a/n unedited and wierrd
"You can still save yourself." Harry says. His hands shake around his wand.
"You are no one to tell me to feel… 'remorse.'" Voldemort spits the words, like acid in his throat.
Then it happens.
Avada Kedavra!
The crowd is stunned into muteness, their breaths suspended, too fearful to be freed, their eyes wide and scared. There are Ron and Ginny who are still with fraught, and there are the Malfoys trembling in their boots, and there are the countless, countless others, but their eyes are held by Harry – Harry who has them all pointed like a spear towards the sun: hurtling ever forwards, an arrow slicing free through the air.
"Harry Potter!" The first shout breaks through just as dawn shatters the sky. "The Boy Who Lived!"
He can still taste the ash of expelliarmus on his tongue.
––
"Tom!" The matron is not very happy.
"I will not come down."tThe boy says, his legs fitting nicely into the slots the rails of the banisters, his hands curled around the wooden bars. Here he can look down at the living room and into the dining hall, where candles flicker and chatter weaves in and out like a serpent, because the other children are in there, their spoons clattering as they fling needle thin fish bones at one another.
"Do you want to starve?" she sneers. He can smell the food, oh yes, he can, but he's learnt how not to be hungry, how to ignore the fragrance of hot stew and sodden vegetables.
"If I must."
She gives him one last look before she leaves. "Suicidal child."
She is wrong. In fact, she has it quite the wrong way around.
Stepping into that dining hall is far more suicidal than sitting here, clutching the bars of the banisters that are always icy cold no matter how long Tom holds them for.
––
Billy beats up that other boy. The small one, with huge pleading eyes that Tom always feels disgusted when he looks at, as though he's looking into something that's too miserable and begging – something utterly stupid because it's looking to Tom for help. Those eyes are liars, either way, because it's that small boy who first hits Billy.
"Billy hit me!" The boy cries fat, terrible tears. Mrs Cole looks at Billy and slides the fag in her mouth to the other side, those sunken eyes of hers squinting at the two boys, those eyes that Tom swears must've fallen out at least once and been stitched back in.
"He hit me first!" Billy shouts.
Tom already knows what Mrs Cole's going to say. "Billy." she says. "My office." A caning for hitting that other boy.
"BUT HE HIT ME FIRST, CONNER REALLY, REALLY, DID!"
Another caning for lying.
Conner gives a weak, wobbly smile, one that looks like it's fraying around the edges, when Billy is dragged off to The Office, and his hands curl and uncurl as his huge pleading eyes dare to crinkle in the grin.
Then he turns around and spots Tom.
"Y-You!" His voice trembles. "You didn't see a-anything! And, and, Mrs Cole'll never believe you!"
Tom just watches. The boy has sloppy brown hair that clings to his skin, and his mouth is a wobbly one that flaps and flails.
"You– Stop staring!" the child shouts. "You're always just staring!"
What's wrong with watching? No one can tell Tom off for watching.
The boy runs, almost tripping on his feet as he backs away, throwing fearful looks at Tom in the shadows. The darkness shrouds him, and it whispers to him, says, look at them, too scared of being known, too scared of the unknown.
I know. Tom whispers back to it. He does know, all too well.
––
He was not always a statue with a heart of stone and soul of shadow.
The tremors grip him from head to toe, and he can't stop shaking. Can't. They grab him and rattle him and the other children are all laughing, all laughing, all laughing and laughing and laughing. "Thief!"
"Stop!" he screams. Somewhere glass shatters. But they don't.
"Thief!" The fire tears apart his books, his blankets, his pillow, his overcoat and they strip him of his shirt and his socks, burn, burn, burn them all. "Thief!" He tries to cover his ears, and they shout louder.
"You want sound, Tommy?" They rip his hands away. All their claws, scrabbling against his skin.
They smash their hands across his ears and later Martha takes him to her home because she's afraid they might've permanently damaged his hearing and the orphanage doesn't have any kit to treat him with.
Later, Mrs Cole moves her fag from one side of the mouth to another and scrutinises them all with her sunken eyes, while Tom sits there and knows. Knows she won't give out the punishment they deserve.
So he will.
––
Tom watches Martha with incredulity. "You can't believe that."
She puts the fairy tale away, its dull red cover starting to break away at the edges, its ink fading and smearing. "Everyone has hope, Tom."
"No." he says, a mile away.
"Even you must hope one day your mum and dad will come." He looks up at her and her sparkling eyes. She is like one of those milkmaids in those made-up stories, with smooth un-dirtied hands, who chatters about dresses and does her blonde hair up in a delicate braid, and skips down the path every morning while humming to the sunny sky.
"No." Tom lies. "I don't."
––
They burn witches.
They burn wizards, too.
––
Rain always makes the world smaller, makes the streets more dreary, brings the heart and the truth out of the city, cuts it all open and lays it out for any watching eye to see, as long as they spare the time to stop and look.
Tom is alone with the rain. Up in a tree, droplets splattering around him and a chill seeping into his bone.
No one does call him back inside, no one ever will, but even if they had, he wouldn't've come down.
––
"Prove it!"
He doesn't trust people. (He never can.) He expects his orders to be followed. (Because everybody always does. Because his magic is just like that.)
"I knew I was special."
He is not humble. (Humbleness never gets anyone anywhere. He has no need to be humble. Safer to claim the work as your own.)
The wardrobe bursts into flames.
He is a thief. (What it would've been like to starve.)
A petty thief. (Tom always craves revenge after they steal his– his–)
Dumbledore brings out a sack of coin.
He is greedy. (He needs coin for his next pair of socks so he wouldn't lose his toes. Or for a new blanket because they'd stolen the old one.)
He is heartless.
Because he'd carved it out of his chest, all on his own.
––
At Hogwarts, Tom is high and lofty, much higher than everyone else, and they can only squint at the sky and see what they think is a burning, blazing, star.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle," they whisper in awe, heads still craned upwards, "oh, how great is he!"
––
He is a bit of a ghost. No one sees him partaking in any sort of mundane task. No one sees him change. No one sees him in the showers. No one sees him in that mysterious room, practising how to walk and talk and gesture with all grace of an aristocrat.
––
"You spurned me." Tom Riddle Jr. snarls. Never has his composure been so shattered and broken, hurled to the ground and splintered.
"Spurned you?" his father says. "Spurned a bastard child?" Tom's hands are shaking with the effort not to hurt. He needs to know. He needs to know. If the children ever wondered where Tom's heartlessness came from, it must've been from this one, despicable man. "Spare me your theatrics. If I went accepting every child a mad woman claimed was mine–"
Tom strikes him across the face. Feels the satisfying crunch. Sees blood. This man was the one who sentenced Tom to death, left him for the crows.
"You spurned me." he grits, magic building in his veins in a slow, deadly coil. "And I will see that you pay."
––
"You've never taken anyone to bed." Nott says.
"I haven't." Tom agrees.
"The witches all too poor for your taste?" The other man laughs, all good humor. "The wizards?"
But Tom does not smile.
––
The prefect baths tempt Tom. One night when he stretches under the huge golden taps, his skin all bared and slick with the streams of bubbles and water-coated sheens, the door opens with a distinct click.
He whirls around just to see the shock that shatters across the other prefect's face.
Then, wandlessly, growls obliviate.
––
When he grows a new body, it's like starting new.
He almost misses his dark hair, darker eyes, but he's not Tom anymore.
––
Harry sees Tom in the pensieve and his heart breaks.
––
"Fancy seeing you here," Harry says, tiredly. The station around them shakes when a train rushes by. "I'm so tired." he continues. "I was so tired. Tired enough to die."
"Several things drive a person to live." says the man sitting beside him. He's tall, skin pale, his brown hair sloppy and clinging to his skin. "Strong emotions. Fear and loyalty, love and loathing."
"I didn't think I'd ever hear you say that."
"Say what?"
"The word 'love.'"
If Harry didn't know better, he'd almost say that the man beside him looked amused.
"So you know who I am?"
"No," Harry says. "I can just sort of– sense it, you know? I know you're someone I know, someone who wouldn't say 'love.' But I really know anything about this place, or why I'm here." Those were far too many 'know's.
The man beside him definitely looks amused, now.
"That's because you're dead."
"What?!"
"And, it appears, so am I." the man says, slightly wryly. "The world's certainly clearer, here in your head." Here, in this clean, clean, place.
Another train rushes by and Harry can feel his teeth rattle.
"So– uh– are you going to tell me who you are?"
"I think you know." the man says. "Even though I'm not wearing my real face, right now."
Harry frowns. He looks at his hands as if they have answers, then looks up again, mouth open to say that he doesn't know.
But that's not a man sitting next to him anymore.
"Harry," and there he is, a young boy with brown hair and dark eyes, skin like porcelain. Harry feels his heart clench. He still recognises those little boots, that brown coat, from a pensieve long ago. But the boy is different now that he isn't in the orphanage. He doesn't look accusing, and his eyes aren't narrowed in anger or suspicion, but they are wide and earnest as if gazing up at the sky. "Harry. I don't want to die."
Harry's throat closes up. His fingers dig into his palm.
"Harry!"
An infant in his cot, his mother crying out. She doesn't want her son to die.
His anger flares faster than he ever thought possible. "Fuck you." he snarls, hand snapping out in a blur, striking the little boy in the face. He sees blood, but that's not a boy he's hitting. That's a murderer.
Tom wipes at his mouth, an out-of-place smirk curling on that young face. "Yes, hit me for fearing death."
Harry can't think. His head's roaring too loud. "You– You–"
Then it is the man, again. "Am I going to hear your tirade about remorse, now? Let me say this first: I will not come down! For the skies are endless here, and I do not want to fall."
Tom knows the exact moment when it clicks and Harry understands. He sees rage spark in those green eyes, then watches it all fade into despair. "It's cold and lonely." Harry says, darkly.
"But it is beautiful, here, where the galaxy ends and the universe begins." Tom says, and Harry closes his eyes. "Harry," and there he is again, the little boy with his terrible earnest eyes, "please, Harry. I don't want to die."
"You're insane," Harry says through gritted teeth, "if you think you're achieving something." He takes a deep breath to let the anger out, to continue. "It's better here." he begins, quietly. "With all the other people, the cities you can build, the lakes and the rivers…"
"There are no other people for me." the boy says.
"You– no!" Harry is done. "I have had enough of whatever you're trying to play here! You trick me into hitting you, trick me into playing along with your sick sympathy–"
"Of course I tricked you." Tom's eyes glitter with sudden fervour, and he's a man again, his voice dripping with disgust. "That's all I do! Trickery and thievery, greed and fear. Haven't you heard? Murderer since birth, pathological liar, freak and thief," he spits his sins, "greedy, heartless, manipulative, egotistical– did you not witness them all in the pensieve yourself?
Harry closes his eyes; takes deep breaths. Pauses.
Finally, "no."
Tom's eyes darken. "No?"
"No." Harry repeats, more firmly, this time. "No, that's not all you do."
"Are you a liar or a fool?" Tom yells, suddenly enraged. "Have you not seen? I am every sin, and I have always been!"
"No."
Tom lunges at him, yell half-torn from his throat, and he stops a breath away from Harry. "Don't lie to me."
"I'm not lying." Harry says, lifting his chin. "No one is born heartless."
Tom's expression is hollow. "You don't believe that."
Their eyes meet. Tom's dark flickers and then he shrinks away, face haunted. "You've lived with me for seventeen years now." Harry says. "You know. You know that I never– never–"
"Never what?" Tom has stormy eyes.
"Anyone can kill you now." Harry says, closing his eyes. "It doesn't have to be me."
I can't do it.
He doesn't look at Tom's face.
"You fool. Why? For cowardice?"
Harry actually laughs. "No." He is dangerously close to hysterical tears. "No, no, no. Not that."
"Can't you see?" Tom growls. "What I am?"
Why wouldn't anyone want to kill me?
"I can. I know who you are better than you do."
"An empty claim. The whole world has seen. It's carved into my flesh, into my bone." Harry reaches out; Tom flinches.
"Is it?"
Tom looks away at the rest of the station.
Another train races by and Harry's head turns to follow. "You know one of us has to stay, right."
"I was wondering when you'd leave."
"That's not what's going to happen." Tom raises his head slowly, disbelieving.
He looked up just in time.
When Harry slides the knife into Tom's chest, he thinks it must be the most painful thing he's ever done.
––
"You can still save yourself." Harry says. His hands shake around his wand.
"You are no one to tell me to feel… 'remorse.'" Voldemort spits the words, like acid in his throat.
Then it happens.
Avada Kedavra!
The crowd is stunned into muteness, their breaths suspended, too fearful to be freed, their eyes wide and scared. There are Ron and Ginny who are still with fraught, and there are the Malfoys trembling in their boots, and there are the countless, countless others, but their eyes are held by Harry – Harry who has them all pointed like a spear towards the sun: hurtling ever forwards, an arrow slicing free through the air.
"Harry Potter!" The first shout breaks through just as dawn shatters the sky. "The Boy Who Lived!"
He can still taste the ash of expelliarmus on his tongue.
He can still see the image of Tom, knife buried in his heart.
But he doesn't know if that ache is for the lost half of his soul or for Tom. Doesn't know if he just killed the one man he loved all his life, forever.
He holds out his hand, and out from the crowd comes glittering, sailing, the Sword of Gryffindor.
He drives it through Voldemort's chest.
The whole of Hogwarts must hear him howl. Its foundations must shake as he crumples to his knees and screams his heart to shreds.
––
When Harry sees Tom again, standing alone in a dark room dipping his head a cauldron, the first thing Tom says is,
"You are insane."
And Harry laughs. His shoulders shake and tremble, and his laughs become hiccups and soon enough, he's crying. Tom, body still bare, climbs out of the cauldron over to him and takes his face in his eyes, to look.
"I can see the sun through your eyes." he says. "With how empty your head is."
"You're still alive," Harry manages. "You really are."
Tom's eyes flicker away. "And half your soul is not."
Harry shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. I made you a new body, too. It should be nearly the same as–"
Tom's hands have gone immediately to his back and Harry can see the startlement in his eyes. "You knew."
I saw it once, in the pensieve, and that was when I knew I was in love with you.
"Why?" Tom asks, eyes dark. Harry looks at him, all his pale skin, his sloping shoulders, his elegant hands. His quiet, roiling hate.
"I don't think you'll understand." Harry says gently.
"There are clothes in the next room, a Muggle ID and Wizarding ID, and everything you'll need."
Tom looks at him, eyes glittering with silent thanks, still looking like he wants to speak,
but then he just inclines his head, and leaves.
––
Sometimes Ron and Hermione notice Harry's quiet. He tells them, "I lost something in the war."
"We all did, mate." Ron says. His twin brothers. His twin brother.
One night after too many drinks, he says, "It was my soul. Half of it. I gave it away so someone else could keep theirs."
The married couple exchange glances, but they never ask him who.
––
They see each other again a few years later.
"I wouldn't do anything without finding the answer." Tom says, and Harry's tripped over in the doorway because the last thing he expected to see was Tom in his apartment. "Wouldn't launch a new political campaign. Wouldn't go splitting what's left of my soul.
"But the answer was here all the time, wasn't it?" Tom asks, striding over to him and taking his chin in a hand, tipping his head back to look up at the man he'd created. "I should've known Dumbledore's greatest irony: that the Boy Who Lived both defeated Voldemort and couldn't defeat him for the same reason."
Harry's eyes are wide with fear.
Tom straightens, then turns away. "I hope you make decent tea." he says, calmly. Harry scrambles to his feet, hurrying after Tom, his heart still beat-beating in his chest in a flutter of anxiety.
"Thank you," he says, "for coming back down."
Tom's stops, turns, dark eyes boring into his. "I didn't realise there would still be people waiting for me on the ground."
Harry's mouth works silently, his emotions threatening to overflow, but then Tom raises an eyebrow and so he shuts his mouth.
When he flails around in the kitchen, knocking pots and pans and spilling tea leaves out of sheer nervousness, fumbling in disbelief, he swears he even sees Tom start to smile.
Fin.
a/n hey so im super stressed and busy and this little oneshot was to help get that stress of my chest for a little bit. sorry that i haven't updated my actual fic but life is hounding me rn
sorry