May '93
In an underground cavern littered with bones, a teenage boy paced in lazy circles around a dying man. It was interesting, the boy mused, that his foot still passed through the bones with nary so much as a twitch to show for it, and yet the man's wand felt solid in his hand as he twirled it idly. As the man on the ground began to convulse, the boy leaned over and grinned cheerfully, "There there Professor, It'll all be over soon. You should be happy; for once in your miserable existence you'll have accomplished something worthwhile." With a final shuddering breath, Professor Lockhart ceased to be. Tom Riddle, flesh and blood once more, began donning the student robes he'd stolen while possessing Lockhart's body. Not even the unfortunate Hufflepuff colors on the robes, the only set he'd been able to find on short notice before fleeing to the Salazar's secret chamber for his rebirth, could put a damper on his mood today. He was free of that wretched diary after five decades of nothing but darkness and dreamlike snippets of a man slowly losing his grip on reality.
A few moments later Tom was pacing back and forth on the seventh floor. He'd had a few too many close calls with being spotted for his tastes while making his way up from the second floor bathroom, but with most of the students and teachers in the great hal for lunch, he'd needed only to avoid the stragglers and Filch's thrice damned cat. "I need the room of lost things," Tom chanted quietly while pacing, repeating it until on the third repetition the doorway to Hogwarts' lost and found appeared.
Once inside, Tom finally relaxed after willing the door to seal behind him and watching it fade from view. No longer risking discovery by his former professor turned meddlesome headmaster, Tom assessed his surroundings. Little had changed in the 50 odd years since his last visit here it seemed, even fifty years of junk being added to the various piles made little different when the piles themselves were made up of near a millennia's discarded items.
A few quick summoning charms later had a small pile of assorted coins in front of Tom, but Tom was far more distracted by the unusual feeling coming from his magic flowing through him. The smooth flow of magic into his wand was absent, replaced by a feeling not unlike water flowing through a much kinked hose. The coins had arrived, but while some had come flying through the air to land at his feet as he had willed them to do, just as many had rolled slowly along the floor, barely making it to the pile. Muttering profanities about reverting to being a firstie all over again, Tom debated trying to sort through the piles by hand before deciding against it due to time constraints. Scooping up the money he had managed to summon, and nabbing the first serviceable moleskin pouch he saw on the piles, he focused his will on "I need to exit the room near the DADA professor's office" and stepped through the door into an empty hallway.
The professor's office had the name Gilderoy Octavius Lockhart embossed on it in large gold lettering "Really now, don't you think this may have been a tad excessive? And seriously, your password is smile for the cameras?" Even having plucked the password directly from the professor's mind during his brief possession, Tom was still a little surprised when the door swung open. "Good riddance," Tom quickly started shoving everything into Lockhart's luggage, for the first time thankful that his former host's magical skills hadn't been up to snuff. After the summoning charms had pushed him to near exhaustion, Tom was fairly certain he'd have blacked out long before he finished packing if the professor hadn't seen the need to ensure all his important belongings could auto-pack themselves. "Perhaps you've felt the need to make a quick getaway before Lockhart?" Tom mused. Shrinking and pocketing the trunk, Tom risked a quick glamour charm, His world darkened at the edges slightly for a moment and he caught his breath leaning against the fireplace. "I really need to work on that," he shook his head to clear it, "Leaky Cauldron." Tom vanished into the green flames.
June '93
Sitting at a table in Heathrow airport a few weeks later, Tom reviewed his notes about the various things he had missed out on while stuck in the diary. That airplanes were now a common mode of travel would certainly make his life easier, but the sheer volume of changes in everyday life would make blending in as a local nearly impossible. Tom snorted at that thought, recalling the somewhat embarrassing conversation he'd had with the periodicals librarian when he asked to see their newspaper archives only to be shown a room full of film canisters.
His best bet he'd concluded would be to 'migrate' over from somewhere like the States, or Australia, so he could pass off any cultural mistakes as the problems of an immigrant. That the United States had managed to supplant Britain as the world power while he slept both tickled and rankled him. Who was he, Tom mused, to judge something for wanting to remake themselves into a world power? But did it really have to be the colonials?
In the end, his own feelings on the topic had proved moot. The plan he'd hatched during his brief discussions with his youngest brother only gave him so much to work with. The Evans family tree didn't branch much until you went back a number of generations, and the son that had left Britain went to the States, so that was where the plane ticket in Tom's hand listed his destination, an airport called LAX. What it was lax about Tom wasn't entirely sure. The confunded ticket sales lady hadn't been able to explain either once the charm had taken hold, Tom was, he'd admit, a touch disappointed that he'd had to confund her at all, but he had been rather short on the kind of identification papers she'd been insisting on.
As the loudspeakers announced that his flight was starting to board, Tom collected his papers and palmed his wand. One final confundus charm and Tom was on the plane.
"Never again," Tom muttered as he left LAX, "If muggles were meant to fly they'd have been given the ability to use broomsticks." Entirely too many hours spent crammed into a metal tube full of muggles had spoiled Tom's mood. He'd be taking the train from now on, or even better, apparating everywhere once he got a proper handle on his power flow issues. The drunken woman that had sat next to him would never know that only those same power issues had saved her from being blasted with dark green light. Well, that and Tom's rather justified fear of magically inducing a catastrophic system failure mid-flight.
Instead he'd settled for staring out the plane windows and daydreaming about the conversations he'd had with his brother's friends while stuck in the diary. It had all started with one Ginevra Weasley's story about her brothers and a flying car. At the time he hadn't even known that the boy she was describing was one of his brothers. It made sense in a way Tom supposed. He could remember the creation of all his brothers. The first time was indistinct; Tom was still largely incoherent when it was created. He knew there was a ring of some sort involved. But that was all he really remembered. Then there was the diadem, he could recognize that from the replica of the statue of Rowena at Hogwarts. He imagined his elder self finally got the ghost of Rowena's daughter to admit where she hid it. The others he could remember even clearer.
'46
Tom woke from his trance with a start as pain wracked through his being. He'd been dreaming of his other self again. As frustrating as it was being a powerless observer, watching as the now slightly older Tom Riddle graduated and made his way out into the world, it was still preferable to being stuck here in the void. With no body to tire, no day or night to pass, and no ability to interact with the world around him, Tom's only indicator of the passage of time became the slowly aging face seen in mirrors during the dreams. As dreams often do, their details got fuzzy after they concluded, but they seemed to come at moments when his counterpart in the real world felt strong emotions, be it anger or excitement, or... well, now that Tom pondered that it seemed that his other self rarely felt anything more varied than that. Or perhaps, if his other self did ever feel joy or sadness, it didn't reach the levels that induced the dream visions.
Some short time ago, Tom had watched from behind the eyes of his elder self, as he found the ornate goblet in some older Lady's collection of heirlooms. Tom could only assume that the family crest of Helga Hufflepuff he'd seen on the cup had proven legitimate, as he'd just dreamed of the woman's murder and a the completion of the ritual that had given birth to himself as a separate being. Tom wondered idly if this meant he now had a new brother of sorts, another piece of Lord Voldemort's soul torn asunder and trapped the cup. Nothing for it, he supposed, as he had no way to confirm the ritual's success or failure as the pain tore him from the visions. He had vague impression that this had happened before, perhaps during his first years when his mind was less focused, still reeling from the shock of separation from his body and soul.
Tom returned to attempting and failing to break up the monotony of his existence as best he could while awaiting the next snippet of his life. 'Eight million, seven hundred twenty-three thousand, forty-two bottles of beer on the wall... Eight million, seven...
'48
Pain once again coursed through his entire being, though for all that it still felt like his entire being was being rent asunder, it somehow hurt less than the previous times. Another murder, this time of some muggle girl, caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a new brother born of ritual, a locket belonging to Salazar Slytherin now housed a part of Tom Riddle. Tom had watched as his counterpart confirmed the link to their illustrious ancestor, smug in the knowledge that he had been right not once, but twice, while viewing that woman... something Smith maybe? Tom couldn't remember for sure, just that his older self had murdered her for the goblet and locket some time ago. Seven million three hundred and seven bottles of beer on the wall...
'81
Where previously they had hurt less and less, Tom's newest brother scattered his ability to think for days. Tom recalled a woman with red hair staring at his older self, insisting that he kill her and not her son. Tom thought it amusing at the time, like his older self wouldn't just kill them both and be done with it. But he hadn't... not at first, he'd told her to stand aside. Why would he do that? Whatever the reason was, it clearly wasn't important enough, as his older self grew impatient an killed the naive woman mere seconds later when she wouldn't stand aside. Then there was a baby, his older self spoke the killing curse, and the world went white.
June '93
Tom was brought back from his musings to the present by the announcement that the plane would be landing soon. Ginevra's tale of a boy imprisoned in his own house had prompted Tom to spend the next months dredging her mind for information on the boy-who-lived. What he'd found had led him here, but he had much work to do before he could engage in idle fancy.
July '93
Knocking on the door of an apartment in what the Americans called a high rise; Tom plastered a smile on his face. "Good Morning, are you Mr. and Mrs. Evans?" he asked the muggle couple that answered the door, "... Mr. Evans your sister put a child up for adoption a number of years ago? I think I might be your nephew." Tom began weaving the tale he'd spent the past month fabricating records for. Lockhart's singular gift with memory charms and obliviations, and the detailed notes on the same, helped considerably when dealing with muggle bureaucracy.