A/N: I acknowledge fully that this needs a lot of revision. I'm a little out of it today, so if you catch anything that sounds off or find any poorly selected paragraph divisions, tell me about them, please. Actually, just critique your heart out upon it.

This will be the second Harry Potter fic I've posted, although I've taken the first one down because I've grown a lot as a writer since then and am a bit ashamed of it. This isn't the only Tom/OC story I've ever had a go at, but it is the first. After I read .everyonepanic.'s Reckless Abandonment, I thought I might do well to post one of my own Tom/OC stories.

I chose this one neither because the plot is the most developed nor because the OC is my favorite, but because it amuses me the most. With that said, please don't take this as a serious story. It's meant to be pointless and light-hearted. All the same, don't let me get away with letting Tom stray out of character. Right now, he's bound to be a little off center. That much is intentional since he's still 14 and I mean to ease him into his older incarnations as the story progresses. I want, in particular, to know if you think I've overshot my goal and made him too different.

I really haven't read the Harry Potter books. I've actually only seen the movies and invaded the wiki thoroughly enough to have acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of the series. So, as good as my intentions are, please chastise me for my errors and forgive me my ambition (and lengthy author's notes).

Without further ado, I present to you the first chapter of An Untitled Escapade (the title of which is sure to be subject to change).

Chapter I:

Tom hoisted himself up onto his knees, ignoring the particularly pained gurgle from his attacker as she rolled off of his back. Under his breath, he unleashed a muffled curse when he realized that his clothes had been muddied by the rain puddles on the pavement. And now he couldn't even use magic to clean them! What a right mess. He snapped his eyes toward whomever it was that had gotten the bright idea to plow him over.

It was a girl whose black hair was cut short and scruffily—he might have mistaken her for a boy were she not in a skirt. Her wrists were sheathed in wooden bangles and as she moved, they clacked together. When she stood, Tom watched her bitterly. She paused briefly and murmured irritably, probably bellyaching over the state of her clothes. Tom didn't blame her. It was then that she turned and looked down at him with a grimace.

Tom allowed his mouth to hang dumbly open.

The girl was an eyeful, but not because of her beauty. That is not to say that she couldn't have been pretty. She might even have been a lovely sight, but it made no difference. All of the best features on her face, unremarkable or otherwise, could not compete for attention with the abnormality that had brought Tom—ever charming and well-mannered Tom—down to the level of the common gaping fish. It was her eyes, strangest of all eyes. The right was a deep oceanic blue which, at its darkest tones, was fathomless like the inky blanket of the night sky and at its lightest, paralyzing like an arctic frost. The left was an ecstatic and wild honeycomb gold, hot and thick like a molten cauldron of felix felicis, but rigid and starchy like kernels of maize.

The girl blanched then, turned, and started to run, but Tom, free from the captivatingly bizarre spectacle, regained enough wit to reach out and seize her wrist. She tugged once, but was fast to give in.

Tom frowned at her and borrowed her unoffered hand to help himself stand. It was a full six seconds before she turned back around and once again, projected the full force of her smoldering eyes upon him. He was unaffected, this time. Her odd-eyed semblance was about as potently shocking as a played-out circus act. With the way she drew her lip into a snarl, it seemed she realized this.

"Who are you?" Tom asked sternly, not wanting her to think for a second that he would let her rudeness escape his attention.

"Nyx," said the girl after a second, glancing at the bony white hand which had wrapped itself completely around her wrist, somehow still not tight enough to be offensive. "It means 'night' in Greek."

"I know what it means," Tom replied, looking entirely insulted. He had been curious and the girl had indulged his curiosity wholeheartedly, but something about the way that Nyx fell off of her lips sounded condescending to him. It sounded like a certain kind of lie—the kind that came from a practiced liar.

Nyx, clearly becoming impatient, tried experimentally to pry her hand from Tom's grip again and he allowed her to. He didn't really want to let her go now that she'd lied to him about something as simple as a name, but he also didn't want to give her any more reasons to lie. He thought he could coax the truth out of her with some carefully chosen words.

Nyx crossed her arms and began to tap her foot. The rain water which had so readily taken to her clothes dripped rhythmically from her hair and the hem of her skirt, putting ripples in the puddles beneath her. Even more droplets accumulated around the apparently impermeable black knit of her sweater.

Tom thought for a moment that all of this water might have been a symbol—a sign pointing to all of the answers to his questions about the girl, about the Chamber of Secrets, about his parents, humanity and life and hatred and the future and death; everything. But then he saw that her frown hadn't diminished and her stare hadn't left him. Following her gaze onto himself, he remembered that he, too, was sopping wet and knew that the water was no symbol—just an inconvenience. But why was she still staring?

"Well!" Nyx cried suddenly, dropping her arms to her sides, "Once is once, isn't it?"

Oh, Tom thought as a distasteful frown came to his face, indeed it is. He wondered why it had taken him so long to guess at her thoughts, supposing ultimately that he had hit his head harder than he initially thought and was still a bit dazed. It was, of course, her fault for falling out of the bloody sky like that.

"Terrance Michael Rivers, at your service." Tom wondered how it was that even when the opportunity for a name change presented itself, he had managed to choose a plain name, not much better than his real one and, much more disconcertingly, with all of the same initials. He thought he had to have hit his head too hard. Either way, he was glad he still had enough sense not to feel proud that he had simultaneously played on her words and accused her by giving a false name. After all, neither of those things was any good to him if she didn't know that he'd done them.

"Really?" Nyx replied. Her expression appeared to have lightened, if only slightly, and she crossed her arms once again. Tom watched as her weight shifted onto her hip in what he thought was an arrogant gesture. With half-lidded eyes she looked him up and down appraisingly and then looked at her nails casually, as if to say "you're nothing special".

Tom thought then that it might be fun to dismember her, but then remembered that murder was frowned upon in wizard (and muggle) society, curiously enough despite its many appealing implications.

"Well," Nyx said then, losing interest in her nails, "If you're at my service as you say, Mr. Rivers, then perhaps you'd oblige an inquiry of mine."

Tom noticed that she hadn't asked it of him, nor had she commanded him to answer. Rather, she had suggested (albeit unsubtly) that it would be polite of him to help her out, even though she had yet to apologize for knocking him into the wet street and nearly crushing him under her weight. By the way she further forced her hip out, it was also clear that she was insinuating that this was because she was a girl and he was, naturally, a chivalrous young man who was expected to rescue her. This was, of course, an unspoken heap of bullocks, but behind it were many truths. For example, he could determine that this girl, Nyx, was bigheaded but also intelligent. Had she put her words any other way, she would have looked demanding or stupid, neither of which were good qualities for a person to have.

"And what is your inquiry?" Tom replied dull-wittedly, for he was busy trying to think of what she could be hiding behind that false name and of how he could get her to reveal it all to him.

"Well, I—" she seemed to be regretting her words then, apparently having not thought so far ahead (Tom retracted his theory about her intelligence, of course), "Where am I?"

She was looking at her shoes when Tom raised an eyebrow at her.

"You're in London," Tom replied with a slightly mocking tone. After all, she was right to think that it lowered her stature to be ignorant of her whereabouts—and that was what she was thinking. It was evident on her face, which was (not surprisingly) of unexceptional beauty, now that Tom could better examine it.

"Yes, I know that," she said, suddenly indignant. Her hands flew to her hips and she looked an awful lot like Mrs. Cole preparing to scold him for something. "But where in London am I? And what's the time? And for heaven's sake, why is wet everywhere? The sky was clear this morning!" As if to highlight her frustration with the humidity, she batted at the light mist in the air and gave Tom a vexed look. He almost felt like she was pinning the blame on him. As if he could control the weather! And then he grimaced.

"You're joking," he said, with well-hidden suspicion only barely leaking through his eyes. "The rain hasn't let up since last night. I've only just gone out for a walk, in fact, to celebrate the sudden abatement."

He was, of course, lying. He would have gone out even if it were still raining—anything to not have to listen to those stupid muggles at the orphanage. It was in fact Martha's incessant inquiries that drove him out the door, but that was none of this strange girl's business and to say so wouldn't have served his purposes as well as the lie. In fact, it had been raining since the previous night and Tom was sure that this was true for all of London.

Nyx seemed taken aback and shook her head, immediately rejecting the possibility before it fully settled in, "It's been a dry summer. The sun was out only a minute ago and hardly a second ago, I was walking down Charing Cross Road, as happy as could be! And then—and then I fell and I—" she looked around as if desperately searching for a good way to word things. She eventually nodded and decided that "well, I landed on top of you," was the only way to say it.

Tom almost smiled, but opted instead to wrinkle his nose at her words. Each time she spoke, she slipped a little more. She was becoming increasingly panicked. Of course, anyone would panic if they suddenly fell into an alternate dimension, as this girl appeared to have done. And by the slowly settling candor in the creases between her brows, it almost looked as if she was considering whether or not he was trustworthy. She looked like her skin would peel away—like she would tell him all of her darkest secrets if he passed her test.

Eager to hear those secrets, Tom replayed her sputtered words in his head at least twice until something outstanding dawned on him.

"It's the middle of March," he pointed out in a manner so factual that it appeared to have left Nyx scandalized and a bit perturbed.

"How can it possibly be mid-March?" she said, upon regaining her composure. "Today is the twenty-first of June, 2008. The skies were clear this morning, and I know I haven't been hallucinating."

Tom Riddle couldn't decide if he should be scared, offended or concerned. After hearing something as utterly preposterous as that, he figured he might as well do a back flip!

"You're horribly confused. It is definitely the twenty-fourth of March, and it is definitely not the year 2008."

"Yes it is!" Nyx objected stubbornly, "I know because I turned sixteen today, which I couldn't have done unless it were 2008!"

Tom almost cracked a grin as he replied, highly amused, "If you turn sixteen in 2008, then I am sixty-six years your elder and you haven't even been born yet." She was either attempting to pull an elaborate prank, sharing a warped sense of humor or completely mental, of course, because Tom knew for an absolute fact that it was 1940 and he was fairly positive that it was Easter Sunday, unless that compulsory trip to church that Mrs. Cole had made him to endure was all for naught.

Nyx appeared to have been working Tom's calculations backwards in her head for a few minutes (indicating that she was a less capable mathematician) before she finally burst out with an uneasy laugh.

"That's impossible, for as you can see, I am quite alive and you can't possibly be more than a few years older than me," she reasoned, "I'm not that gullible, Mr. Rivers."

Tom finally did crack a grin. "Actually, if you are sixteen, then you're older than me by almost two years. That must mean, of course, that one of us is either a compulsive liar or at least entirely cracked."

"And naturally, that would be you, Mr. Rivers," Nyx said immediately with narrowed eyes, as if she'd taken his comment as a confession.

"Ask anyone you want to and they'll confirm it. You'll probably get hauled off to a bedlam, too, if you keep insisting that you've come from a time sixty-eight years in the future," Tom guaranteed.

Nyx laughed a loud, exaggerated laugh and placed a hand on Tom's shoulder as if to steady herself, "No, no, sir, it is you for which the padded cell is reserved. What are you, a steam-punk fan-boy gone wrong? Look at your clothes—you're wearing suspenders."

Tom grimaced. "Well, I don't exactly fancy the idea of wearing my trousers around my ankles."

Nyx rolled her eyes and whatever joke she thought Tom was playing had clearly gone far enough in her opinion. "Well," she huffed, "I suppose you are a bit bony. It's probably not a stretch to think you'd have a hard time keeping them up. After all, young girls like skinny boys these days, don't they? I'm not sure quite so many of them enjoy anachronisms, though." She paused to glare, no longer content to poke fun at his appearance. "Is this your hobby, Terrance Michael Rivers? Do you go around trying to further frighten the already frightened for fun? Am I at least the third person you've tried to mess with today? Because I swear to God and Buddha and—and—Bloody fucking Merlin that if you're dicking around and giving me a difficult time on purpose, I'll—I'll—I'll…!"

Tom raised his eyebrows, unfazed, "you'll keep talking?"

Nyx looked like she was considering it for a minute, before she realized what exactly he'd said and snarled, "Yes. That is exactly what I'll do. I'll follow you forever and never stop talking and when I die, I'll come back from the dead and haunt you until you die and then I'll follow you to the afterlife and you will never live in peace."

Tom dropped his eyebrows and then decided that the lamppost a few feet away was very intriguing compared to the current discussion and looked straight over Nyx's disheveled head to examine it, saying almost absentmindedly, "sorry, I'm not interested in married life."

He was more interested in knowing why she'd seen fit to lie about her name. She obviously didn't have much to hide, aside from a smidgen of insanity.

Nyx let out a long, angry growl, "You know what? Fuck you, Rivers. I shall find my own fucking way home and we shall see who the bloody shit is really cracked. And I'm still going to haunt you!"

Tom watched, somewhat frustrated himself, as Nyx stomped away, splashing water around with her feet and wrapping her arms around her body for warmth in the cold, wet Spring day.

He saw then that her shoes were striped and made of white rubber with an odd black fabric. There was a blue star on each of her heels along with some red letters. They were the oddest shoes he'd ever seen. It was as he acknowledged this that Nyx tripped, less over the curb then over her anger, let out a yelp and then rolled over into the gutter, motionless. Tom grumbled to himself.

"Bloody hell."