liquid was hot, but it seemed to get cold as soon as it touched his skin.

"Stop writhing like that! It'll help the bone heal!"

"What is it?" asked Riddle with a wobbly voice when he managed to pull his arm back to himself, but didn't take the cloth away as he noticed the pain had numbed a little.

"Confrey and some other things," said Evert, winking and laughing. "I put your bone in place before you woke up, but it's still broken. The potion will help to mend it. It works faster when ingested, but it has the same effect as a plaster…"

"How did you put it in place?"

"A spell," he said, hesitating a little, before kneeling in front of Riddle and staring at him for a while. "You're not a wizard, hm?" Tom simply shook his head, trying to keep his hands tucked under his arms so the other wouldn't see him trembling just by hearing the word 'wizard'. "Look, I don't know what you heard about us, but I won't turn you into a toad, sacrifice you in a ritual for the devil, make you ill on purpose or curse the next generations of your family. I just want to help you, sir."

"Why…?" Tom wanted to tell the other that he had just seen another wizard kill his parents, but he just swallowed his words.

"Because you seem to need some help," the young man answered. "My father taught me that helping those in need is the right thing to do. Well, he used to tell me that, but who taught it to me was that old man over there." The wizard pointed to the fireplace where the cauldron kept bubbling. "I won't hurt you and everything I ask in return is for you not to hand me over for practicing magic."

"Hand you over…?"

"People around here are not really fond of magic. Well, they're hunting witches everywhere, but here there are strange stories," said Evert. "Some people still think that a runaway wizard will come back and destroy one of the villages around here as revenge for the time when they tried to burn him alive, hundreds of years ago. So, they're always looking for someone to accuse…"

"Little Hangleton?" Riddle asked. "The village you mentioned…"

"Hangleton," he said. "You know it?"

"Y-Yes," whispered Tom. "I mean, I'm from Little Hangleton."

"Hangleton. There's no Great of Little Hangleton… Imagine two of that village! It would be too much gossip for the whole Yorkshire." Evert laughed, looking at the broken arm again. "Is it still hurting too much?"

"No… It feels numb," said Tom, furrowing his brows while he tried to understand what the other man had said. Maybe he just wasn't in East Yorkshire anymore? Maybe there was place called Hangleton in somewhere else in Yorkshire?

"That's what we want."

"Where am I?" asked Riddle, looking around with care for the first time and noticing that the place was, at the very least, strange. It looked a mix of a bedroom, guest room and kitchen. All the furniture was pretty simple and there were bunches of flowers and herbs hanging around for drying, flasks and pots on the shelves, rolls of papers and books stuck everywhere… There even was a brown owl perched on the top of a chair, lazily hooting from time to time.

"As I said, near Hangleton, at my home," said Evert. "Some people come here when they need something…"

"Something?"

"Remedies, something to help their crops, stuff like that… I learned with another wizard that it's better to keep myself from giving away potions to attract husbands and some miraculous cures after one of us was killed because of that," he explained. "But some Muggles still look for me…" The young man looked at him for a moment. "You're not a wizard, but has meddled with magic, hm? Otherwise you wouldn't be here.

"How d'you know that?"

"When I found you, this was with you," the younger one said, getting up and walking to the table. When he went back to the bed, he held in his hands a silver chain with a broken hourglass hanging from it. "I don't know what it is, but I know it's magical… And I know there's some kind of magic hanging to your body. It's not a good magic. It seems like you've got in trouble with a dark wizard."

Tom looked at the broken object, before raising his good arm to take it. He remembered his son waving that thing in front of his face, saying something about traveling in time… A time-turner. A broken time-turner.

"Can you… Can you tell me today's date?" Riddle asked, fearful as he remembered more and more of what his son had talked about that object.

"13th of July of 1421," said Evert.