History Rewritten Chapter 1: The End in the Beginning, a harry potter fanfic

(( This is a compilation of a roleplay between myself ( ) and HeroComplexing ( ). I played Tom, while my companion played Harry. Their writing is incredible, and I would highly recommend that you follow them.

My sweet, adorable buddy Grace Lee ( ) collected most of the posts together for me, so I owe her a huge thanks. She's an incredible writer as well.

Also a big ol' thanks to everyone who followed this AU storyline thus far. This upload has been promised for a LONG TIME and I really appreciate your patience. Thank you so much. ))

It had taken Harry several days to orientate himself. What year was it? Who was alive? Who was dead? Would anybody recognize him? The answers to those questions came to him slowly, his mind feeling as though it were full of cotton balls that buzzed inside his skull, hindering his comprehension of the world around him. It was only after this buzzing had receded that he recognized it for what it was: the time period adjusting to his presence. Accepting its intruder, as unwelcome as he might have been.

He had managed to eat and sleep by the third day. Took some food off some unsuspecting muggles and found himself a quiet alleyway, dozing in there until he had stabilized enough to be functional. He found out the year shortly after from a muggle newspaper. It was 1943, early summer. Tom Riddle had not yet made the transition into Voldemort and Harry Potter did not yet exist. He was relieved when he realized this; it would have been indefinitely more difficult to get a hold of Tom if he were already deep into his travels.

Being an encyclopedia of Tom Riddle facts by this time, Harry knew exactly where to go next. Albus Dumbledore's voice, as clear as day, rung through his head as he found somewhere safe and out of the way to apparate from; 'He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son'. Hermione's voice piqued in with a 'be careful, Harry. Remember what happened last time you were there? Please be careful.' She had been telling him to 'be careful' right up until her death. Ron had been a little more subdued in that regard, always trusting Harry to come out alright in the end. Harry's tenacity had always ensured he did. He had become very adept at running and dodging over the years.

Harry didn't particularly like apparition, even now, but he couldn't think of a better way to get to his destination. He couldn't go by broomstick because he hadn't access to a broomstick, and he couldn't go by floo powder because the Riddle house wouldn't be connected to the network. As much as he loathed to do it, he had to apparate. So that was exactly what he did, and he managed to do so without splinching, thank goodness. He was old enough that apparition shouldn't cause him this much grief, but, well… old habits die hard. Hermione had always been so much better at it than him.

It was a bit of a walk before he reached the heart of Little Hangleton. The building he was after, the Riddle residence, looked a great more regal without the overgrown vines and weather-worn extremities; it might've been breathtaking to someone who hadn't attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The bright green grass surrounding it squelched beneath his feet as he ascended the hill. There was still some daylight left, which meant there would be time to move the Riddle family to a different location, somewhere safer, while he dealt with Tom Riddle.

He performed a simple unlocking charm on the door and - to his surprise, nothing happened. Testing the handle, he found the door was already unlocked. Harry nigh flung himself into the house upon realizing this, performing a silencing charm on his feet as he ran, bolting his way through the house, aiming for the drawing room. All the while he was cursing the house for being so needlessly large. Did three people really need a whole manor?

At the sight of Tom he didn't even think. He bellowed the word 'expelliarmus' so loud that he saw the Riddle's – still alive, wide-eyed and terrified – jerk in their seats, turning to look at him with an expression of mingled disgust and fear. He wasn't a pleasant sight, he was sure. All ragged and war-torn and filthy. It'd been ages since he'd had the opportunity to shave and bathe; The Riddle's probably thought some insane homeless man had wandered in and started screaming nonsense.

As an afterthought, he belted into the room and grabbed for the back of Tom's robes, just in case he had mastered apparition. Looked a little young for that, but, well… it paid to be cautious around Tom Riddle.

The middle aged man stared up at his attacker, his mouth clenched shut, and eyes all but rolling into the back of his head in absolute horror. His hands were shaking violently as he gripped the arms of his cushioned chair, all but tearing at the fabric in his efforts to move, to run, to flee. The veins on his neck stood out in stark contrast to his beautifully smooth, porcelain skin as he held back a scream of terror.

The elderly gentleman looked more confused than his petrified son. He was staring back at him, level in control, perhaps sensing the boy's hesitation, or maybe even amazed at the revelation that they were being attacked with a small stick. Either way, his thick, white mustache quivered with anger and loathing somewhere within his confusion as he stared forward.

The sensibly dressed woman to the elderly man's side was entirely unreadable. She kept her neatly lipsticked mouth was in a firm, resolute line as she prevented herself from even the inclination of fear, staring the forces of what she could not see or entirely understand. Her lined face seemed rather grim as she looked at the attacker facing them, knowing him without having even met him once. She seemed to somehow be resigned to her fate, despite the anger in her eyes.

Everything, from their uncertainty, to their confusion, to their horror seemed to stem from the rather young, robed boy before, a boy who faked confidence as his mind refused to move forward as second by harrowing second ticked by on the huge grandfather clock.

Tom was holding his breath.

Everything within the towering manor seemed to want to crush him under the weight of the silence which had fallen. He was sweating. He was shaking. He was every bit as weak as every revolting individual he had ever hated and yet he couldn't seem to get past one single solitary fact, one repeating loop of a thought which refused to be denied.

He looked exactly like them.

Tom had never stared into the face of someone who shared his features. He knew those high, regal cheekbones, that deep black, silken hair, the straight edge of that nose. He was even familiar with the thin fingers which tightened in horror on his chair as he stared with wide, shining eyes up at him. There was no mistaking that recognition. It was the face that he woke up to every single morning, the face that he had forced the emotions from long ago now locking eyes with him from across the room, his angular jaw clenched in abject terror.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, his thoughts were moving fast. He needed to move beyond this, and it must be done quickly and neatly. No one must know of his parentage. He would do away with his living relatives now and he would move past this. His insane Uncle would be the perfect fall back, the perfect scapegoat for his crime. If only he could-

His grip tightened on his wand to keep his hand from shaking, but he couldn't seem to stop staring into those eyes. His eyes. In a life full of people who didn't even seem to look vaguely like him, this man was sitting here, wearing his eyes. He'd been here all along. Always wearing his eyes and hiding away.

Tom snapped his own shut, concentrating hard, willing himself to snap out of it, grappling with those thoughts and needing to push past and find it, the hatred, the pain, the anger, and the chilling cold rooted in countless nights spent alone and awake on his orphanage bed, wondering, wanting, needing the man before him, and now to learn this…yes, there it was. Now, he had it.

His sense of purpose. He would make them pay.

Soft, gentle green light tipped his wand as the words consumed his mind. He lifted his wand to cast the spell and suddenly went flying into the wall behind him.

Blindsided, Tom crumpled to the floor, weaponless and winded as a cry of despair erupted from his father, no longer silenced or confined to his seat. The grandfather dashed forward with speed unexpected of a man his age, lunging for a tall glass case and tearing open the wooden door frames to reveal several sizable and well-kept hunting muskets.

Ah, guns. Of course there were guns. He should have expected wealthy family like the Riddles to have a few within reach at all times. Harry wordlessly shut the cabinet on the muggle, almost catching those long thin fingers of his in the process. It wouldn't open for him no matter how desperately he tugged at the fine silver handle. Harry then willed Tom's wand to himself, pocketing it with his grip still firm around a handful of its owner's robes. He'd involuntarily pulled the boy closer to himself rather than let him crumple to the floor.

After all this time, all the suffering and loss inflicted on himself and others, he was finally, finally going to be able put things right. The thought rejuvenated him, made him feel less like a man who'd been on the run for years, trying and failing to save those he cared about, and more like the 'chosen one' Trelawney had claimed him to be.

He sent the Elder Riddle back into his chair with a simple propelling spell. Not the gentlest way to do it, but it was fast. Licking his lips, he uttered "obliviate" and followed it with a soft "stupefy". Didn't want to have the muggles go ricocheting into the walls. He just wanted them unconscious long enough to make an escape. The spell would wear off within ten to twenty minutes, after which the Riddles would awaken very confused indeed. He hadn't provided them with a false memory to replace the one he had removed. There wasn't time for that. He needed to get himself and Tom somewhere out of the way, somewhere quiet, like…

Little Whinging (Little Hangleton, Little Whinging, both occupied by muggles that had rejected their magic relatives; the parallel made Harry frown. There were far too many parallels between himself and Voldemort). Little Whinging was where he would go. He'd find an empty house – not Number 4 Privet Drive; too many bad memories associated with that place. There ought to be at least a few on the market that he could temporarily occupy. He clutched Tom tight to himself and with a loud pop, disappeared before the pale, unconscious faces of Tom's family.

They landed on asphalt. Surveying the street, he located the nearest house with a 'for sale' sign and approached, dragging the sign out of the ground with his wand as he headed for the attached garage. He opened it, slid inside, and threw the sign into a dark corner. Put up a few wards and he – they? – ought to be able to stay here for at least a couple of weeks.

The house was still reasonably well furnished. There were a few chairs and tables scattered throughout the house, some clearly having been moved from other rooms. The kitchen was a bit bare, but he could go out and get himself some cutlery and kitchen utensils if he found himself wanting. The lounge room had two seats, a coffee table, and a fire. For that, Harry was grateful. He hadn't known such comforts in quite some time. He dropped the unconscious Tom into the chair furthest from the fire and lashed him to it with magical bindings, and then proceeded to light the fire and hunch down in front of it, warming his chilled hands and face. He was still shaking minutely from the adrenaline that had rushed his veins the moment he had found that front door unlocked. He curled his hands into fists, squeezed tight, and then unfurled them, but they were still shaking. Harry hoped it would cease before Tom awoke. The last thing he needed was Tom to think he – a grown man – was afraid of a teenager, or afraid of what he was about to do to that teenager.

He had decided prior to attempting time travel that he wouldn't kill Tom, but as Dumbledore had said on numerous occasions, 'there are worse things than death'.

There hadn't been time for cohesive thought. Tom could vaguely feel that he had been grabbed, rather unceremoniously by what must have been his attacker. The dueling skills that he had took so much pride in were left by the wayside as he found himself quite weaponless. That deadly sense of purpose which had fueled his anger not a few seconds before dissipated in a heartbeat, replaced by an overwhelming sense of vertigo, as though he had been physically struck into a wall.

He felt the grip around him tighten and somewhere in the back of his own mind, he felt the press of a side-along apparition being forced upon him and before he knew it, darkness engulfed him and the world went a fuzzy, unnamable shade of gray.

When he came to from the haze of semi-consciousness, he awoke slowly and kept his eyes carefully shut, taking stock of himself before he could even begin to account for much else. His body seemed to be intact and unharmed as far as he was aware, but his senses were telling him that he was not quite out of danger yet. Slowly, carefully testing out his muscles, he quickly learned from the dull ache in his side that he had been knocked back somehow, perhaps with the same spell that had disarmed him. Seemed unlikely, but he couldn't possibly argue otherwise.

He tried to move his arms, or even his fingers ever so slightly, but found them held fast in place. These were no normal bindings. He should have assumed as much. Thankfully, the seat he seemed to be bound to was reasonably comfortable. It made it all the easier for faking that he was still out cold. There was the smell of ash and smoke that suddenly occurred to Tom, and he nearly cried out in alarm, thinking that his captor had thought him an expendable piece of fodder, but he bit back his fear and panic, settling to only open his eyes the slightest crack.

There was a man by the fireplace which he was facing, Tom realized, just a touch relieved. It was incredibly difficult to tell his age from his angle, but he must have been on the younger side, and yet, there was something remarkably weathered about him, from the ragged clothing, to the overgrown hair, to the way his hands shook as he attempted to warm them by the fire. His captor had obviously seen better days, apparently, but Tom was not about to make the mistake of letting his guard down once again.

It had been quite a while since he had even thought to try it, but he could almost feel the pull of magic crackling at his fingertips. Wandless magic, barely controllable, but so overwhelmingly useful. The last time he had used it, he had desperately needed it within the orphanage in order to defend himself. Now, at the grimmest possible moment, it seemed to be returning to him, like a long forgotten lullaby from a mother he never knew.

Pain. Make him feel such pain. Make him release me and give me back my wand.

Tom concentrated with alarming focus for a young man who was bound, weaponless and still feeling just a touch queasy, but he refused to give up his sense of control. This ragged newcomer would bend to his will, no matter the cost. He needed to escape, needed to get back. But to what? Little Hangleton? Hogwarts? How could he remedy this mess that the idiot before him had created?

Unhand me, you swine! Unhand me so that I can create my own future and forget this filthy past.

Accelerated by magic, the fire was quick to warm Harry. The adrenaline soon waned and the shivering subsided. He gave a great, heaving sigh as he dropped back on his hunches, taking a moment to enjoy the warmth that was slowly pervading the air. This was a short-lived pleasure as an unpleasant, throbbing sensation spread throughout his forehead, the source being – as it so often was – the puckered white flesh of his scar. Though a fragment of Voldemort's soul no longer resided there, having been destroyed by Voldemort himself, back at Hogwarts, it remained sensitive to the magic of the one who had created it. Evidently that extended to younger versions of Voldemort. He rose to his feet, wholly unaffected by the discomfort, and approached Tom. He had become accustomed to pain at a young age. Found it difficult to shrug off, at times, but it was the least likely thing to incapacitate him these days.

He brought the chair opposite Tom's closer with a wave of his wand, moving the coffee table out of the way in a similar manner so he could seat himself before the boy.

"You're awake, then. Just so you know, that isn't really doing anything." Giving him a mild headache, sure, but hindering him? Certainly not. He had been a skilled wizard at seventeen years old. At twenty two he had a full arsenal of spells to counter any attempts to harm him. Granted, they didn't always work, and he wasn't nearly as powerful as Voldemort or Dumbledore, but his tenacity usually got him through.

"Right, so…" he'd had years to prepare for this conversation, but Harry's well-rehearsed words were failing to surface now that he needed them, and there were instead large gaps of silence while he thought about what to say. "…First of all, I want to reassure you I'm not here to harm you, despite what these… these uncomfortable circumstances might lead you to believe."

Harry ran his hands up through his hair, scratching at the dirty locks before he let his hands fall back into his lap. He'd pulled away with dirt under his nails. He really needed a bath.

"I'm not going to be turning you over to the ministry either," he continued. "We're going to be spending some time together, Tom. A lot of time, actually."

Tom had to admit himself slightly impressed. By all arguments, the pain he was causing was something that he had been inherently given since his youth, and he had been training with ever since he could discover the grim little trick, but the rather ragged man seemed undeterred by it entirely. If anything, it just seemed to be a vague annoyance, like the buzzing of a fly in the room.

The firelight flickered, casting a soft glow on the man's face and revealing, to Tom's surprise, that he was a great deal younger than he had first assumed. It was rather hard to discern beyond the grime and the overgrown hair, but he seemed within his mid-twenties. The sheen of his glasses couldn't hide the bright green of his almond shaped eyes as he rather casually arranged a chair to sit down and face him.

Tom kept his breathing steady and prompted himself to think logically, but it was nigh impossible beyond the buzz of panic which was vibrating through his mind. The man was telling him that his efforts to deter him were futile and Tom might have found a suitable response if he didn't keep looking at his own reflection in those glasses and seeing the terrified face of his father staring back.

Christ, they had the same face. He had been alive all along. He looked exactly like that 'pretty muggle man', as his Uncle had so astutely pointed out. He swallowed hard, fighting down the fear of being defenseless, looking for a way out, but his thoughts kept turning back to his father and the shrill words he had screamed before Tom had seen fit to silence him.

"You're her son!" He had all but choked on his own scream of terror. "That woman who drugged me! S-she-!" He cut himself off, almost as though too disgusted to continue. "And now you're here to finish the job! I knew it!" He shrieked, heaving a dry sob and tearing at his beautiful hair. "I knew it all along! It was magic, I tell you! Satanic black magic, God help me!"

Tom continued to keep his breathing steady, even as his mind spiraled off dangerously. He swallowed back fear and searched for words.

"You haven't really thought this through, have you?" He forced himself to speak, relieved to find that his voice, though barely above a whisper, was still smooth and taunting. "If you were take me to the ministry, what could you possibly accuse me of? Nothing happened. If anything, you would be arrested for kidnapping." Despite the cold of his own skin, he could feel sweat dripping down his long, graceful neck as his fingers gripped at the arms of his chair.

"And you wouldn't dare hurt me or the consequences would be even worse." He challenged, sounding far more confident now than he felt. Any moment now, the man before him could lash out and flay the very flesh from his body, and he would be defenseless to retaliate, but as long as he kept calm, he may be able to get out of this situation alive. "Whoever you are, I don't intend on spending any time with you at all. If you return my wand to me, I may very well overlook this," He glared haughtily at him, as though fishing for the correct word. "Escapade."

"Now, free me. Immediately." He demanded, ignoring dizzy sensation which lingered in the back of his mind, and the memories of his father's terror which refused to be shoved away.

The urge to laugh tickled his throat. He was already being threatened. How very like Voldemort. He managed to rein in a laugh, but his lips curved into a small, pleasant smile, though he was sure Tom would interpret it as mocking.

"Forget I mentioned the ministry. I was trying to calm you down, but it looks like it's done the opposite." Was there anything he could say without Tom regarding it with suspicion? He suspected not.

He seemed unperturbed by Tom's volatile behaviour. He was too used to such things by now to be bothered by it in the slightest. Voldemort had always been the sort of man who reacted strongly to anything less than admiration of his abilities, and Harry had gotten quite used to his threats and insults.

Leaning back in his chair, Harry continued. "It's a good thing nothing happened. I thought for sure I'd come too late. Though I'd come in and they'd all be dead and there'd be yet another horcrux to deal with." He was sure Tom would be compelled to comment at this point, so he raised a hand to forestall interruption. "Before I continue, you've probably guessed by now that I know a lot about you, and I know it's going to upset you that I know a lot about you. I'll explain how eventually, but right now – you don't even know my name, so I'll tell you that first, and then we can talk about, uh. Horcruxes and your family." His hand dropped. "You can call me Harry."

Bastard.

Tom scowled, realizing that it was technically himself who was the bastard, but this individual seemed all too willing to scoff at his orders, going so far as to nearly laugh at him in this regrettable state. Tom's eyes narrowed dangerously as he straightened himself up to full height. Even seated, he could be a rather intimidating figure, particularly while glaring daggers at his companion.

But of course, the other man seemed unperturbed. His dirtied face smiled back at him, and as he explained himself, Tom could have laughed at the rather shoddy attempt that the other man had made at trying to calm him down. Did this idiot suppose that knocking someone out and binding them to a chair could be somehow excused with pretty and soothing assurances? This was a fool's game and Tom knew it.

The man before him was all too capable of tearing him to pieces and he wouldn't be distracted into forgetting that fact. The power of his simple disarming spell had sent him flying into the wall and rendered entirely unconscious. His binding spell had neither lessened in their time speaking, nor even slightly wavered. He was clearly malnourished and a bit beaten, but even still, a rather seasoned wizard in his own right. Tom might have respected that if he wasn't currently trying to worm his way out of this damned situation.

At the mention of 'horcrux', Tom couldn't help himself from sucking in air, his eyes widening in shock. Yet another blindsided moment, he inwardly cursed, but how could this man have possibly known? His grip on the chair instinctively tightened and his jaw clenched tight, clearly enraged at being cut off yet again by the other man's words. Harry, apparently, saw fit to keep him quiet for a time.

This man knew far too much, but Tom refused to give himself away. He mentally began to reach out as his eyes focused on Harry's face, his brilliant eyes that…rather striking scar. He searched the other's mind as he spoke.

"What do you know?" He hissed. "And how do know this?"

He'd been looking into Tom's eyes, straight into them when he felt the slight probing sensation that accompanied legilimency. In his haste to calm Tom, he had forgotten that particular ability. He could recognized when his mind was being invaded, but he was no better at occlumency despite the time that had passed; his thoughts and feelings were still very much on his sleeve. Snape's harsh words flittered briefly through his mind – 'Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers!' and he knew at once that Tom would have been privy to them.

He averted his eyes, the only manner of which he knew to avoid having the deeper depths of his thoughts uncovered. There was only so much he wanted Tom to know at this time.

"Well, to be completely honest, it'd be easier to tell you what I don't know. I know just about everything about you – including your future, which is why I'm here." Over Tom's shoulder, he could see the kitchen. A wave of his wand filled two glasses and sent them whizzing into the lounge room. He set Tom's glass on the coffee table. "Unless being rendered powerless and insane for a decade is something you fancy, it's not a future you'll want to pursue." He resumed looking at Tom, just briefly, so Tom could see snapshots of himself in weak, pitiful stages of his life; drinking unicorn blood to survive, being held like an infant by an ugly, balding servant, and then he looked away, taking a sip of his water. It probably wasn't the most dignified display, but the moment the water touched his lips he proceeded to empty the entire glass. It'd been a while since he'd had something to drink. He then wiped his mouth on the back of a sleeve, sending the glass back into the kitchen.

"Not that I'm giving you a choice. I'm not going to let you continue making Swiss cheese of your soul." Tom was a bit of a brat, sure, but no one deserve to be what Voldemort eventually made of himself. Being powerful wasn't compensation enough for the stability and humanity Voldemort had deprived himself of.

He knew. Apparently, Tom was not the only one familiar with what the powers of legilimency entailed. Harry had broken eye contact almost immediately after realizing what Tom had been up to, no doubt to protect his thoughts much more carefully. He wasn't doing a startlingly good job of it, Tom realized. As skilled or powerful as Harry might have been, this seemed to be an area of weakness for him. His tired thoughts swirled around his mind and Tom picked up on a few stray memories that Harry had perhaps tried to keep to himself.

"It'd be easier to tell you what I don't know…" The words echoed in Tom's mind as he peered into Harry's spotting flashes of an enraged man, gleaming red eyes flashing as power radiated from the dark cloaked figure. The recollections were moving so quickly that Tom didn't have a chance to see what happened next, what the figure would do with all that power. Harry had forced other memories to the forefront, one's that he apparently wanted to make very clear to his trapped companion.

A decrepit small, sickening looking baby creature, shivering and weak as a portly, sniveling man attended to it. A robed monster with silver blood dripping down the front of its robes as it stalked to its next victim. The memories were so vivid, so terrifying that Tom felt as though he had been transported for a fleeting moment, but he kept his face rigidly unreadable as he gripped the arms of his chair, the only movement he had been allowed within his bindings.

Upon his rather shaken return to reality, he listened quietly to Harry's ultimatum.

There was a distinct pause as he waited for Tom's response, and Tom waited to collect himself after the rather jarring experience he had just been forced through. His thoughts swirled with the revelations which did not seem to connect. The mutilated baby. The beast who was drinking silver blood. The red-eyed figure with all of the power. All while hearing the screams of his father echoing over and over again.

The son of that woman! Come back to finish me off!

"You're not being clear. Tell the truth." Tom demanded, but in that breathless voice of uncertainty, he sounded much less like a controlling mastermind, and much more like a confused teen. "None of this makes any sense! Start from the beginning!" He snapped, trying to deny the feeling of nausea currently growing in his abdomen.

It was odd to hear Voldemort speak in voice so startlingly human. Harry's most prominent memories of Voldemort had him speak soft, but vicious words. Moments of calm were, in some ways, a great deal more terrifying than the occasions Voldemort had lost his temper. When he spoke softly, quietly, talking to you as though you were there for something as trivial as a tea party, it was because he was in control. Because you were exactly where he wanted you.

But Tom Riddle wasn't Voldemort. Not yet, in any case. Harry would have to keep on reminding himself of that if he ever wanted to reform the boy. If he went into this thinking of Tom as a psychopathic murderer – which, to be fair, wasn't that far off the mark considering Tom's actions with the basilisk – he was going to find it exceedingly hard to treat him like a human being rather than a monster.

Tom's scared, he reminded himself. He was, after all, only seventeen, and he had just been captured by a man who claimed to know his future and who was showing him snippets of the awful creature he was to become.

"The beginning…" he said quietly, contemplatively. Perhaps he ought to backtrack to Tom's roots. "You already know your mother's a witch, and your father's a muggle. I don't know if you're aware of the circumstances under which they, uh, had you, but your mother, she-" It was hard to find a delicate way to explain to Tom that he was the result of rape. No one wanted to know they had been born under such abhorrent circumstances. "She did a terrible thing to your father, Tom. I'm not sure how exactly she did it, but the reason he was never in your life is because she – she forced herself on him, though magical means. She did that for a very long time, and I don't think he ever forgot what she did or recovered from it."

Talking about Tom's conception was just as hard and just as awkward as Harry had anticipated.

"I know that's… not an easy thing to hear, especially from someone you just met, but you're almost an adult, and you deserve the truth."

It was almost as though there was a shift in the air around them. It felt incredibly as though those electric sparks of animosity had somewhat died down to a subtle buzz of tension. Of course, it did nothing to ease the expectation of attack that was quite plainly in Harry's attentiveness, or his need to keep his wand close, and Tom's own hidden away. Harry seemed to be stumbling over himself once again. Careful with his words in a way he had lacked before, in a tone he had not taken when trying to scare him. Was this sympathy? Empathy? Or worse, was it pity? The muscles of his jaw tightened as he swallowed down that bitter pill. Damn him. Damn it all. If only he could get to his wand.

Tom took slow, soft breaths, trying to hide the fact that he desperately needed air. He was so ridiculously cold and yet the room was feeling staggeringly hot. Or perhaps it was just the magic snaking around his form that was jarring to him. Either way, he was anything but comfortable, and quite far from being comforted.

This story, it seemed to make a great deal of sense given his circumstances. He stared blankly at Harry, believing him, not wanting to believe him, hearing his words but sincerely wanting to block them away. He had asked for the full story, had he not? He had demanded it, from the beginning. All of the pieces to clearly fall into place. His insane Uncle's comments, the horrified shrieks of his father, the anger from his grandfather and the grim silence from his grandmother. If this were true, if his mother really had committed such an act…

"I don't understand." He spoke instinctively now, before he thought things through, his voice soft as though unaccustomed to the sensation of letting the words fall as they would. "If she had those abilities, she could have chosen to live."

There was a pause. His eyes closed tightly as he tried to deny that the room was spinning as much as his own conception. Of course there was a reason as to why she was dead. She had chosen not to live. Oh, how bitterly clear it was. She raped a filthy magic-less man and then couldn't live with the shame of the action or worse, the child that resulted. "Why should I trust you?" He hissed, forcing his eyes open again, trying to see lies where there was truth within Harry's mind, seeking fruitlessly as his fingers clawed at the arms of his chair.

Harry wouldn't delude himself by thinking Tom would trust him even if he gave him a legitimate reason to do so. He had, after all, kidnapped the boy. Trust was going to be an evasive, fickle thing if ever he did acquire it.

"You don't have to trust me. You can either take my word for it or come to your own conclusions." Because Harry wasn't about to push forth memories of himself and Dumbledore discussing Tom's birth. He didn't want to subject Tom to that; it would only serve to further confuse and upset him.

After a moment hesitation, he released one of Tom's arms and nudged his hand with the glass of water. All through magic, of course. He wasn't about to get too close to a seventeen year old wizard prodigy.

"Whatever you decide, the point I'm trying to make is- your father, he doesn't deserve to die. I think you could see for yourself that he was very intimidated by you, and not because you were brandishing what he probably thought was a stick."

He let their eyes meet, just briefly, to show that he was sincere. Tom would find no lies within his mind. He would, however, find Hogwart's sprawling hallways and lavish classrooms and the fire-lit Gryffindor common room as testament to Harry's warm, open personality. He had his secrets, of course, but his mind at rest had only stray hints of darkness - monochrome corners and locked doors and a flash of green followed by the faint scream of a woman. Those were harder to find among the radiant sea of gold and red.

Tom felt an inkling of relief. Harry was not about to try to convince him to believe that whatever he was spouting was the truth. He knew better than to try any manipulation tactics, or bringing up memories that could be falsified and molded to his own ends. Tom would have known, without a doubt, that if that were the case, Harry would have been lying. But the other man was confident enough in what had occurred here between them, and the logical soundness of his words, that Tom would come to the truth on his own. It was refreshing to be trusted with even that much. It showed that Harry had an iota of confidence in his ability to deduce.

"Why?" Tom asked finally. Hearing Harry speak and looking into his eyes, he could almost sense a warm presence, an open mind, an organic, kind generosity even when he wasn't beyond his own confusion quite yet. "Why are you defending him? What is any of this to you?" His voice was the same even controlled tone.

He felt the binding on his arm ease, the water nudge at his hand but he refused to move quite yet. The water felt cool against his skin, but anything could be a threat and he forced his instincts into submission. In actuality, this didn't make too much sense. If this stranger had wanted to threaten him at any point, kill him, or take advantage of him in this defenseless state, he certainly could have. He had the skill too, that was certain. But that open, welcoming, warm atmosphere he wanted Tom to believe in was just a bit too good to be true.

There was no way someone would have chosen to save his wretched, shrieking father without some sort of payment. Tom blinked slowly, trying to get the room to stop spinning, but then it occurred to him, Harry knew he wasn't feeling well. He knew that Tom's current state was anything but stable. He was perhaps expecting Tom to be sick, and maybe he was quite right because Tom did feel as though he were heating up rather dangerously.

But why not use this to his advantage?

Tom tried to grasp at the glass of water, faking deftly his own hand's trembling before knocking it over accidentally. With a frustrated groan, he slumped forward in his seat, quieting his thoughts to clarity, and blocking out what he could not entirely silence, to make it seem as though he had passed out, held suspended by Harry's magical bindings.

"Your father isn't really the focus here. It's-"

And that was as far as he got before being interrupted by the glass of water being sprayed across the carpet. With a wave of his wand he picked it up and set it back on the coffee table, and when he lifted his head to ask Tom if he would like assistance with his next glass of water, he was startled to find him unconscious in his chair. He'd never thought of Tom Riddle as sensitive enough to pass out over – well – anything, but there had been an awful lot of force behind his disarming spell; perhaps Tom had a concussion? He really should have checked beforehand.

His every movement was hesitant, but he eventually stood out of his chair and approached Tom, setting the back of his hand on Tom's forehead. Hot. Very hot. Moving his hand down to Tom's neck to check his pulse, he noticed there was a concerning amount of sweat. Some of Tom's hair was plastered to his forehead.

"Tom?"

He used his other hand to reach into his pocket as he spoke, groping around the deepest depths for a bag of potions. Its enchanted material enabled him to fit an incredible number of items inside. He had everything from potion ingredients to spell books in there. Tom's wand was lying somewhere at the bottom.

"Tom? Hang on, I have a pepper-up potion in here somewhere." It was generally used for colds, but it'd still make Tom feel better.

It was working.

Harry had completely fallen for his farce. Without even so much as a question of the genuine nature of his sickness, Harry had simply jumped to his aid. There was something to be said of someone who was so very suspicious of him and all at once, someone who was so very giving of his time and efforts as to help a seemingly defenseless boy.

Perhaps he was just a touch too willing to try to help him out. Tom couldn't help but find himself questioning Harry's real intentions here. Even aside from the fancy footwork involved in evading the questions of how Harry had managed any of this elaborate feat, there was always the question of 'why reveal all of this new knowledge and suddenly expect some sort of reaction? Why interrupt such a pivotal moment? And why Tom?

Harry had leaned in close now, checking gently over Tom's vitals, placing his fingertips gently on his forehead and then gently pressing at the artery of his neck. Tom could feel the heat of his skin not two inches away from his own body and it took considerable effort to keep himself calm, carefully unassuming in his 'unconscious' state.

It was now or never.

In one tense motion, Tom's head snapped up once again, and using his freed arm, punched Harry as hard as he could manage in his bound state. He put all of his power and energy into straining against those bindings that currently kept him locked into that chair. He swiped at the wand so tantalizingly close in Harry's hand, hoping to snatch it away from his captor.

If only he could get that wand, he would be able to not only free himself, but force this random man to start speaking some sense, to explain the insanity he had just been through and the enigma that encompassed the fact that he seemed to know more about Tom and his own history that Tom knew himself. It was a jarring and terrifying experience all at once, but there was certainly a note of genuine truth to Harry that Tom couldn't entirely deny.

He should have expected to be assaulted, really. At least he'd had the forethought to tighten his grip on his wand.

Staggering backwards, Harry very nearly tripped over the coffee table, only managing to stop his descent by sitting himself down. As he did, he gave a grimace and slammed his free hand – the hand with a pepper-up potion clutched in it – onto the wooden surface, steadying himself. It had hurt the small of his back to sit so suddenly and on furniture that was much too low for that purpose.

There was a thick stream of blood coming from his nose. The only thing he had to stifle it with was his robe, which was already filthy and stained. He supposed another patch of dark brown wouldn't make much difference. Sniffing and holding a sleeve beneath his streaming nostrils, he frowned at Tom. He wasn't going to lose his temper, not over a bloody nose; not over scared, desperate seventeen year old, though he clearly wasn't happy.

"Well, now I know you're just fine," said Harry, his voice slightly muffled. "Maybe we ought to talk later. I should make you more comfortable first." And how he intended to do that involved the assistance of a witch or wizard. There ought to be someone in Diagon Alley he could coerce over here to perform the Unbreakable Vow. It wouldn't take him long to retrieve someone, but in the meantime, Tom looked like he would benefit from a nap.

The pepper-up potion was returned to the small satchel he'd taken it from. He then removed a vial of thick purple liquid that looked as though it were filled with glitter. Tom would easily be able to recognize it as a sleeping draught. A whispered "stupefy" rendered Tom momentarily immobile, and he uncorked the vial, draining the contents into Tom's mouth. The spell would wear off within a few minutes, by which time Tom would be drifting off to sleep. It ought to keep him out long enough to let Harry do what he needed to do. But just in case, he would transfigure some ropes (one of the few things he actually could transfigure due to necessity) and tie him to the chair.

Tom was absolutely seething. As weak as he felt, it didn't seem to negate from his emotions. His teeth were clenched in an unbecoming grimace as he tried desperately to swat to the wand before realizing that Harry had already retreated clumsily out of reach, nursing a broken nose. Tom glared venomously at him for having the audacity to foil his sudden attack, but refused to say a word on the subject. He kept his mouth tightly closed as he withdrew his arm to rest gently on the chair once again contemptuously, as though he had chosen to do so from the beginning, ignoring his bruised knuckles.

He expected violent retaliation. If he was to face it, he would do it with his chin up and mouth shut. He wouldn't give Harry the satisfaction of hearing him scream in pain and beg like an animal for mercy.

But Harry did nothing of the sort. In all honesty, he seemed to be taking the broken nose in stride, albeit a good bit of annoyance at having to mop up the blood from his face with his robes. The challenging rage in Tom's expression eased a touch as his curiosity was piqued in the back of his mind. Harry seemed strangely accepting for a man who had just been physically assaulted.

The confusion did nothing to calm Tom, but it certainly was a comfort to know he was not about to be skinned alive or slowly sliced apart. Not yet anyway.

He would have to find another way out of this damned chair, and it would have to be when Harry finally vacated his presence. But Harry seemed to be fiddling with his bag once again, and this time, not nearly foolish enough to take his attention from Tom. He withdrew a small vial with a shimmering liquid. Tom's face lit up with recognition, sleeping draught. Though he made to refuse, he felt the effects of a stunning curse sent his way, much more than he heard them whispered under Harry's breath.

Before he knew it, the drink was slipping down his throat, thick and warm, and he might have choked had his body not been so eager for an excuse for respite. He coughed weakly before slumping over in his seat once again, this time genuinely (and rather deeply) asleep.

He was sitting in his small room at Wool's orphanage, his feet barely touching the ground as he swung them back and forth, waiting for the conversation outside his door to end, for them to decide where he was to go. His father was shrieking, "Come to finish the job!" as the men from the institution rattled the handle to his door.

Tom slipped off of his bed. He wanted to hide in the cabinet with all of his treasures, but his feet were frozen. He could not move, let alone hide from them. His father was crying now. The door knob turned. Tom gripped his bedpost. If his mother had chosen death, perhaps she had meant it for him as well, but he couldn't let her. Not now, not ever.

The only thing Harry was able to find to transfigure into rope was a pile of dishcloths. The results were a little… colourful, dark shades of red and blue instead of a tawny brown, but they had the strength of rope so Harry wasn't going to try to do a better job. The magical bindings retreated as he secured Tom's wrists and ankles together with the rope, and then tied his torso to the body of the chair. Magic was used to further tighten each knot. He wanted to make sure Tom wouldn't be able to move more than a few inches if he awoke before Harry returned (though he was confident Tom wouldn't; he'd given him an unnecessarily large dose of sleeping draught).

Once he was sure Tom wouldn't be going anywhere, Harry stepped outside and apparated to the Leaky Cauldron. No muggles seemed to notice him pop into being seemingly out of nowhere. He pushed through crowds of them to enter the Leaky Cauldron, hurrying for Diagon Alley. But it wasn't Diagon Alley that he surveyed for a potential bonder; he walked straight through to Knockturn Alley, passing men and women who regarded him with hungry eyes as he strode into the deepest, darkest recesses of the shopping area. Harry had few reservations about either cursing or paying one of the occupants of this place to assist him.

In the end he selected the first person to accost him as his bonder. They were a heavily cloaked man with yellowing teeth and wide, bloodshot eyes. Their long dirty fingers had grappled at his robe as he had attempted to pass, trying to pull him into a dangerous looking alleyway. Harry had subsequently cast the Imperius Curse on him and they had returned to the house at which Tom was being kept not ten minutes later.

As far as bonders go, he wasn't ideal, but he'd do the job alright. Now all he had to do was wake Tom up.

The cheapest and easiest potion to brew was the awakening potion, so Harry had plenty of that in his satchel. He'd used it on himself on more than one occasion in order to remain awake during guard duty. Uncorking a vial, he emptied the contents into Tom's mouth and untied one of his hands, grasping it tight with his own. He had his companion – the short, ugly little wizard he had under the Imperius curse – stand before their arms, holding out his wand. It was as short and ugly as the man wielding it.

Sitting on the very edge of coffee table, Harry waited.

His dream had taken a rather surreal turn. His room at the orphanage darkened and blurred just as the hands of those awaiting him outside reached out for him wildly, clawing the air, and feeling for his small, defenseless body. He had promised himself, never again! Never again would he allow himself to feel so powerless, so out of control. He would always be the one deciding his own fate, without fail.

But the ground was falling out from under his small feet now, the darkness swallowing him whole. All the while, he couldn't seem to get his father's scream from echoing around his skull. They had the same face, after all. The same exact face. How could he escape this?

Without warning, Tom felt a hand on his own, taking it firmly, but not angrily or violently as he had expected. The electric tingle of the awakening draught shocked his entire body and caused him to sputter slightly with its cool intensity as he speedily came to.

Blinking blearily for a moment, the room came into focus after a beat. Tom looked at Harry, then up to the dazed looking, squat fellow standing poised above him, then back to Harry once again and then the hand holding his own firmly in place. Either Harry was about to perform some ungodly ritual on him, or he was about to be violated. Or both, he reflected, his stomach churning in anger and dread.

"Harry," Tom said gently. "If you felt this way about me, you should have let me know. Customarily, you would at least take me out to dinner first…" He finished with a touch of biting sarcasm that offset the coldness of his glare wonderfully.

Harry's mouth fell open to accommodate a retort (or because he was surprised, but he wasn't going to acknowledge that). He wasn't really used to that sort of insinuation being made to mock him; neither Draco Malfoy nor Dudley would have ever suggested Harry was interested in them. It would have been more embarrassing for them than it would have been for him, but it didn't appear to bother Tom in the least.

"Shaking hands must be a real event for you if that's what you think this is," he eventually said, and he was pleased to note that his voice was cool and smooth.

His grip tightened. He then withdrew his wand, reaching across to Tom so he could set the tip against his jugular. Tom needed to feel intimidated for this to work.

"We're about to perform the Unbreakable Vow. The only thing you need to say is 'I will'. If you refuse, you'll meet the results of breaking the Unbreakable Vow a lot quicker than you would have had you agreed." Harry gaze was unwavering. The fire had gone out in his absence and the room was now beginning to cool. "Tom Marvolo Riddle, will you promise me that you will never make a Horcrux?"

Tom smirked, satisfaction quite clear on his face at having thrown Harry off, even for just a fraction of a second. To be in a position anything less than absolute power and control had been eating away at him ever since he had been confined to his seat, so just the implication of knocking Harry down a peg was something he was more than willing to give a shot for. "Shaking hands with the only who's forcing their will upon me is quite a different event than normal." Tom replied in mock politeness, his voice venomous with disdain.

This, of course, didn't seem to please Harry. The other man's grip tightened and Tom found himself all too aware of sensation of the tip of his wand pressed firmly against Tom's neck. Instinctively, Tom kept his outward composure. He locked eyes with Harry's own brilliant green ones, answering his fiery, unwavering gaze with one of supreme annoyance, as though Harry were interrupting his usual midday stroll to murder his surviving family members. He could have kept that act going indefinitely.

But then, Harry mentioned Horcruxes.

Tom's eyes shot open as he instinctively tried to jerk his hand away. For the hundredth time that night (or morning?), he found himself wondering how Harry knew what he had been thinking, how he was so dead on when it came to Tom's intentions. He hadn't told a soul about his plans, and he certainly had not discussed immortality with anyone who wasn't absolutely necessary for his gathering of information and possible methods. Harry seemed to know his hand before he even had a chance to completely form it.

It was horrifying. The tip of that wand seemed to press even harder now that Harry revealed exactly what he intended for Tom to vow to. He might have played off the comment in innocent confusion had he not been shocked into a reaction, but what good would that have ended up doing aside from buying him time? His eyes narrowed dangerously.

"What are you playing at, Harry? You really intend on forcing me to succumb to your will?"

Harry kept his expression hard, his eyes trained on Tom. Everything about him conveyed intent to harm. He knew Tom was terrified of death. He was sure, given the ultimatum of compliance or death, he would sooner choose compliance than face the unknown. This was the man who had split his soul into seven (or eight, if Harry counted himself) to avoid the inevitability of death, after all.

"The alternative is killing you. And I will if you don't make the vow." He gave Tom's hand another squeeze. "You'd be better off dead than living out the life you eventually make for yourself.

The man on their left stepped forward at Harry's direction, placing the tip of his wand against their hands.

"Let's give this one more try." He drew in a long breath to expand his lungs as far as they would go, mentally preparing himself. He had used every unforgivable curse except the one that had affected his life so profoundly, and if he was wrong about Tom, and Tom would rather die than succumb to Harry's wishes (which was very unlikely, he reassured himself), then he would need to utter it with the conviction necessary to take a life. If he faltered halfway through he wasn't sure he'd be able to finish it.

Despite everything he had been through and everything he had done, taking a life – no matter the intentions – would never come easy to him.

After a heavy exhale, Harry repeated himself. "Tom Marvolo Riddle, will you promise me that you will never make a Horcrux?"

Tom's mind was buzzing with activity, but his expression was frozen in an unreadable state of shock. Harry looked serious, dead serious. His intentions were all too clear by the grim concentration displayed on his face. Even aside from that, there was a terrible and heavy weight behind his thoughts that only led to one conclusion.

Tom felt Harry's grip tighten on the wand which was held to his throat. In his life, he had been pitted against the threat of bombs overhead, of abuse behind the thin walls of his orphanage room, of countless people who considered him a demon child for his unlikely abilities. His grandfather's stony glare surfaced in his mind. But at this moment, he had never felt closer to the threat of death.

The thoughts were a half formed buzz and he shut his eyes tightly, willing them to form some sort of order, any sort of semblance of an answer to this terrible fate. 'Reason with him', 'Charm him', 'Scare him', 'Lie to him', 'Seduce him'. Anything to get him to stop this madness.

The moment wore on. That deadly sense of purpose in Harry's eyes did not waver. If anything, it seemed to grow even stronger. Tom was all too aware of the furious pounding of his heart. It seemed to drum behind his ears as though trying to escape before the final breath.

It couldn't end this way. He couldn't let it. Not like his mother. "Harry, I-" Seduce him, charm him, scare him, control him, convince him! But those green eyes did not waver and that wand tip felt all too hot against his jugular. Harry left no opening for escape. He meant to see Tom dead, one way or another.

"I will." Tom sighed softly, sounding small and unsure for the first time since he was a mere child.

A shimmering string of red rose from their bonder's wand and coiled itself around their hands, warm on their skin. It thrummed with an arcane power. Harry paused before he continued, taking a moment to consider his next words. He didn't want to make too many vows with too many stipulations or Tom might accidentally end up dead; he needed to be straightforward and concise.

"Will you promise me not to kill anyone, indirectly or otherwise? Unless, of course, someone is actively making an attempt on your own life."

A little redundant considering he'd already asked Tom not to make Horcrux's, but this would ensure Tom wouldn't be able to use others – his followers, creatures – to take a life. The basilisk would be useless to him.

Precious little was known of Unbreakable Vows, and what small amount had been gleaned, was usually for the use of matrimony. That was what Tom had read before, that was what he had studied and those were the facts that were currently not helping him in the slightest. All that was overwhelmingly clear was that no matter what he did, he could not break his word without dying as a consequence. This was only of the only aspects of the 'ceremony' that made itself all too clear.

He could never make a Horcrux. He would never be immortal.

Death seemed all too present as a chilled sensation ran down his back, branching off all the way to his fingertips. The room was cold, his thoughts went cold and Harry's brilliant green eyes were frigid. He fought to keep his breath even, to keep himself calm in the wake of this nightmare, but all he could comprehend in this state was the will to survive. The thirst for life was overtaking his sense, his hatred for his captor overtaking his fear.

He wanted to kill Harry. Not just kill, make him feel pain like he had never felt before in his life. He wanted to shatter him so badly he could almost taste the copper metallic of blood on his tongue. So, he knew about Tom's father? He knew about the basilisk? He seemed to know about every damn little thing.

"Do you think I'm a demon?" He whispered, the red glow of the first vow flickering in his eyes. "Just like the rest? My very birth brought death, Harry, but certainly you already know that. Do you really think death doesn't ghost my every step?" He gave a soft, mad little laugh.

"Will you make my death messy like my mother's? Will they tell grand stories of how you destroyed me? Will you tell my father so he can finally be relieved that his bastard is gone?"

Harry wished he wasn't such an expressive person. Though he tried to remain impassive, his eyes twitched away and his shoulders became a tense line; the way Tom laughed and spoke was too reminiscent of Voldemort for him to remain unaffected.

"You are in the future, but I wouldn't have come here if I didn't think I could prevent that. I don't want to have to kill you." His gaze flicked back to Tom's and his face was a series of weary lines as he re-considered the vow. Tom was right. He'd overlooked the possibility Tom would inadvertently cause death, and if that happened, Tom would die as well. It was an unlikely scenario, but he would adjust the vow to reflect Tom's concerns just to make sure Tom felt secure enough to continue.

"Tom, just… do this. I'm giving you a chance to live. If you let me I think I'll be able to help you. If not…" He shrugged, pressing his wand a little further into Tom's neck to remind him of his precarious situation. "Well, we'll just have to suffer each other's company until we grow old and tired of fighting."

He wasn't looking forward to that. He was sure Tom would do everything within his power to make Harry regret forcing this life upon him.

"Will you promise me not to kill anyone? Unless, of course, you do it inadvertently-" He snorted a little. It didn't seem very likely. "Or because someone is actively trying to kill you. Intent is important here."

Tom could have laughed in his face, but he bit back the bitter, angry sensation just like he had the rest of his emotions (though he was still grappling with the fear). Harry was giving him a chance to live, was he? By forcing death upon him eventually, by ensuring that he could never achieve immortality? Tom was doomed now, and Harry knew it. Perhaps he even enjoyed knowing it, though Tom was having one hell of a time being able to tell from the tenseness of his upper body and the way those brilliant eyes twitched behind the dirty panes of his spectacles.

Harry was clearly upset. He was doing a terrible job of hiding it. Tom's words had effected Harry on a deep level, but in a way which he had not expected. They certainly didn't seem to deter the tip of that wand that was pressing into his neck. Tom didn't react, though his pulse thundered behind his ears.

Breathe deeply. Act calmly. Think logically.

His mind was a buzz of furious thoughts. It just did not make any sense to him. Harry was trying to 'help'? It was all too confusing, too open ended, and all his mind could concentrate on where possible loopholes.

'…because someone is actively trying to kill you.' Intent to kill certainly sounded a great deal like what Harry was doing right now as they spoke, dooming him to eventual death in some way. Tom's eyes narrowed dangerously. Perhaps that would give him the possibility of killing Harry and escaping this hellish nightmare finally. And, if that were the case, could he possibly keep a vow with a dead man? Perhaps this foolish agreement would be then broken once Harry got his just reward for his heroism.

"I will." Tom had to concentrate hard to keep his hand from shaking. He didn't entirely succeed.

Harry didn't have enough skill in legilimency to gain insight into Tom's mind, but the superficial things – the barely restrained anger, for example – were so intense as to almost be palpable. He was glad they weren't connected by his scar anymore. That kind of anger would have given him a splitting headache. The tension alone was making his temples throb, and his scar always prickled, just a little, when he was stressed, but it wasn't the same prickling he had experienced in his youth.

A second coil of brilliant fire encircled their hands. He felt a barely perceptible tremor run the length of Tom's arm and pretended not to notice.

With the most important vows over and done with, Harry was finally starting to relax. Even if they were to stop now it would nigh impossible for Tom to become Lord Voldemort with his current boundaries.

"I only have one more," he told Tom. This was, quite possibly, the one Tom would hate the most. "Will you stay with me until I either give you permission to relocate or dismiss you? And If I dismiss you, will you return when called within – let's say… an hour? If circumstances separate us, that won't be considered breaking your vow, and I'll put something in place to tell you when you're in danger of straying too far."

A mark, just like the marks Voldemort had inflicted on his followers. Maybe he'd make it a lightning bolt.

Tom's stomach turned to ice and he felt caught between the urge to laugh and scream all at the same time. Harry's last request was not only mad, it seemed almost entirely random. He would have thought from the sequence of events up until this moment, Harry would have simply made him vow to never eat or drink again or something, which would ensure his demise rather soon without the emotional consequences of casting the curse. It was all so confusing with this Harry fellow. The more he tried to add things together, the less they seem to align. One moment, he seemed to care, the next he was staring back into the eyes of a cold, hard warrior, ready to cut his throat without second glance.

Tom closed his eyes, breathing deeply to keep himself from gritting his teeth. This didn't stop his jaw from clenching angrily as his mind worked quickly; fruitlessly, but quickly.

"This is ridiculous." Tom hissed, fighting to keep his voice level, his anger in check, but it burned in his chest and tasted disgusting like bile on his tongue. The sheer injustice of it all made him want to strangle Harry all over again. "Am I to be with you every single second of every single day? For one, how would we even manage to bathe? And of our sleeping arrangement? Am I to attend to you like a servant? This must be some kind of joke." Tom tried to keep the underlying fear from his voice. Harry had the power and the weapon. If this did end up being some sort of twisted fetish, Tom wouldn't have the ability to stop him.

"You obviously hate me, Harry." Tom continued imploringly, clenching his hand now to keep it from shaking, no longer really keeping track if he succeeded or not. "And you wish I was dead, that much is clear. If you would just challenge me to a duel, you could have your chance at killing me fairly, no emotional strings or dishonorable 'vows' attached. You seem a fair fighter. Why not see reason and just challenge me like a true warrior instead of hiding behind idiotic rules?"

His mind already had an answer to his question though. He wants to see you suffer. He wants to use you, every inch of you, before he destroys you. He wants to see you squirm and crawl like a filthy animal.

Harry made an effort not to roll his eyes. He didn't want to give Riddle more reason to be pissed off, even if he was being a melodramatic little snot. Granted, being melodramatic in this situation was understandable, and Harry couldn't deny his biases. Tom Riddle in this universe had yet to do anything to earn his ire, but Harry associated him with Voldemort and all the awful things Voldemort had done to him. It was hard not to let his experiences colour his behaviour.

Harry sighed. He would try for some patience. "I'm not going to treat you like a house elf if that's what you're thinking. I can set your boundaries. I can let you go places. Eventually I'll let you return to school to finish your last year." If he could help it, he didn't want to deprive Tom of his education. They still had the rest of summer to work on developing an amicable relationship and curbing his interest in the dark arts.

"I don't… okay, I hate you little. Not you, really; what you became. Anyone else would have just killed you by now, and I won't pretend that didn't cross my mind. You – you in the future, that is – took everything from me." His knuckles were white. He hadn't noticed he'd tightened his grip on his wand. Loosening it, he continued. "But I'm not here to return the favor. I really do want to help you. I'm not going to let – him stop me from giving you a better life than one you spend in a diary, or as a monster."

The wand had resumed its prod into Tom's jugular. He needed Tom to know he wanted to do what was right, but was willing to do what was necessary if Tom refused to cooperate. No matter what, he wasn't going to let himself deviate from his task. "Accept the vow, Tom. Believe it or not, I don't want the solution here to be your death."

Tom fell deathly silent, his eyes focusing on Harry as the other man spoke, stray pieces of his thoughts finally falling into place. One aspect of Harry's story seemed to fill in so many questions and create so many more along with it. Harry was from the future. Tom's mouth tightened into a thin line as he bit back the immediate questions that rushed in after the shock of the realization. He knew what happened to Tom after this moment, knew how he and his followers moved from being simply students with ideas of grandeur to actually making his dreams a reality. Harry's otherworldly knowledge of Tom's past and instincts all seemed to make sense now.

And yet, it opened up the possibility for so many more questions. Where did Tom go from here? Had his father been killed and the secret of his bloodline safely kept away from prying eyes and the powerful elitists that he hoped to use in his favor? And even aside from that, the comment about his diary and being locked away in it took him off guard. Tom had not even thought of creating something from his old diary, but for Harry, that object seemed to hold even more power and hatred than anything, except maybe that monster he spoke of. So many new possibilities opened, innumerable paths that could have led to them as well, but one comment seemed to stick in Tom's mind more than others.

You took everything from me. It all seemed to come full circle. His father squirming and screaming to get away from him, his Uncle scoffing and jeering at his obvious bloodline and now, Harry's look of vile distrust and contempt as he pressed that wand further and further into his neck as though he would have liked nothing more than to forego magic entirely and just stab him with it.

Tom could not hope for mercy here. Whatever he would do in the future had already colored what Harry would do to him now in the past, Tom's present. And yet, there were fleeting moments of clarity in which Harry actually seemed as though he may think he was helping in some way, shape or form.

How much help could Tom expect from a mad man though?

There was one final fear that refused to be silenced, the lingering fear defenseless boy with a survivalist mentality, raised in an orphanage in a time of war. It was the fear of a neglected, angry child that slipped through the cracks when Tom was too busy thinking of the future to realize that the past was still so staggeringly present. "You swear you won't disrespect me? You won't take away my sense of agency?" His voice was a tired whisper as he looked down at his clenched fist. His fingernails bit at the skin of his palm before he realized what he had said. His eyes snapped back up to Harry, almost as though accusing him of drawing the words right out of his mouth. As though it were entirely Harry's fault he had to resort to them.

Even if he tried to take away Tom's agency, he couldn't imagine succeeding. The boy was resourceful and stubborn. He wasn't going to take anything Harry did sitting down. Moreover, there was no vow in place to prevent him from being a relatively normal schoolboy, and Harry wasn't going to deny him the comforts he had become accustomed to at Hogwarts. After all, Tom had already experienced severe deprivation throughout his childhood and look at how that had turned out.

"I can't control how you feel. You'll probably feel like I'm doing both those things even if I'm not trying to." He lifted a shoulder in a shrug, wand jostling in his grip. He really did want to help Tom. He was sure with a little (or a lot) of guidance Tom could be a better man, because he knew despite all his bravado and anger that everything about Tom was shaped by neglect and isolation and an intense, intense fear.

He wet his lips before he continued, his thoughts drifting briefly to the bathtub upstairs. He was sure Riddle would find his company more agreeable if he didn't smell and look homeless. A quick bath would do them both some good. But first…

"But I'm not going to try to do either of those things," he stated firmly. "Like I've said, I don't know – five times now? I want to help you. Helping you doesn't involve making you miserable. If anything, it involves making me miserable." Trying to be a mentor to Tom Riddle wasn't exactly what Harry would call fun and games. It was going to be hell to get even a modicum of respect out of him. "Now, I'm going to repeat the vow. Accept it this time, alright? Because it's a rather long one and I really don't fancy repeating it three times.

"Tom, will you stay with me until I either dismiss you or give you permission to relocate? And If I dismiss you, will you return when called within an hour? It won't be considered breaking your vow if unforeseen circumstances separate us, and I'll put something in place to tell you when you're in danger of straying too far."

Tom let out a slow, meaningful sigh of relief. If Harry had meant to take away his right to consent, some sort of trigger would have shown as such in his mind up until this point in their conversation. Everything seemed strikingly genuine with Harry. It was an aspect that, despite his inward panic, Tom found to be remarkably comforting. It was almost as though he had nothing to hide from Tom, but even his preliminary training in the reading of minds was enough to show that there were underlying currents to which Harry was keeping secrets. That could only be expected though; each and every individual had secrets to unlock. Whether or not they were willing to part with them, or even knew about them, was quite another story.

Don't forget that hateful look in his eyes. He wants you to suffer. He'll enjoy watching you squirm. He'd love to help lower you straight into your grave.

Tom's head began to ache now, the revelations of the past few hours hanging heavily upon him, as though weighing him down by his temples. He wished his thoughts would just move more slowly so he could get a grasp on where these half-formed plans were going, but everything seemed to be an array of lunacy. His knowledge of his mother's death blended with his uncle's laughter. Harry's hateful glare was superimposed on his father's horrified scream. He could almost forget the dull-eyed, controlled wizard standing above them and even the ropes that bound him up because the mention of his Diary and the Monster had consumed his thoughts completely.

What did that even mean? What had Tom ended up taking from Harry? How much of this future did Harry hope to change, and was it even possible? He was getting absolutely nowhere asking himself. Perhaps he was just wasting precious time that he could be spending trying to escape somehow. Or kill Harry, perhaps. Whichever came first.

"I will." Tom finally answered, feeling as grave as he sounded. He fixed Harry with an unreadable stare, entirely unsure of what was to come next, now that he seemed to have promised away his plans and his power. His rage was simmering beneath the surface, but it would do him no good to let off any boiling anger yet. Not when the future had so much promise of quality time.

The last strand of fire wrapped like a viper around their wrists, eliciting a sigh from Harry. Like Tom's, it was deep and meaningful, and the tension that had lifted his shoulders into a straight line gradually began to recede. With no anxiety broiling beneath the surface he seemed like an entirely different person, smiling as the magic of the vow pulsed through him. This was the first thing that had gone right for him in a very long time. After this success he thought he deserved a nice long bath.

"Well, you did, uh. Good." He felt obligated to offer Tom some form of praise. That's what guardians were supposed to do. "You can wash your hand in the kitchen sink in a minute if you want. I know I would. I haven't bathed in ages." Clearing his throat, he turned to his companion – the ugly, hunched figure beside them – and obliviated the last hour from his mind. With the imperious curse still in place, the man walked straight up to the door, stepped out, and apperated away with a sound like a gunshot.

That left him and Tom alone once more.

"I'll let you gather your bearings before we continue our discussion," he said as he stood, his hand still tight around Tom's. Almost as an afterthought, he set the end of his wand against Tom's arm, just below the junction of his elbow. The spell he murmured seemed to be a combination of sectumsempra – a spell Tom wouldn't recognize due to it having been conceived by Snape – and an incantation easily associated with the Unbreakable Vow, and a series of spells that didn't sound as though they should have been interwoven at all. The result was a little blue lightning bolt on Tom's forearm that wouldn't pain him as the dark mark did Voldemort's followers, but would give the surrounding veins the sensation of being filled with tepid water if he wandered too far. It'd be enough to get his attention, enough to make him uncomfortable, but not enough to cause him any anguish.

Once done, Harry took several steps back before removing Tom's restraints with a flick of his wand. They turned back into a colourful series of dish cloths that tumbled their way into Tom's lap.

"Don't try to leave the house. I don't really want you to get yourself killed before we've even had the chance to have a proper talk. I'll be back downstairs in about thirty minutes." That should give Tom enough time to recuperate and test his boundaries, toeing at them until he was forced to concede to his imprisonment. There was no way for him to escape, but Harry would let him come to that conclusion on his own. "Have some water and something to eat." With that said, he turned to walk upstairs, keeping his wand at the ready in case Tom attempted another assault. There was still blood beneath his nose, dried and flaking.

Tom watched the third and final glowing string snake its way around their hands as he might have watched a train wreck, with grim acceptance and blind, powerless anger. He had promised himself, all those years ago, that he would never allow his own future to be taken out of his hands, that he would always have power and control, even at the cost of those around him. He had promised himself he would survive, and now, he had nearly thrown all of that away in the course of a few hours.

He stayed carefully silent as he watched Harry slowly withdraw his hand and then attend to the lingering problem of the ugly man overseeing their vows, clearly still in the throes of the imperious curse. After that was neatly accomplished, Harry turned to him once again and in a frozen moment, he looked up and tried not to dwell on the fact that Harry had his wand, his power, and all of the control, not to mention a great deal of skill to put that control to use.

Tom was hardly breathing. Harry didn't need to inflict death to make him suffer. He placed the tip of his wand right below Tom's elbow joint and Tom was forced, once again, to keep himself from shaking. Would he cut his arm off? Was that the way that this little game of Harry's began? Yet, the only visible change seemed to be a tingling, unpleasant sensation which erupted right at the spot that Harry pointing. The words which he was speaking were disjointed, fragmented, and rather unbecoming but the result was something which Tom could have never expected. It was a small, lightning bolt shaped mark, bluish in nature as though it were a discolored old scar.

The other man seemed to visibly relax before him, as though a small weight had been lifted from his shoulders in the span of just a few moments. Tom watched his composure ebb to something far more casual as he explained that he should not leave the house, and should most likely consider washing that hand of his. Tom glanced down at his arm and grimaced at the smears of dirt left by Harry's fingers, or the red marks which would surely turn to bruises rather speedily on his pale skin. Something in the back of his mind told him that a shower would be rather nice. The offer of food and water even better, seeing as the last time he could have remembered eating anything was yesterday, and his throat burned with dryness.

His overseer gave him one final, prolonged look before making his way upstairs. Tom waited. One minute passed, then three. A full five minutes after Harry had retreated, Tom reasoned that now was the time to take a chance at checking his surroundings while he was still alone. The house was reasonably well furnished. These non-magical folk were well off enough to be able to afford a radio, and had several chairs set around the living room to accommodate for those who wanted to listen together. The windows had been painted black, as demanded by the currently wartime efforts, to prevent light from escaping at night to attract a German aerial attack, but the paint seemed aged and weathered to the point of graying. How long had these muggles been gone, anyway?

Tom wandered into the conservatively sized kitchen. He marveled at the fact that this place had managed to have anything akin to produce as he took note of several tomatoes and peppers arranged neatly on the counter. A few meager portions of meat in the fridge spoke to the fact that the house belonged to a couple, no children. There was no way that a family could be fed with that small of an amount. He could have cried out for joy when he finally opened up the drawers and found exactly what he was looking for.

Knives.

He had no intention of attacking Harry quite yet, but there was no reason as to why he shouldn't be looking to defend himself if the time came. There was also no guarantee that Harry wouldn't change his mind and decide that Tom's life was best forfeit. He took one rather small, yet sharp, unassuming paring knife and wrapped it in cloth before storing it quickly in his pocket. Looking around once again, he spotted the normal ration of tasteless white bread allotted to two people, sitting on the counter next to the vegetables.

He should be hungry. He should want to eat it. He needed to survive. All he could comprehend in that moment was how overwhelmingly angry he was. The rage burned at him, scorching his mind, his stomach, his throat, his thoughts. If only he had not been distracted by his damned, screaming father! If only he had his wits about him enough to prevent Harry's ambush! Damn it all! Damn it! "DAMN IT ALL!" He shrieked finally.

The bread was rendered into a burnt, smoldering, stinking crisp. Wand or no wand, Tom's magic would find any outlet it could. He groaned, feeling his head lurch, his headache returning as he stepped quickly to the sink to wash his hands and then drink. Without warning, the light bulb over his head exploded. Tom groaned a curse. He hadn't caused this much havoc unintentionally since he was seven.

There were a lot of things Hogwarts neglected to teach its students. Muggle history, for example. It was only as Harry settled into a large, but extremely old bath tub that he thought about when he was. 1943. He didn't know much about 1943 (his primary school education had only covered basic history), but he vaguely recalled World War 2 hadn't ended until '45. Come to think of it, that For Sale sign had looked very old. Weather-worn and peeling around the edges. Perhaps this house had been put on the market prior to the London bombings and remained there despite the family's absence because they couldn't risk returning. Or perhaps they couldn't return at all because they were…

East London had been a hot spot for bombs, hadn't it? And they were in Surrey. Harry couldn't say he was terribly scared of getting caught in a raid, though; he was a wizard after all. If any danger reared its head he'd just apparate himself and Tom to safety. Maybe to a distant beach or Hogsmeade. It was only the muggles that need fear the terror of the bombs, which was a thought that immediately made Harry's stomach twist with something akin to guilt; he didn't like to think wizards had means of protecting themselves from the carnage and refused to share it with the muggles for the sake of remaining hidden. But Harry didn't need another war burdening his conscience, so the thought - or realization, rather - was quickly discarded in favor examining his surroundings.

The house they were occupying must have been owned by a wealthy family because they had pipes that ran hot water, a ceramic bath and sink, an additional room for the toilet, a wide range of hygiene products, and a mirror with a beautifully painted frame; luxuries he imagined most other families would be hard pressed to afford. He supposed their wealth was what had enabled them to move out in the first place. Most other people didn't have the money to relocate. They had to remain and risk the bombs.

God, he couldn't stop thinking about the bombs now that he'd started. Cursing under his breath, Harry picked up a sponge and started to scrub every inch of his dirt-caked skin clean. The bombs still lingered at the back of his mind, but at least now he had a task to take the edge off the unease he was feeling.

The water was brown by the time he was finished. Before evacuating the water, he took up a straight razor and cut his neglected beard down to a fine stubble. He ended up cutting himself several times on his jaw, neck, and cheek, dotting the brown water with red, but it felt nice to have a clear face once he was done. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had access to a razor.

He decided to leave his clothes in a pile on the floor, tying a towel tight around his waist and stealing his way into the main bedroom while still dripping wet. There weren't many clothes in the drawers and they were all a little big on him, but he found black slacks and a dress shirt that would be good enough for a temporary ensemble. Better than what he'd been forced to wear at the Dursley's, in any case. Before putting his robe back on, he performed some basic cleaning spells in an effort to make it more presentable. His hair was, as always, an absolutely mess, and he didn't even bother trying to comb it before descending the steps and walking through to the kitchen.

"Sorry, that might've been a little longer than thirty mi-"Upon noticing the burnt bread and burst light bulb, Harry fell silent, examining the rest of the room for additional damage. It didn't look like Tom had broken anything else.

Returning his gaze to Tom, he frowned. "Try not to reduce too much of our food to ash. We need that for 'not starving' purposes."

What the hell…?

Tom had not been expecting this. Tom had heard footsteps on the staircase, and upon snapping his attention up he was greeted with a completely unexpected sight. The man, shorter than Tom by a little less than half a foot, was shaven and looked scrubbed and fresh. His large clothes hung loosely around his well-built form. His messy black hair seemed to give him a devil-may-care attitude as he greeted Tom with a displeased frown. Tom was certain that the burnt bread was doing nothing to calm his companion. But frankly, Tom had a bit of trouble comprehending the entirety of it.

"You're short!" Tom observed, looking confused. "And young. And winsome." It might have been a compliment coming from anyone else. If anything, Tom's pale features just seemed rather confused, as though Harry had pulled off a mask to reveal he was someone completely different entirely. It was hardly the same person, and the difference between night and day. The Harry that had walked up those stairs had been a grungy, angry homeless vagrant. The Harry that walked down was adorably casual, yet barely older than his school years, still rather angry though. Somehow the threatening nature of the homeless man seemed to make him seem even more imposing and tall. It was a small comfort to see him more humanized.

With a disgruntled huff, Tom stared down at the smoldering loaf of tasteless bread. Frankly, he might have done them a favor. Harry had no idea what bread rations tasted like, so he wouldn't be privy to the knowledge that charcoal or sawdust was a comparable alternative.

"I'm going to bathe. Do not follow me." He ordered rather forcefully, knowing full well the lack of power he had over Harry, but insisting all the same that he make his intentions clear. "Or is that forbidden for me as well?" He continued, snide and caustic as he stepped quickly out of the kitchen without giving his counterpart a chance to answer, past Harry and for the stairs.

The bathroom was, indeed, rather luxurious and well stocked. Tom would have revelled in the fact that he had a choice of different soaps and fragrances, and perhaps he would have even felt entitled to it, but within this moment he hardly noticed. After he entered, locked the door, he looked longingly at the blacked out window, as though entertaining a stray thought to jump out of it before his body began to move mechanically through the motions.

He disrobed, washed, scrubbed, dried, and re-clothed himself with the clothing from across the hallway, just as Harry had apparently done. The length of the garments was just right, but the waist was quite a bit larger than he had expected, but he would certainly make it work. He could have charmed his clothing clean once again, but he lacked his wand. He felt so very naked without it, truth be told, that he would have done anything to have it back, even if he could not use it to completely free himself. After finding a plain wooden comb on the female occupant's dresser, he slicked back wet hair and took a moment to look in the mirror.

His father's face stared back at him, screaming.

Tom's stomach clenched dangerously and nausea gripped him. He dashed back to the bathroom, barely having time enough to slam the door shut behind him as he doubled over the toilet, retching as stomach acid and bile poured from his mouth in repulsive heaves. His already empty stomach insisted on turning itself inside out. All the while, his father lingering in his memory as he clutched the seat to keep himself steady, coughing, panting, yet trying to keep as silent as possible. He could not afford to let Harry hear him.

Harry couldn't know he was this weak. Harry wanted him to suffer and die. He couldn't afford to let him know…

When the horrifying episode was finally over, Tom was left quivering and panting, his stomach numb and empty and his mind heavy and leaden. After spitting, and flushing, he carefully made his way to the sink to scrub his face once again and brush his teeth (the family was even wealthy enough to have toothpaste! Imagine that!) He gripped the porcelain edges of the sink, bracing himself to look up at the mirror.

His own tired eyes stared back at him, set into a somewhat exhausted, extremely pale, yet strikingly handsome face, framed with soft black hair. Tom straightened to his full height, taking several deep breaths, gradually gaining back his composure. He hoped against hope that Harry hadn't heard that shameful display, that he didn't know exactly how Tom's weakness was seeping through his control at inopportune moments. He finally made his way out of the bathroom and downstairs once again.

Harry was so taken aback he didn't know which part of Tom's outburst to address first. With bagged eyes, messy hair, and a thin layer of peach fuzz, Harry had to wonder if Tom actually knew the definition of winsome. And short – he wasn't short! Just because Tom was obnoxiously tall didn't mean Harry was short; he was almost the same height as his father, and his father had been one of the tallest among the marauders.

Besides, not many people could boast being taller than Tom Riddle, who had been blessed with a height that facilitated harassing those he considered lesser than him (i.e. everyone) by looming over them.

He folded his arms over his chest, opening his mouth to reply, but before he could utter a single word Tom had pushed past him and ascended the stairs. Harry didn't even have the time to consider stopping him. As he watched the ends of Tom's robes disappear from sight, he was glad he'd never had the opportunity – and would never have the opportunity to pursue a career that required skills in supervision. He would've been bloody terrible at it.

Pushing his damp hair out of his eyes, Harry decided to start cooking dinner. A pot of beef stew ought to last them a day or two. Having subsisted on stew for the last several months, he'd become very adept at making them. He'd often made them for the Dursley's as well, usually during winter. Needless to say, his portion of the stew had always been pitiful, and that was if he'd earned the right to eat anything at all, but it was still a meal he associated with warmth and a full belly.

He was sure Tom would have been disgusted to see him cooking the muggle way, hunched over the counter with a knife and a chopping board and no wand in sight. He was so used to cooking without magic that he scarcely ever bothered to use it. If he did, he probably would have screwed it up somehow, anyway. Sent the beef slamming into the wall or something. He couldn't risk slamming the beef into the wall because it was the only beef they had and he was pretty sure Tom wouldn't consent to consuming sullied meat.

He was in the process of throwing the aforementioned meat into a boiling pot of stock and water when he heard a great slam of – a door? A person? Startled, Harry almost smacked his elbow into the cooker, managing to stop himself just before impact. A cube of beef fell out of his hand and onto the kitchen floor. He ignored it, hurrying up the stairs to make sure Tom's magic hadn't gone haywire again and broken something.

He was greeted by the sound of retching.

Oh.

Harry stood there for a moment, listening, but he knew better than to intervene. Offering help would only serve to embarrass the boy. Tom had a lot of pride, and Harry had inflicted enough damage to it for one evening. He returned to the kitchen and resumed cooking, giving no indication he had eavesdropped on Tom's breakdown. He did, however, pour Tom a glass of water and set it on the counter along with an apple.

"Dinner won't be ready for a while."

The aroma of gently simmering broth filled the air in the kitchen as Tom walked in, finding Harry at the stove, stirring what could only be a stew with the casual air of someone who was rather adapt at cooking. Judging by the look of the knife and cutting board and knife on the counter, he obviously had done most of the work (if not all of it) manually. His heart skipped a beat when he realized that he had left his own weapon in the bathroom upstairs with his dirty clothes. He inwardly cursed his sickness for distracting from what truly had mattered, his survival. There was no running back up there now that Harry had obviously noticed him, but he could not afford any more slip ups. If anything, Harry could be planning on spilling some sort of potion into their meal right as he stirred. Veritasium? Or maybe worse, Amortentia? He would have to make sure to note any drastic changes in the scent. The last thing he needed was to lose his body as well as his mind.

His stomach gave a rather unsettled turn at the alluring smell of meat slowly stewing away whatever vegetables Harry had managed to find within the kitchen. Harry was certainly easier to look at this way. He looked far less threatening than he had before his washing, but Tom couldn't let that distract him from the fact that this powerful individual had literally stolen away all of his goals and free will in the matter of a few precious hours, debasing him to the status of an angry child spewing out errant, wandless magic every now and then when his emotions took over in place of his mind. It was good to note that Harry did not seem confident enough in his magic to let it do the cooking for him. Then again, Tom did so little cooking magic that he doubted he could perform it suitably either. It simply was not within his normal repertoire. At the orphanage though, if one expected to eat, one had to contribute with the cooking. Mandatory survival, if you will. It made avoiding any sort of domestication all but impossible.

When Harry turned to greet him, he slid a glass of water and an apple in his direction. Apples, obviously good for an upset stomach. So, he knew. He knew about the episode upstairs. He knew bloody everything, didn't he?

Tom's eyes narrowed dangerously, yet he kept his careful composure as he sat down at the neatly small wooden table for two, looking remarkably well adjusted for someone whose life had literally just been derailed. He ignored both of the offered items in lieu of fixing Harry with a curiously innocent, pensive look.

"Harry, it seems that you know everything about me." He articulated carefully, keeping his tone smooth and calm, almost comfortingly so. "I can see you've definitely studied me a great deal." And also want me to suffer and die. "I'm far more interested in hearing about you though." He made a small, politely unassuming gesture to his companion.

"Who are you? Could you tell me about yourself? Seeing as we'll be spending some time together, I should like to know more than your first name."

"Er, alright…" Harry hesitated. 'Hi, I'm Harry Potter, and my life is an absolute mess' would be a succinct way of introducing himself. He didn't think Tom would find that amusing, though, and he wanted to have a better second impression than the catastrophe that had been his first.

He ran a hand up though his hair before he responded, somehow managing to make it even messier. "Well, my surname's Potter." That seemed like a good place to start. "This place is where I used to live. Sort of. I lived on this street – would have lived on this street in about forty years. I'm from the future, you see." He dropped his hand from his hair and began to slowly stir the stew. The steam was rising up in great clouds of white. "I'm not much of a time traveler though; now that I'm here I can't go anywhere else. It was a one way journey."

A pause, and then he continued.

"If you want to know something specific, go ahead and ask. I don't have a lot to hide." Which implied that he did have some things to hide, but they were nothing of great consequence. Just sentimental things; things that would offer Tom no advantage. At best it was information that could be used to provoke Harry, and considering he currently had two wands in his possessions, he didn't think Tom would want to do that.

The surname Potter sounded all too familiar. Not that he could have really chosen it out in particular, Tom felt as though he had heard many of the other 'Sacred Twenty Eight' members speaking of Potters from time to time. If his memory served him correctly, Henry Potter had crusaded for the rights of muggles in the Wizengamot about a decade or two ago, before he stepped down from his seat. Suitably, the Potters had been kicked out brethren of the pure blooded families because of his rather insolent ideas.

From a family of crusaders for the rights of muggles. Tom had a vague picture of where this was headed and why exactly Harry had targeted him. It wasn't exactly a stretch, considering Tom's current trajectory and his ideals. He could only assume that forty years from the present moment, his goals had not shifted too drastically. Then he had achieved them, to a certain extent? It was hard to tell from that small amount that Harry had revealed.

He seemed strikingly evasive on the subject of time travel. He couldn't quite blame him for that though. From the extent of Tom's knowledge, Time Traveling was highly dangerous and illegal in some countries. The irreparable damage it could inflict on the Time-Space Continuum was always a looming threat, but that could also explain why it was impossible to move back to his own original time period. "It seems uncomfortable to be trapped in a completely different era. Do you miss your own time? Have you had a difficult time adjusting?" Tom asked, genuine curiosity creeping into his voice, rather than the cold, calculated variety he had been using before.

He paused, taking Harry's offer into consideration before continuing with his line of questioning. "And also, it seems that you are quite trained at the use of magic. Did you attend Hogwarts, by any chance?"

Those weren't the questions Harry had been anticipating. Having harbored a fragment of Voldemort's soul for sixteen years, Harry liked to think he understood him almost as well as Dumbledore. But then, Tom wasn't really Voldemort yet, was he? Not truly. Voldemort exhibited little subtly when it came to acquiring what information he wanted, while Tom was still self-aware enough not to broach certain subjects right off the bat.

Once again, Harry reminded himself that Tom Riddle and Voldemort weren't the same person. Not in these circumstances, anyway.

"I did, yeah. Attend Hogwarts, I mean. I was in the Gryffindor house, which was either terrible or great for the Gryffindor's depending on what I was up to that month." He laughed quietly, mostly to himself. "I killed a guy during my first year – er, not deliberately. He tried to kill me and started falling to pieces. That pretty much set the theme for the rest of my time at Hogwarts."

He reached into the spices cabinet and added a generous amount of paprika to the stew.

"Being here is actually kind of an improvement. I already mentioned that you…" A beat. "Well, not you; I only said 'you' before because I was upset. You and Voldemort are entirely different people. You haven't taken anything from me, but he did. It was probably his favorite hobby, killing muggle-borns and tormenting muggles aside." Harry glanced at Tom, taking a moment to gauge his reaction. "Once the war's over I'll probably have a good time being here. I might even get a job so these muggles can have their house back."

He would need to have some official documents forged before he did that, and he wouldn't be able to work anywhere of significance. He couldn't risk the Ministry noticing he was an anomaly.

Ugh. A Gryffindor. Just when his punishment couldn't get any better.

Tom's eyes widened a fraction when Harry mentioned 'unintentionally killing a man during his first year'. Tom had to admit that he had a rather unsteady past, filled with a good deal more violence than most, but he could have never admitted to murdering an individual at just above a decade old. He suppressed a shiver, realizing that wasn't entirely the truth. He had unintentionally murdered his mother. The casual tone which Harry had used didn't help the uneasy feeling that came with the thought of how much control Harry truly had over his future, and how very sure Tom was that Harry wanted him to suffer like an animal.

He watched as Harry added some unnamed red spice to the dish as he described how much of an improvement it was to be in this era. As he spoke of Tom's future self, using the name which Tom prided himself so much in choosing, there seemed to be an underlying anger and hatred which Harry could not hide. To be entirely honest, he did not even seem to want to hide it. Harry glanced back at him from time to time, as though trying to catch some sort of grand reaction, as though Tom were about to transform suddenly into a fanged beast and pounce at him. Almost in retaliation, Tom kept his expression calm and his tone level and smooth as he spoke.

"Do you have any idea why I…or rather, my future self would be so adamant about targeting you?" He asked politely, fixing Harry with an unblinkingly focused stare.

"I'm glad to hear that you think that this is an improvement." Tom gestured to their makeshift 'home' for the time being. "Truth be told, this is a rather wealthy household. Many of the comforts offered by this place are not universal in England at the moment, though I'm sure you know all about this history as well. I won't bore you with the current war news." Tom wanted to know when he could expect an end to this idiotic, muggle conflict, but he knew better than to ask directly. There was just no way that Harry would impart that information willingly. "So, when will you be getting a job then, do you think?" Tom asked casually, running his fingertips over the rim of his glass of water before fixing Harry with the same, focused stare yet again, waiting for his answer.

Harry visibly hesitated. He wasn't sure if Tom was ready to hear about the prophecy. There was the potential he would take it to heart, try something. He didn't want to put Tom in a situation where he felt as boxed in as his elder counterpart did. But the prophecy was null and void now, wasn't it? If there had been anything about time travel in there, it had been a very loose interpretation. What sort of lie could he tell Tom in lieu of the truth, anyway? Even at this age, Tom was a skilled legilimens. He would realize Harry was lying to him and their trust (or lack thereof) would be even more tenuous than it already was.

With a long-suffering sigh, he replied. "There was a prophecy about me and Voldemort. It doesn't really matter now since the whole 'dark lord' business isn't going to happen, but since you asked…" He scratched at his neck, clearly unhappy to be talking about something so personal with Tom, even if Tom had technically been one of the parties involved. "The prophecy basically said I was an unavoidable destiny, and he hated that. So he tried to kill me. Wasn't the last time he tried to kill me, either; he did that a lot. It backfired and he ended up making me a horcrux, which led to him living as a parasite for over a decade." His fingers darted to the scar on his forehead, brushing over the puckered flesh. "He kept trying to kill me for years. Probably would have tried a different tactic if he'd ever realized I had a part of his soul. Put me in a cage, maybe."

The memory of Voldemort in his head, speaking to him in that high, cold voice made Harry look away from Tom, continuing to needlessly stir the stew.

"Anyway, point is, creating horcrux's wasn't all it cracked up to be, because you ended up with such a fractured soul that it could hardly sustain itself. I'm still not entirely sure why you thought it was such a good idea, honestly. In the end you were so inhuman you couldn't even feel it when part of your soul was destroyed." He shook his head.

"As for work, not sure yet. I haven't even been here a week. I have plenty of money, in the meantime. I brought as much as I could carry before I left, so you won't be deprived of anything." He smiled to himself, amused by the idea of buying gifts for his arch-nemesis. "I don't intend to keep you here doing nothing all day. We'll go to Diagon Alley at some point and get you some books. Speaking of-"

He reached into his pocket, digging through the contents until he came upon what he was looking for. Withdrawing a book, he set it on the counter, sliding it over to Tom. The title was 'Quintessence: A Quest', written in bold gold lettering. It was an olive branch of sorts, much like the apple and water had been. Hopefully the allure of reading something from the future would be reason enough for Tom to take it regardless of how he felt about Harry.

Tom had obviously made a misstep. Asking about the nature of their past (his former future?) had turned the conversation tense. Harry seemed reticent to speak, let alone come up with an appropriate answer and Tom found himself regretting his decision to bring this up as early as he did. The amount of information he gleaned from his captor would depend on how comfortable Harry was with speaking to him. He had to make Harry believe that this was somewhat of a safe space to for him to speak. Forcing him to reflect on what the future held was, apparently, not working in his favor and yet Tom had to know why all of these jarringly random events were happening to him so suddenly. The future was an integral part to this explanation.

Keeping his face calm and his voice level and even was a trial. Harry was being infuriatingly vague and extremely curt on the subject. There were huge holes in his ideology, and Tom had the fleetingly horrified notion that he had been kidnapped by a mad man. A skilled wizard, yes, but a complete mad man nonetheless. He swallowed his growing panic and tried to sort through the facts he had been presented. Forty years from now, there had been a prophecy which had made Harry a target of his. He then attacked Harry multiple times. One of those times had created a Horcrux by accident which had attached to Harry. Was that even possible? How did this effect Harry? Did he still feel the effects? His multiple Horcruxes had weakened his soul infinitely, yet he, er…Voldemort himself was still powerful enough to attack and be formidable, and cause enough fear and caution that it would have driven Harry to find him here, in the past.

"That's very interesting." Tom commented softly, more to himself than his companion. He concentrated, and tried not to look too irate at the lack of clarity while he did so. There was a horrendous amount missing from this story, but questioning further would only set Harry on edge, and he had already taken to stirring that stew with enough vigor to tenderize the toughest meat.

His assurance that Tom would not really need for anything was somehow heartwarming in how genuine the offer had been, but the reflection that it was coming from a madman was a clear reminder that he needed to try to escape from Harry as soon as possible. Harry wanted him to suffer and die, he couldn't allow himself to forget that fact. He considered Tom his enemy already and had no reason to hold back for much longer. Harry had forced him into this position, and he would do his damnedest to see Tom's end. If his story was correct, than he had the most to gain from killing Tom. This kindness…perhaps it was to soothe his conscience later when he was cleaning off his weapon of choice.

The book that he slid forward could have only been described as academic. Textbook sized, with a suitable amount of heft, it looked rather mundane aside from its golden lettering and colored front, but the colors themselves were rather vivid and bright, the lettering precise and crisp, the cover only weathered about the edges from minimal use. He pulled the book closer carefully before glancing up to Harry once again, fully intending on asking about the nature of the volume before his breath hitched.

This was an obvious distraction. Harry knew him all too well without even trying.

"How long have you been here? In this time, I mean? How did you find me? I told no one I would be in Little Hangleton. How do you know of my surviving family?" He continued smoothly, softly but still relentlessly, making remarkable efforts to ignore the book before him, no matter how much 'Quintessence' did interest him.

There was interest there, even if Tom's reaction wasn't the one he had sought. He would accept the book eventually, Harry was sure, but until Tom overcame his paranoia, everything Harry did would be thrown into suspicion. He couldn't really blame him seeing as he'd kidnapped the boy; he wouldn't have trusted himself either.

"Slow down, would you? I'll answer all your questions, but it'll be easier for me to keep a train of thought if you stick to one or two at a time."

Harry, at last, left the stew to cook. It would be some time before it was ready for consumption. While they waited, he maneuvered himself around the counter, seating himself at the kitchen table.

"Right, that first one… I've been here about four days so far. Not long. I spent the first few days orienting myself." He glanced at the glasses cabinet and it came open on its own accord, a glass descending to the sink. It was filled with water and floated across the room to Harry. He drained the entire glass in one go. Smacking his lips, he then provided the rest of his answer. "Those other questions are easily answered by 'I know everything about you'. I had to know everything about you in order to defeat you. Though, I guess 'everything' is a bit of an overstatement. I don't know every little facet of your personal life, I just know the important things, like your family, your upbringing, the approximate date you created each horcrux…"

He leaned his chin on a palm, looking deceptively calm and relaxed. This line of questioning was tricky to navigate. If he divulged too much he risked the possibility of Tom concluding that Dumbledore was responsible for Harry's knowledge. He would tell Tom, at some point, but not today. Not this early on. If he let Tom return to school, he didn't want him to return with a vendetta against the man.

"We knew a lot about each other. Granted, most people knew a lot about me because of the whole 'surviving a killing curse' thing, but their information was a little more superficial and embellished than yours. They didn't have some weird – mind link to draw information out of."

Four days.

That was all it had taken Harry to get himself oriented to the turbulent time, plan his attack, track Tom down, and time himself perfectly to completely disrupt all of Tom's plans. It was an incredible feat, but even more unbelievable due to the shortened period of time. Tom tried not to show the shock on his face, swallowing hard and tightening the grip on his glass a fraction.

Harry must have been extremely focused on finding him, hunting him down. To go so far as to travel through time to prevent the future spoke to the lengths he would go to ensure that this 'monster' Voldemort that he claimed Tom would become would never happen. If he had gone this far, there was no denying the fact that he would make not hesitate to kill him.

Tom looked up to find Harry sitting across from him at the little kitchen table, personally made just to seat two. It felt just a touch too intimate for Tom, but he refused to back down now. Harry was answering questions, no matter how evasively. It seemed that now was not quite the right moment for murder, if he could judge Harry's actions correctly. "What else do you know of my past? Other than…" He paused, searching for the right words. "Other than the circumstances of my birth?" Asking of his future would be futile, seeing as though it had been irreversibly changed at this point.

Tom couldn't help the shock on his face when Harry mentioned his surviving the killing curse. "H-How…?" He sputtered, completely caught off guard. "How could you possibly survive that? No one has ever survived that!" Tom's eyes traced the thin scar on his forehead, his jaw tightened visibly as the pieces quickly fell into place. The scar, it was a mark of dark magic gone awry. Harry hadn't been thorough with his details, of course. When he said that the prophecy had linked the two of them, he certainly hadn't mentioned his survival.

"Superficial information? Mind link? I don't understand." Tom snapped through clenched teeth. "Explain yourself! You're being infuriating!"

When Tom's dulcet tones gave way to petulance, Harry couldn't help but smile; Tom sounded more his age when he spoke that way. He brought his fingers up to his mouth, smothering his reaction so Tom wouldn't be able to misinterpret it as teasing.

"Right, I'll start from the beginning then. Give you some context." He cleared his throat. "Leave the questions and comments until the end, alright? I'll lose track of what I'm saying otherwise."

Harry's gaze was vacant as he mentally picked apart the details of Tom's life. He knew them well; it was deciding how to articulate them that was the hard part. He didn't want to be too long-winded, but he didn't want to skimp on too many details, either, and he also wanted Tom to know he regarded him and Voldemort as two different people. It was a lot more thought than he'd usually put into anything he said.

"…You don't need me to recount your entire upbringing, so… you made two Horcrux's while still in Hogwarts, and once you had graduated you started traveling and making more. Eventually you reached the peak of your power and started a war. You weren't really Tom by that point, though. That was basically your Tom Riddle to Voldemort transition period." Harry wrinkled his nose. "A prophecy about me and Voldemort was made during the war and overheard by one of his followers, who immediately relayed it to him. Neither of them knew what they he heard wasn't the full prophecy. He only had a small part of it, but deduced that I was the one 'fated' to vanquish him. He ended up fulfilling the unheard part by marking me as his equal through a failed killing curse. It failed because of an ancient magic invoked by my mother, rebounding and leaving me with a fragment of his soul." A barely perceptible blush rose on his cheeks as he continued. "Er. Love. That- that was the magic. It protected me right up until my first year at Hogwarts, by which time Voldemort had managed to convince a professor there to let him inhabit the back of his head. Obviously his plans didn't work out since I'm still alive, and he resumed being…" Harry made a vague, incomprehensible gesture with his hands. "No one really knows what he was, but he was so weak that he had to live inside a guy's turban all day – which people threw snowballs at, by the way – so you can come to your own conclusions about that."

Harry paused to make sure Tom was keeping up.

"I actually met you in my second year. You'd been preserved in a diary for fifty years, but you were still sixteen year old Tom Riddle. I can't imagine that was a pleasant existence, but I wasn't able to muster up much sympathy for you at the time since you tried to kill almost a dozen people while possessing my best friends sister, and then attempted to kill me. After giving me a 'we're not so different' speech." He rolled his eyes. "Long story short, I destroyed that horcrux entirely by accident. Voldemort himself didn't reappear until my fourth year, and with the help of a servant who had sought him out in my third year, he'd made an eighth horcrux by that time. He thought it was his seventh since he never figured out he'd accidentally made me into one. He had that servant help him brew a regeneration potion, of which I was a key ingredient. It gave him a body that looked like the offspring of a skeleton and a snake. I was too busy being tortured at the time to tell him as much or he might have reconsidered the red eyes and white skin."

He'd intended that as a joke, but it came off a bit dry.

"After I'd escaped that predicament, because I seemed to be pretty adept at that at that point, the mind link I mentioned earlier started to strengthen. I'd seen snippets of what he was doing the previous year and now that he had a corporeal body, those were becoming more frequent. I bet you saw this part coming: he took advantage of our mind link and… well, those events aren't really that relevant, to be honest. Point is, the war had begun again and the only way to stop it was by destroying all his horcrux's. So that's what I and my friends did. We destroyed all but two, including the one inside my head.

"Voldemort was the one who destroyed the one inside me. He used the killing curse on me again, but it didn't kill me. It killed the fragment of his soul. And while I was straddling life and death I saw what would happen to him." There was a pregnant pause, and then Harry ran his hands up through his shaggy hair, pushing it behind his ears. The movement put the whole of his scar on view. The puckered, white flesh seemed to shine beneath the overhead light. "He was this horrible, raw, flayed thing that looked almost like a baby. It was in pain and I wanted to help it, but I couldn't, and I don't… I don't think you knew what you were or who you were. You were just conscious enough to be in pain. And if I killed you, that was your future. Neither able to live nor die. Just that, forever." He wetted his lips. He hadn't intended to start using 'you' to refer to the thing. "I knew that, but I still would have killed Voldemort if it meant no one else would die or suffer on my behalf. I didn't succeed, obviously, which is for the best. If I hadn't resorted to time travel you would have been stuck there with no way out." Harry's hands dropping back to the table signified the end of his story.

"Anything you want me to clarify?"

Tom was sitting very still when Harry finally finished. He had hardly moved during the entire duration of Harry's shortened and sped up rendition of his story. He seemed to be almost carved in stone, rarely blinking, hardly breathing, his fingers slowly tightening on the apple before him as Harry's words created a world unto itself, spiced here and there with a bit of grim, dry humor on the speaker's part.

For having just recited the entirety of his life and their rather tumultuous past in the span of maybe ten minutes at the most, Harry looked like he was doing remarkably well. One might even have described him as 'spirited' as he dropped his hands on the table to signify an end. He was sitting quite easily with his empty glass, staring expectantly at Tom for some sort of confirmation, some grand display of acceptance or even rejection. If that were the case, Harry would be proven rather disappointed.

Tom sat before him, stoic and silent, his breathing carefully even, yet remarkably deep as though he were trying to keep himself steady. His face was ashen and stood out all the more white against his dark hair and eyes. His hands shook as they gripped the apple, making deep brown bruises on the crisp, red skin until finally the fruit burst in his hands under the strain.

The crushing sensation seemed to awaken Tom to a certain degree. He blinked rapidly for a moment, shaking his head slowly as though trying to awaken from stasis. Closing his eyes, he set the crushed fruit down on the tabletop next to the untouched glass of water and finally looked back up at Harry, his eyes unfocused, his mind working quickly yet his body only slightly responding.

"I need to lie down. Do not follow me." Tom didn't realize he had spoken until he heard his own voice in his ears. Slowly lifting himself from his seat, he retreated back to the staircase without another word, ascending steadily at first, (where he knew Harry could see him still), and then finally allowing himself the handicap of leaning on the doorframe as he stumbled into the master bedroom, slipping the door quietly closed behind him.

Tom had been defeated. No matter which way he turned, he had to face death.

Harry had been genuine, truthful. Tom saw it in his brilliant eyes and his sharp mind as he spoke of the past events between them. He had been so very animated, yet so rushed in their story, their previous encounters.

It seemed incredible that Harry was even sitting there to relay the full chain of events. The tale had been so very outlandish that Tom couldn't blame himself for doubting his counterpart, and yet there were bits that were undeniably true.

His intentions for his family's ring, perhaps for his diary once he managed to get confirmation from another source that creating multiple horcruxes was even possible. The chain of events seemed so very strange and otherworldly, but those two facts tied him to this other individual irreversibly. A story about him that was now, not even about him. The news that his soul fragments were so very easily done away with was disheartening to say the least. Shreds of his pride refused to let him forget that he had so much riding on his Horcrux mechanizations, and to hear of it all crashing down around him was sickening. Or perhaps it just seemed so because Harry was speaking so quickly, so casually about his demise. There was no real way to tell.

Tom collapsed on the bed before him, his empty stomach churning dangerously yet again as he curled up to try to ease the pain. He tried to calm the thoughts and questions buzzing in his head, but was failing miserably as they continued to surface at a frequency that made his hands shake and his head throb.

Harry had come here to change the future, to finish him off before this story ever began.

His father kept screaming somewhere in the back of his mind. Tom was going to die. It was all because of Harry.

Harry was starting to wonder if being honest with Tom was the best idea. The boy was clearly in shock. His face had turned ashen, his eyes were unfocused. He looked as though he might faint at any moment. He would have told him everything eventually – had already planned to prior to traveling to Tom's era – but it seemed as though he should have given Tom some time to recover from the first information dump. Maybe this was why Dumbledore had always been so reticent with him, not giving him the full story until it was needed. He wasn't about to agree with that method of imparting information, but he was starting to understand Dumbledore's feelings on the matter.

He waited twenty minutes before ascending the stairs after Tom, carrying the book, glass of water, and a fresh apple with him (the other one was still splattered all over the kitchen table; he would clean it up later). Once he was sure Tom wasn't crying, he nudged the bedroom door open and stepped inside, very quiet on his feet, as though trying not to be heard. The items were dumped on the bedside table. He added a pepper up potion as an afterthought; it had always made him feel better even when he hadn't been ill with a cold.

"If you need a sleeping draught, I'll bring one up for you," he said gently, turning to leave.

He would wait a few days before he told Tom anything else. Give him time to absorb the information he already had. Eventually Tom would know his whole story, but not until Harry was sure it wouldn't be detrimental to his mental health.

The next time Harry came upstairs, it was with a bowl of stew, which he left on a tray beside Tom's bed, covering it with a dishcloth so it would retain its heat until Tom felt peckish enough to eat it. That would be the last Tom saw of Harry for the evening. He retreated to his own bedroom before the sun had even started to set, falling asleep within minutes of curling up beneath the covers.

He wouldn't realize until morning that he had completely forgotten to clean up the splattered apple.