Disclaimer: If you know it, I do not own it.

A/N: The song Atlanta is "writing" is "Shattered" by Trading Yesterday. The line Tom reads is from that song.

13 July 2013 - Edited and reloaded

Beyond Believing

It took almost two hours for a Healer to see the them.

It was pestiferous to no end. Tom wanted to discuss how Black had exploded out of his diary he'd been writing in, but the steadily crowding waiting room was not the place for such a disquisition.

Black sang for almost a half hour before she realized she was singing out loud. She fell silent until one of the other people in the waiting room struck up a conversation about her song. Getting over her embarrassment at lulling the entire room into a stupor (which Tom noted she understood how it had happened), the child began talking to the person, who transfigured something into a guitar. The man handed it to her and began to instruct her on to play it. The child caught on quickly, stating she had a few basic lessons from someone called Mr. Remus.

The man left after another half hour, leaving Black with her new toy. She began to pick out a song, the one she'd been singing before. She was careful not to sing Tom noted.

After an hour, she began to play a melody she didn't seem to know. She sang out notes, no words, till she'd created a song. It seemed without words, her singing magic had no power over the room, other than a few people who were clearly enjoying it. The melody she picked out, though, made Tom break out in goose pimples.

Without needing to ask, Tom handed her the Daily Prophet and she pulled what looked like an odd Muggle contraption from behind her ear. She jotted down the notes and began writing words. Tom read what she was writing, but couldn't make sense of any of it. The only line she seemed to like was, "All is lost, hope remains and this war's not over." Everything else was crossed out. As time went on, she began to rearrange the notes, and began frowning.

Tom refrained from asking her if she often wrote music while sitting around with a broken nose. He was happy she wasn't bothering him.

"Calliope Riddle?"

Tom grabbed Black by the wrist and dragged her off. He heard her make an annoyed noise and the guitar protested by making an odd clanging noise as he took her over to the Medi-Witch who was waiting for them.

"This is your sister?" the Medi-Witch asked.

Tom nodded.

"Here, you dropped this," someone said.

"Thank you!" Black said from behind Tom before he shoved her in front of the Medi-Witch. He heard the guitar string clang unattractively as Black gripped the neck of the guitar.

"She broke her nose," Tom announced.

"I fell down the stairs," Black informed the lady.

Tom, who hadn't actually looked at Black in almost three hours, was alarmed to find Black sported two rather painful looking black eyes.

"Honest. I fell down the stairs and smashed my nose into a book," Black went on. Tom clenched his jaw. "My brother isn't seventeen yet, so we didn't want to chance healing it ourselves. It wasn't life or death. We live in a Muggle orphanage."

"Calliope," Tom hissed out of the side of his mouth.

"You live in a Muggle…" the Medi-Witch trailed off, looking between the pair.

Tom knew he didn't look like he belonged in an orphanage. While he sported second hand robes his first few years at Hogowarts, last year, when he'd been made prefect, he'd gotten new robes and new uniform clothing to wear underneath the same quality all Slytherins wore.

Then he grew three inches over the course of the year. Tom wished he'd stop growing already. At least he'd thought to buy trousers that had at least five inches to let out.

Black, though, might have the pureblood behavior and voice down, but she looked like a disaster. Even in the rather nice second hand jacket Tom had procured.

"Our parents were killed," Black announced, sticking out her bottom lip and pulling the oversized jacket closer to herself. "No one knew what to do with us."

"Calliope," Tom scolded. "Hush. Please, heal her nose."

Tom knew his tone was snappy, but he'd been sitting around with this girl for almost three hours and still had no clue why, what, or how. And he had to know. Now.

"Follow me," the witch said, eyeing Tom for a moment. He sighed, holding back a groan.

They were lead into a small room, all white and sterile. The woman had Black sit down on a table and studied her nose for a few minutes, then tapped it with her wand. Black let out a yelp and her nose snapped back in place. The pair prattled for a long time till Black was fed a few potions and was lathered with bruise ointment around her eyes to reduce the swelling. Just as the Medi-Witch was finished, a knock sounded on the door and opened shortly to reveal none other than Albus Dumbledore, his horrid magenta robes making Tom wish he was blind.

"Good evening, Mr. Riddle," Dumbledore greeted, smiling and twinkling. He cast a glance at Black, who beamed back at him. Tom refrained from rolling his eyes, stomping his foot and shooting out a hex.

"Good evening, Professor. I do not think you have had the pleasure of meeting my little sister, Calliope," Tom offered, indicating to Black with a sweep of his hand. "She will be starting Hogwarts this fall."

"I will," Black agreed, turning her attention from Tom to Dumbledore. She stuck out her hand, then realized what she was doing. She hopped off the table and gave Dumbledore a small curtsy. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Dumbledore."

"And I you," Dumbledore greeted, bowing a bit. When he righted, he locked eyes with Black. Tom watched the man carefully as he studied Black for a moment before asking, "So, what happened to land you in hospital?"

"I fell down some stairs. I tripped on the hem of my robes, fell head over feet and landed face first into a book. Splat!" Black added a few hand motions to illustrate her story. "There was blood all over the place. Then, when I thought things couldn't get any worst, I fell again, right into T.M."

Dumbledore hummed, looking at Tom. Tom put a hand on Black's shoulder and looked at Dumbledore, not meeting his eyes. He kept his gaze just above Dumbledore's shoulder.

"She is tragically clumsy," Tom offered.

"I am not!" Black snapped.

"I'm going to go grab some vials for you to take home with you," the witch said, going out the door and closing it behind her.

Dumbledore waved his wand and his cheery, old grandfather persona fell. He looked between Black and Tom for a moment. Tom tightened his grip on Black's shoulder. For some reason this caused her to take a step closer to him.

"What happened for real?"

"Everything I told you, only I left the part out where I flew out of this notebook and rammed into T.M. With enough force to break my nose some more. And when this happened, I traveled some fifty years into the past."

Dumbledore gave an almost imperceptible jolt. "Repeat that."

"I traveled fifty years into the past."

"From a notebook?"

"Yup. It was kind of…oozy," she offered, biting her lip. "The one I had was oozy. The one here isn't oozying anything. It's totally Muggle."

"Oozing what?"

"Dark magic," she replied. "I can feel and see it."

"Magical gift," Dumbledore murmered as if it was nothing more than being able to breathe.

Tom would kill to be able to see magic. He could feel it. It felt tangible in his hands, it caressed his skin and crackled all over him. But, he never saw it. It explained why Black was always looking at something around Tom rather than at Tom when his magic swelled.

"So, this diary was the exact same one that Mr. Riddle is in possession of?"

Black nodded slowly. "Only his had writing in it. The one I had was blank. Except for the name T.M. Riddle in the front. It also ate ink. Since his isn't eating ink, I would expect his is normal."

Dumbledore extended his head towards her. "Interesting. I've not come across time travel in this manner."

Black bit her bottom lip, frown appearing.

"I'm afraid you are stuck here till we figure out how Mr. Riddle's diary brought you here," Dumbledore said, stabbing Tom with a look he couldn't read.

"I'm not giving you my diary," Tom said. "It's a Muggle book. I write in it. With a fountain pen."

Tom put on an innocent, yet outraged face.

"And yet, Miss Riddle burst out of your diary," Dumbledore said.

Tom suddenly realized they had failed to tell Dumbledore one key thing: Black wasn't actually his sister or any sort of relation. It almost made sense not to tell Dumbledore, as he must know due to the fact Black kept referring to Tom as T.M. It was better than Tom. He ought to insist people call him T.M.

Dumbledore was pinning Tom with a look he did not like. Rethinking what Dumbledore had said, Tom knew there was a much deeper meaning behind the words. Obviously, at some point, Tom planned to do something to the diary that was sinister and nefarious that would dump the idiot child next to him in his lap.

Whatever he had done, he sure was not going to do it now. No time traveling spells.

Why would he even put a time travel spell on the diary in the first place? Tom had no interest in time travel. Or bringing people back from the future. While he was interested to know what became of him, he knew enough about the theory of time travel to know it was not something to be messed with. Whatever future Black knew was in jeopardy now that she was here in the past.

"Maybe someone stole it?" Black blurted out. "The name was rather smudged. And it was blank. It could have been magically wiped, made into whatever it was and then left—"

Black stopped talking rather abruptly, slowly turning to look at Tom. Her oddly colored eyes were wide, her eyeballs almost bulging out of the sockets as she looked at Tom as if seeing him for the first time.

"No," she breathed. "That's not possible."

"Anything is possible in the future, Miss Riddle," Dumbledore said serenely. "What is it you're worried about?"

She shook her head, slowly inching away from Tom. He frowned and doubled his grip on his shoulder. Having been abnormally nice (so nice his skin was crawling) to her since she'd rudely burst out of his diary, there was absolutely no reason for her to be afraid. He felt her magic, which had been floating rather absently around her, draw within her tightly.

She was looking at him like—

Oh.

Tom had to stop himself from grinning mantically. He bottled up his sense of power, sense of victory.

He was a feared Dark Lord in the future. Lord Voldemort succeeded.

He itched to question her on what she knew of Lord Voldemort, but refrained. He did not want to put into peril what she knew to be the future by figuring out what became of him in the present.

Black trained her features back to her pureblood mask and turned to Dumbledore. She glanced up at Tom once more out of the corner of her eyes before setting her mouth in a determined expression.

"The future can be rewritten," she announced.

No. He dug his fingernails into her shoulder. She winced imperceptibly. Dumbledore quirked an eyebrow. Tom loosened his grip.

"Time is fluid. Certain points in time are fixed, like major events," the girl went on. She frowned, getting a peculiar expression. "I think Draco's a time traveller. He seems way too old. And he has this haunted look in his eyes. Harry, whose life sucks in general, doesn't even have that."

Black suddenly glared up at Tom, as if it were his fault Harry's life was such a disaster. Dumbledore watched with an amused expression.

"I do not know much about time, other than it's confusing. However, time is making fools out of us, as I am sure your nurse would much enjoy to give you your potions and send us on our way."

"Us?" Tom asked.

"Certainly. You've discovered your long lost half sister— or whatever her actual relation to you happens to be— and now she's known to the Ministry of Magic. I'm sure her name will appear on a list of students to be accepted this fall. I believe it best if you both come to Hogwarts for the remaining holiday."

Tom balled his free hand into a tight fist. He was supposed to be a natural genius, how did he end up in this disaster? He had plans for this summer. Important Voldemort related plans.

Wait. If he were at Hogwarts, he'd be able to do magic. He'd be able to charm the diary without the fear of students finding him.

Black looked at Tom questionably.

"So, what's the story? We share the same Dad? Different Mum?"

"Yes."

He was stuck with the child. He studied her for a moment. Her magic was still tightly wrapped up within her. Dumbledore's radiated off him, the lightness of it causing Tom's to crackle across his skin in protest.

"Where is your mother?" Dumbledore asked. "Best work out that detail, as Mr. Riddle's mother is deceased."

Black was quiet for a moment while Tom studied Dumbledore. He would keep an annoying eye on him once they were back at Hogwarts. But, the child might serve as a distraction, as he had a feeling she was highly splentic and full of energy.

"She was killed while we were in France," Black announced. She got an excited look a bout her and shouted, "Isla Black was disowned for marring a Muggleborn named Bob Hitchens!"

Dumbledore looked rather surprised Black knew this information, as he did not know she was a Black by birth, thus would know the Black family tree.

"She had children, they were wizards and witches and hence my Black like looks."

A frown appeared between Dumbledore's eyebrows. Tom sent out a pulse of magic towards Black to get her attention instead of further gripping her bony shoulder. She jumped a little, turning to look at Tom. He smiled sweetly at her.

"That's a good story, as I guess I can see you do have a little Black in you," he offered, giving her a pointed look. He dropped his hand from her shoulder. "How did you end up with the Riddle side?"

"Mum, a one Andromeda Hitchens, had a tryst with a Riddle, and was landed with me, and exiled herself to France when he rejected her upon finding out she was a witch."

That story sounded too close to home. Tom glanced at Dumbledore, who nodded.

"We've lived with a bunch of ex-pats in France, hence the accent, but due to the war with the Germans and Grindlewald, I've wound up here after Mum died. I managed to escape due to a burst of accidentally magic that caused me to Apparate to T.M.!"

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, glancing over at Tom. Tom looked at Dumbledore's shoulder challengingly.

"That is a clever story. I do now notice the rather strong Black family traits. I am sure our many Black students will notice, so bravo for working them in. It would be best if you kept your real origins to yourself."

Black nodded.

"Time is very tricky thing, Miss Riddle," Dumbledore said, looking carefully at Black.

"Time and fish," Black announced.

Dumbledore chuckled. He looked between Tom and Black for a few more moments, deciding to leave whatever was bothering him for later.

"Well, I think we'll let the nurse back in and allow her to give you your potions," Dumbledore began, looking back at Black. "Then we can head to Hogwarts."

Black slid back up on the bed and said, "Sounds peachy to me. T.M.?"

She smiled sweetly at him. He gave her a smirk and turned to Dumbledore.

"That would be fine," Tom cooly agreed, keeping his face blank. "Will I be allowed to gather my belongings?"

"Of course. We will stop by the orphanage. I will tell them you will be heading to school early. I take it they did not notice Miss Riddle?"

Tom nodded.

"All right. Are you ready, Miss Riddle?"

"This will be so totally awesome!" Black answered as Dumbledore opened the door to reveal the nurse. "Hogwarts without any students!"

Tom did not like the look in Black's eye in the least.