A/N: A sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle has a nightmare about his father. It's a bit odd but I hope you like it. Feedback and critiques would be appreciated.
Submission for:
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments): Speed Drabble - "Are you sure this won't completely and utterly destroy...everything?", "You're...you're him!", "You're one of them!", shiver, lightning
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Lightning flashed across the night sky, illuminating the streaks of rain outside his window. Tom knew nothing of the chaos raging beyond his bed as he lay twisting and turning in a fitful sleep.
"Are you sure this won't completely and utterly destroy... everything?" a voice asked on his right. He sneered towards the boy whose expression betrayed no emotion but his eyes told all. The coward. If he didn't think Avery was so influential, he would have disassociated from him long ago.
"Just trust my judgement," Tom said to his colleague. They were not friends. Tom didn't have friends.
"But what about others? Won't this hurt others? Won't it kill innocent people?" the boy asked. Tom raised an eyebrow. One thing Tom liked about his fellow Slytherins was their complete disregard towards others. It stemmed from a superiority complex held by most but one Tom could always count on in order to carry out his ideas.
"What about others? Since when do you care about anyone lower than yourself?" Tom retorted.
"Yes, since when do you care, Tom?" an old voice said from behind him, sending a shiver through his body.
Avery disappeared as Tom spun to come face to face with his least favourite man, his Transfiguration professor, Dumbledore. Dumbledore always regarded him with a calculating eye. While the other professors were eating out of the palm of his hand and thought of him as the model student, Dumbledore was not easily fooled. At times, he felt as if the old man could see straight into his mind with that annoying twinkle in his eyes.
"When do you care about how your actions hurt others?" the old man asked again.
"I-, I- don't!" Tom shouted at the old man, hoping he would just leave him.
"Somewhere deep inside you do or else I wouldn't be here," the old man said as he walked closer to the young boy. "There are people you care about that you wish you didn't. There are questions you wish you didn't want to know the answer to."
"You don't know what you're talking about old man!" Tom shouted.
"I think he does, Tom," another voice said coming out of the old man. Dumbledore morphed before Tom's eyes before another man took his place.
"You're... you're him!" Tom said in shock. He was an older version of Tom himself with smooth, neatly coiffed black hair, dark eyes and handsome chiselled features. Those who knew, mainly Dumbledore, had told him he looked like his father though Tom had never seen for himself.
"You wish to know who I am. You wish to know what happened those years ago. You wish I accepted you and your mother and gave you the family you always wanted," the man said with a smirk, one Tom had seen on his own face before.
"Why would I want that? You're one of them! A weak, filthy muggle is all you are!" Tom shouted, trying to get away from the apparition before him.
The man chuckled, "I may be a muggle, but I am your father. You can't run away from that, Tom, as much as you may try." He walked towards Tom with that cold look on his face. "But I didn't want you. I didn't want your ugly mother. I didn't want your freakish ways. You should have never been born, Tom. You should have-"
The lightning cracked again, startling the young man out of his sleep. He sat up with his eyes wide, his short gasps drowned out by the rolling thunder and the hard rain beating on the small window of the dorm. He looked about at his dormmates all still dead to the world. He frowned before lying back down in bed. "I don't care about anyone, and I don't care about him," he whispered to the ceiling, wondering what his dream had been about.
