"I wanted only to look back and say: 'There! There's an existence which couldn't hold me. See! I vanish! No restraint or net of human devising can trap me ever again. I renounce my religion! This glorious instant is mine! I'm free!"
Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
It wasn't that Tom didn't miss Hogwarts, that he didn't miss naïve youth, his own ambitions and dreams, and even the smaller things like the way sunlight would stream through the windows and the smell of old leather from the books in the library. There were days he almost ached for Hogwarts, for its nostalgic memory, and would cling to it as he passed from dreaming into reality.
(His soul, the notebook, would often sketch out the great hall, the library, or the Slytherin common room in painstaking detail, in the ink and blood that had been splattered across its pages every now and then. And Tom would open it, quietly out of sight of any of the others, and would feel such a disquieted longing and sense of trepidation.
Horcruxes had proven far more unnerving than Tom had been led to believe.)
However, he also didn't like deluding himself, and he would admit that there were many things he had not missed about Hogwarts.
For one, he hadn't missed being a minor, being stuck in that blasted muggle orphanage, having to wait every single goddamn year for that seventeenth birthday that would finally bring him true freedom. Even with war, blood, and death everywhere he wouldn't trade his new existence for that old, endless, bitter waiting.
The other thing he hadn't missed, more intrinsic to Hogwarts itself rather than Tom's own age, were the people.
He had tolerated them, at best, when he was inside the walls. He'd tolerated the Blacks, the Malfoys, the Goyles, the Browns, the Potters, the mudbloods, and everyone in between. But it'd been that, it'd been toleration, and even then, that bitter toleration had provided fuel for the dream of Voldemort. Voldemort, that great, looming, tyrant that would devour them all one day, so perhaps it wasn't tolerance at all.
Perhaps that too had simply been him biding his time.
He'd enjoyed killing Malfoy, cutting off his head and placing it on a pike in the middle of a field for the new German authorities to find, he wouldn't deny it. Hadn't, even, when he had offhandedly informed Evans of Malfoy's gruesome fate, and it said something about Evans that he couldn't seem to find it in himself to be surprised at Tom's blunt honesty. He also wouldn't deny that if he did run across any of his old classmates again he'd probably enjoy killing them too. Particularly those that had been in his own house.
Being terrifying was wonderful, he loved every second of it.
He was not loving every second of this.
"Isn't this great? It's almost like old times." Evans was grinning like an idiot, still grinning like an idiot, he'd been this way for a week.
Ever since Minerva McGonagall, Tom's old academic Gryffindor rival, appeared from the Scottish ether, Harry Evans' spirits had never been higher. And, perhaps consequently, Tom couldn't remember having been this aggravated in the past year.
Even starving, covered in blood, sleep deprived, with only Evans and his sycophants for true company, he hadn't felt this… annoyed.
It really was just like old times.
He and Evans were finally alone (and Merlin only knew how little time either of them got to themselves anymore), apparated to the cave by the sea after having planned, rallied, recruited, and done everything in between. True, this was more efficient, more powerful, perhaps even powerful enough to truly take back the country, but Tom couldn't help but miss when it was just him and Evans. Evans the meat shield, Tom the planner, it had worked for them back in those old days.
Now they had to deal with hero worshipping idiots, staring up at Evans like he was Jesus incarnate, and training them, feeding them, directing them, keeping them alive, and it was just so many more logistics than it used to be.
And even Evans, who didn't have to deal with those logistics (having pushed all the issues of numbers, accounting, weaponry, food, transportation, onto Tom) seemed exhausted by it. Evans constantly having to put on this persona of a great warrior and hero, always the first into battle and always the last out no matter his malfunctioning wands or the fact that every German's eyes were on him, hating every bloody moment of it.
Truth was, they were both tired.
Or, at least, they had been until Minerva McGonagall had shown up.
"I wonder who else is alive… I mean, Malfoy… was I guess." Evans' face fell at that, wincing, but then pulled himself out of this momentary depression, "But if McGonagall's alive, I wonder who else is."
Who cared.
Tom gritted his teeth, wishing that he at least had something to work on so that he wouldn't just be sitting here looking like an idiot, but this was about the last thing he really wanted to talk about.
"You know, when the war's over, we really can retake Hogwarts. I mean, I always knew we would but now… It's like I can just see everything and… I'm just so happy to see someone, familiar, I guess. Do you feel that way?"
No, no he did not.
Tom spared Evans a withering glance, saying nothing, and then resumed staring blankly ahead at the wall of the cave. The wall understood Tom's pain.
"What is your problem?"
Tom sighed, or attempted to, he was too tense to truly sigh and instead it was this harsh breathing out through gritted teeth, "I don't have a problem."
"I thought you liked McGonagall, seriously, what is your deal?"
"I have neither deals nor problems." Tom said concisely, at least no deals or problems aside from the usual overwhelming assortment of deals and problems. And now the wonderful Minerva McGonagall, who had been slightly more tolerable than anyone else in Hogwarts, but only slightly.
"You only have deals and problems," Evans replied back with far more venom than he deserved, "It's the reason you're such a mess, so, what's wrong with Minerva?"
That, that was what was wrong with McGonagall. Harry Evans had barely known her, had practically stalked her for no reason, and just her showing up was enough to brighten his day. Whereas Tom, it had taken him setting a town on fire and more for Harry Evans to even talk to him without insults.
"It's hardly cause for celebration," Tom said instead, turning his head to stare at Evans pointedly, "We still have work to do,"
"What's that supposed to…"
Tom cut him off, "We have troops, followers, excellent. We have land, a quarter of the island, wonderful. Tell me, Evans, what precisely are we planning on doing with them?"
"Well, lead them…"
"Into what? I am not a general, Evans," Tom said, motioning to himself, "Neither are you for that matter. Guerilla warfare, oh we are very good at that, but soon we will need to transfer into true warfare. If we do not take a stand, if we keep hiding in the shadows, we will never retake the country."
Tom stood then scoffing, throwing his hands into the air as he paced and talked, "We've lead these men for half a year now, Evans. Half a year after Azkaban, we've fed them, supplied them with shoes, trained them, and what have we gotten from it?"
"We've gotten back Scotland…"
"Half of Scotland, Evans, half! Not Hogwarts either, but small magical villages and garrisons of no true import. And only because we took out the garrisons and all the replacements from England. And only because you and I have somehow maintained the illusion that we can be everywhere at once! We do not have the people to staff them, we do not have an army, and Scotland is by no means all Great Britain. We cannot continue this slow, crawling march, waiting for the guillotine to fall onto our necks, when he does send the army, the elite wizards, to deal with us. It's time to start changing directions,"
Evans stared a moment, then said almost slowly, "Well, isn't that the pot calling the kettle black…"
"That was a year ago, we were starving, alone, and you wanted to raid London by yourself. Now, we've found ourselves leaders of a revolution, Grindelwald has started to pay true attention, all the underlings he's sent our way have been disposed of. We aren't even a pair of overambitious terrorists anymore, Evans. If we do not move, if we do not make a stand, he will eliminate us."
Evans didn't say anything at first, just stared at Tom, and then offered him a small and self-deprecating smile, "… You know, Riddle, every once in a while, I wonder why I'm still here. I mean, my grandfather's probably dead, right? And even if he wasn't I don't think my dad would have the same upbringing so… How am I still here?"
Evans took a breath, "I know, it's not the same thing but… They look up to me so much, we're asked to do so much, and I shouldn't even exist anymore,"
And he did, every once in a while, have a strange aura surrounding him, this shade of something off, like he shouldn't be here and yet he was. They never saw it though, not even Minerva McGonagall, as she'd been embraced by him, had seemed to see it.
But all he could say was, "I'll keep thinking,"
"Merlin, Riddle, why is it so hard to talk with you?"
Riddle, there were now two people left in all the world who would comfortably call him that, and only one of them had earned it.
"Because I'm very busy,"
Tom didn't even look up, merely kept sifting through intelligence reports from all over the country, searching for troop movements, new supply lines, anything and everything in between. There was a period where they had declined, where German wizards had been nicely settled throughout the country, but once again they were on the rise, larger groups of reinforcements were being sent to the forts in Scotland, to take them back from the rebels… And so far, Tom and Evans had beaten them back each time but… But they had not pressed forward since then, even though Grindelwald had not beaten them back, they had yet to press forward.
They'd found themselves in an endless game of sorts, one that Tom wasn't sure how to win, or what winning even truly meant.
Clearly it wasn't winning men, they'd done that, and clearly it wasn't liberating towns. Funny, they kept doing that, and the same towns kept turning back to the Germans, to the aurors and protection and law they provided, and then Tom would have to go back and remind them how terrible of an idea this truly was.
As Evans had once bleakly remarked, all the brave men among them had long since died, there were no lions left in Britain.
Perhaps it wouldn't even be winning London itself or Hogwarts, the crown jewels of magical Britain.
Was it assassination? Was killing Grindelwald the only way? Then what of his right-hand men, they too would have to be eliminated, and perhaps a good chunk of their underlings. With every second that passed their task grew more daunting, those who would stand with them were executed, and those who had betrayed them were given even more reason to stay with Grindelwald.
They weren't winning, they were a pestilence, a known pestilence, a known rebellion, and perhaps on the verge of being a revolution, but they were not winning, they were slowing down inch by inch…
"Was there something you needed?"
McGonagall didn't say anything, just took a seat across from him, then said, "I didn't see you, in Hogwarts I mean,"
Strange, how long had it been since he'd thought on that day? Occasionally it would slip into his thoughts or nightmares but it always seemed… surreal. As if it hadn't truly happened to him, as if, until that day he'd come for Evans in the village, he'd been dreaming.
"I dragged Evans into hiding," Tom said rather bluntly and simply, "We then made our way through Hogsmede then out into Scotland,"
She nodded slowly, carefully, "I thought that might have been it… That's not what happened to me, you know."
He didn't ask what had happened to her, but it seemed she was determined to tell him anyways.
She'd always been like that, more or less, talking to him as if his silence meant her conversation was welcome. Of course, he always thought that it could have been because she had so little thought provoking conversations from anyone else, talking to Tom must have been a breath of fresh air after living with Gryffindors, "I'm pureblood, you know, so they kept all of us alive, the ones whose families they recognized anyways, or at least, those of us who were lucky. Sent us to London for a while, kept us locked up in the Ministry, and sometimes people would disappear if their relatives hadn't cooperated, then… Then they offered us a place back at Hogwarts to finish our year. Only, there weren't very many of us left by that point."
Tom stopped looking at his papers, looked up to stare at her, and at once he realized that he was supposed to be pitying her or at the very least feeling sympathetic. This was her tragic past, the one she had overcome, throwing all that education and safety away to go join the revolution.
And she wanted him to feel sympathetic, how adorable.
He didn't even have to say it, her eyes narrowed, and suddenly she spat, "You know, I just spent three days out with those men and women, and talking to them you would think that you and Evans were gods! And you were always such a smarmy ass, funny, isn't it, how much people don't change?"
Evans had once said the same thing to him, only, Evans had known exactly what it meant to say that.
"McGonagall, did you really argue your way in here for this?"
She paled, stopped, started again, "Look, Riddle, I'm sorry. I just… I didn't think I'd see either of you again. I know I've wanted to talk about it for a while, thought you'd feel the same."
Good lord, her and Evans were a pair.
Tom sighed, abandoned his work mentally, and said, "Listen, McGonagall, I am… I was never as sympathetic or as nice as I appeared in Hogwarts. In a way, this war has been… liberating, for me."
Giving her a thin smile he continued, "If you wish to wax nostalgia with someone, over the glory of Hogwarts and quidditch, then it would be best you talk to Evans. If you can somehow manage to make it past his worshiping mob, that is. Otherwise… There are days when I miss it, but I find I'm not much of a nostalgic person. I don't find it useful,"
Then, with more irritation than he would have liked, Evans and his constant rambling on of the greatness of Hogwarts playing in his head, he turned back to his work and spat out, "Because while you remember the good old days of NEWTs and OWLs and being the Gryffindor chaser or whatever it is you are, I have to sit here, and figure out just what we're going to do next and more what the Germans are going to do next. So, if you don't mind, I'm a little busy."
Minerva frowned, crossed her arms, surveying him, then said, "I heard you're charge of that, intelligence, I mean. I always thought it would be one or the aurors, since there are a few of them here now."
Yes, well, they hadn't exactly been functioning after being released from Azkaban. Some were just now getting their wits back together and there were a good portion who were still only useful as cannon fodder (strange, wasn't it, how dementors removed one's ability to think critically yet not the battle instinct muscle memory).
And the ones from the villages, well, Harry might have fared well enough (perhaps more prone to illness than he had been before, perhaps dangerously anemic at times but still alive), but many had died within the first days of their rescue and other the first weeks, the ones left would likely never be what they once were.
Which left the schoolboys, those a few years older and a few years younger than Tom, smiling young witches and wizards, halfblooded and the occasional idealistic pureblood and lucky mudblood, who all looked at Tom with such eagerness as they asked what precisely he wanted them to do now when all he wanted was for them to go back to where they came from.
At any rate, Tom had not been eager to hand over the reins, and those who were more with it than others hadn't been all that eager to take it, despite Tom's age. They had just… stepped in line and followed these two dark haired Hogwarts dropouts, one without even a permanent or functional wand in his arsenal.
"They're not, I'm afraid it's just me,"
Minerva nodded, still didn't leave, just kept sitting there looking at him and then, "It suits you, you know, more than being prefect did."
"I know."
And wasn't that ironic? Because he didn't know what the Tom back then, the Tom before Evans and the chamber and anything, would make of the Tom today. Tom didn't think he would have displeased, annoyed with Evan's presence, certainly and perhaps a bit insulted by it but… But there was power here, power and recognition for all that he was, and although he was not an emperor certainly it wouldn't have been displeasing.
Perhaps some of this showed on his face, or perhaps Minerva McGonagall finally got bored, but either way she offered him a curt nod, and said, "Right, well, I should probably leave then."
And she did, promptly without another word, and Tom almost rolled his eyes and returned back to his work, diving deep into the realm of intelligence and only sparing the single thought of, "Thank God she's gone", as he worked.
Unfortunately, she made a habit of coming back nearly every day, and nothing he did seemed to be able to drive her out.
"Merlin, Evans is something else. Did you know he could fight like that, during school I mean? I never saw any of his duels, really, didn't pay much attention to him at all. You know, Slytherin and… And I am sorry about that, in retrospect, because we were all Hogwarts students at the end of things."
Tom offered a vague, hm, not remarking that he was personally acquainted with how good of a duelist Evans had been, before his wand had been stolen and either given to a German or else burned.
And even then, Evans had found ways to make up for it, perhaps becoming even more terrifying than he had ever been back then.
And as for all being Hogwarts students, well, perhaps there was some point in that, but Tom remembered Hogwarts very clearly at times and that wasn't how he remembered it going. The divide between Gryffindor and Slytherin had both been vast and insurmountable. And that wasn't even getting into the divide between mudbloods and purebloods. Hogwarts had made it a point to be divisive.
It was the war that made them all equal.
She then went on to talk about Evans this and Evans that and did you know about this Tom? To which Tom gave short answers as well as the continual plea that she please find something else to do with her time because unlike some people Tom had actual work to do.
Of course, after she left and he once again breathed a sigh of exasperated relief, she returned by the next day, "He's even worse than you are! At least you just ignore me as much as you do everyone else. Him, he tries talking to me, talks about Hogwarts and everything, and then he'll just shut down and not talk about anything at all."
"Well, Evans is prone to emotional whiplash," Tom had responded blithely, not that this had cut off the ensuing rant.
"It's like, it's like he can't make up his mind!" Minerva shouted.
"He usually can't," Tom concurred, thinking back to his own interactions with Evans, "It seems to be chronic."
But she continued, "Does he want to be friends or not?! Can't he just, can't he just make up his mind already?"
And it seemed, as she continued, and she continued to come in, that somehow despite all reason and rationality in the universe, Minerva McGonagall had decided, completely on her own, that she and Tom were friends. More, that Tom not only had time for but also appreciated her constant rants about the ineffability of Harry Evans and how she just didn't understand him at all.
Even hexing her, throwing her out of the tent and gluing her to a nearby tree, to be gawked at and laughed at by older men (some of whom had been in the same if not worse situations themselves, because Tom was not an easy task master or a patient one), didn't seem to deter her in the slightest.
And he had no idea what to do about it.
But, he thought to himself going over reports, at the very least this was a problem that was unlikely to get him killed.
The beginning of endings was often anticlimactic, or perhaps Tom was simply a romantic, and nothing ever lived up to his expectations.
"Evans, sir, there's someone here to see you, says he knows you from school, says he has important information on the enemy,"
It was one of the younger rebel's they'd picked up who said this, only perhaps a few years older than Harry and Tom, likely fresh out of Hogwarts when the Germans had breached the school, but somehow seemed younger if only for the way he looked at Evans, his eyes burning like stars and that near worshipful expression on his face.
That always unnerved Tom.
Or perhaps it was because he looked at Tom with the same expression, knowing exactly what Tom did to enemy soldiers they captured (because you couldn't trust these wasted men and idealistic boys to do it right for you), and knowing exactly how ruthless Tom portrayed himself to be.
They were in one of the half-destroyed villages, one they'd taken early, almost entirely devoid of civilians now. They had fled months ago, pushed out into the German occupied villages for some sense of stability, leaving only those willing to burn their own country to the ground for freedom, behind.
Tom and Evans were expected to haunt this place at least once a day, to devise plans, supply runs, information gathering, anything and everything necessary for the next push north. But more than that, simply to be seen, to reassure both their men and their enemies that Evans and Tom were very much on the front lines and on the lookout for any kind of ambush.
"Really?" Evans asked, and to his credit his eyes did narrow and he frowned as he took this information in, "What's his name?"
"Says it's Earnest Smith, sir, was in Hufflepuff."
Evans spared Tom a glance which Tom silently returned with a small if unenthusiastic nod, that yes, Smith had indeed been a Hufflepuff in their year and Evans probably should have been expected to know him.
Tom, who had made it his business to know all their classmates, certainly knew of him. Vaguely intelligent, pureblooded, family vaguely well off, and far too conceited for the relatively small amount of wealth in his vault. The type who screamed Slytherin but who had made it a strange type of pride to be thrown into Hufflepuff just as his fathers before him had been for generations now.
Certainly, not a person Tom would have seen risking his own neck for a rebellion.
"Well, show him in then, let's see what he has to say," Evans said, and as soon as the boy left the rather rundown building Tom and Evans had commandeered as their headquarters in this particular village Evans turned to him and said, "Seems like everyone from Hogwarts is starting to crop back up."
"Yes, like weeds," Tom responded, because really, once was happenstance, twice coincidence, but three times…
"Are you still going on about that?"
"You may see old friends and familiar faces, Evans, but just because we knew these people back in the glory days does not mean that we can…"
Tom cut himself off as the boy entered, and indeed, whoever it was at least wore the face of Earnest Smith. Earnest, despite his name, did not have a particularly earnest face. He never had, even back then, but now it was worn and tired and thinner just as all their faces were.
"So, it is true, Evans and Riddle, leading the rebellion underneath the Germans noses," Smith said, with a smile that also failed entirely to be earnest or even endearing.
"You said you had information for us Smith?" Tom said, entirely too willing to cut the Hogwarts reunion short before it could even truly get started.
"Merlin, you've gotten impatient Riddle."
"War does not favor the patient, Smith, or the earnest," Tom replied eagerly back, "And intelligence is only as good as it is timely, so you'd best be getting to your point."
"It's not that kind of intelligence… It's… connections. I haven't spent the last year idle, you know, I've been behind enemy lines, making contacts in all the right places…"
"Have you?" Tom asked with a raised eyebrow, because spies in wizarding wars were tricky things, and usually shortly ended up dead or at least, that was what Tom had come to discover. If one were to survive as a double agent they had better be damn good at what they did, and Earnest Smith didn't seem to have that in him.
"You don't believe me? Well, believe this, they're coming here, for this village, Saturday 1200 with thirty men, not the best, not yet, but not inexperienced rookies like they used to throw at you."
"That's awfully convenient," Tom commented, watching as the boy (because this one, despite living in a war, seemed to still be a child compared to Evans or even Tom).
Evans eyes darted to Tom's darkening, knowing full well what Tom was about to say and while not necessarily approving, doing nothing to stop Tom either as he walked over to Earnest, lifted his chin so he was looking directly into the whites of Tom's eyes, "You know, if you're lying, and we all conveniently wind up in the same place at the same time, waiting for this ambush of yours, leaving our other garrisons and villages open, I will have no choice but to gut you."
"I'm not…"
"If," Tom said, "I said if…"
Peering into his eyes and into his mind Tom sifted through details, and it was immediately clear he had some practice in occlumency, which meant that Tom could never be entirely certain of what he found. Sifting through the shields and walking through the traps and barriers he found himself sifting memories and instead feeling for that ringing bell of truth in his words.
And it was there, muted, but he believed what he was saying.
However, it wasn't nearly as clear and unmuddied as Tom would have preferred.
"You, my earnest young friend, are hopelessly convenient," Tom muttered with a frown, but Evans was already moving past him, shaking the boy's hand, yammering on about Smith's contacts and what their identities were (to which Smith said he must protect them at the risk of his own life), and preparing for whatever was coming on Saturday along with whatever he knew about what was coming next.
Evans, always a bit too proactive, fully willing to risk their necks for something that only bared a hint of truth to it.
It always came to Tom to burst that bubble.
"I don't like this," they'd finally left, Smith, the others, leaving Harry writing on the table, organizing and reorganizing who to defend on Saturday, who besides Harry and Tom and what formations to choose and what points the Germans were likely to apparate into outside of their wards.
"You don't like anything," Evans scoffed, almost fondly, but never the less dismissively enough to well and truly irritate Tom.
"He's far too convenient for my liking," Tom continued, "He will stab us in the back at the nearest opportunity, I guarantee it."
"That's not very Hufflepuff of him."
"None of us are truly our houses, Evans, that died with Hogwarts."
Evans lifted his head, sighing, and holding up his hands in defeat, "What do you want? You've been whining about our lack of human intelligence for months. You've wanted this, him, since the beginning. And now we have it, what more could you ask for?"
"Something that I'm certain won't slit our throats in our sleep."
Evans gives him a rather flat and dull look, "You read his mind, you tell me, was he lying?"
"About this, no, but he's a mildly talented occlumens, and I couldn't see everything floating around in his head."
"Everyone has their secrets these days, and anyone who knows what's good for them has some talent in occlumency."
"Except you," Tom can't help but point out, because Evans never has quite gotten a handle on it, even after months of practicing, a full year when he'd been in the 90's even. Sometimes Tom thought Evans was screaming his thoughts at him, not even having to make eye contact for all of Evans' feelings and worries and hopes and dreams to start pounding inside his head.
"Right, except me, but we all know I'm an idiot," he sighed, stared Tom directly in the eye, and said, "Is it so difficult to believe that some people really mean what they say?"
"Completely."
Evans smiles ruefully, as if this was a joke, "Well, then, when he does stab us all in the back, be sure to say, 'I told you so' as we're bleeding out."
Why was it that Evans never took him seriously?
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when left to his own devices, Tom would have truly terrible ideas.
Tom, over the years, really since Evans had arrived, had been forced to acknowledge uncomfortable truths about himself. He had… flaws.
Now, the flaws Evans would point out were not the same that Tom would acknowledge as flaws. Tom had no issue with his own arrogance (which was rather warranted in his opinion), his ruthlessness, his lack of sentimentality and empathy.
But, Tom had a habit of romanticizing things that perhaps didn't deserve to be romanticized. The basilisk had been that, at the heart of things, a desperate and foolish need to prove himself, to claim his birth right beneath Dumbledore's nose.
And sometimes, occasionally, he could be impulsive.
Alone by himself, he pulled the horcrux out of his clothing, never having found a convenient or safe place to store it, and stared dully at the worn and now stained cover. The pages though… They were always pristine, though they had been soaked through by blood bone marrow more than once, no those pages were exactly as they'd been that first night, perfectly blank and inviting.
Except when they weren't… It sketched, not always, but more often than not it sketched out fantastical cities and scenes, sometimes painfully realistic renderings of Hogwarts, of the countryside, and many profiles of Harry Evans (but more than the Evans he knew and had known, but the hypothetical child Evans, the Evans he had once been in 1996 and earlier…)
The book had been brief on horcruxes, Slughorn had been brief on horcruxes, but from what he'd been led to believe… Horcruxes were a memory of you, if that, so while they might be able to recollect, to think beyond this, to emulate humanity so easily… This wasn't supposed to happen.
And normally he tried to put this out of his thoughts, he had much grander things to focus on after all, but Evans had had his moment of stupidity already, and goddamn if Tom would allow himself his own.
So, alone in the wasted Scottish countryside, in a ruined rural village with Evans sleeping fitfully beside him, Tom spared him a final glance (taking in that exhausted face, even in sleep, and all its painfully familiar features) and using one of the muggle pens he'd conjured for himself (quill and ink having proved tedious in a war even if war had turned Tom almost painfully muggle) he began to write.
Or, rather, his pen hesitated over the page, suddenly not quite sure what to say.
Eventually, licking his lips, he wrote that one question that had been bothering him most of all, without any preamble to it, "Why do you draw younger versions of him?"
The picture being drawn, was once again of an eleven year old Harry Evans, hair sticking out at odd angles like black feathers, eyes magnified behind coke bottle glasses, wearing strange unflattering clothing that were far too large for his thin frame, staring through the window of a storefront in Diagon Alley with a childlike wonder that Tom would never have correlated with the chronically terse and irritable Evans, suddenly stopped forming, the red of his cheeks withdrawing as the blood used for ink returned to the heart of the notebook.
The rest of the picture faded with it, lines collapsing in on themselves and drawing into the center of the binding, out of Tom's sight.
Finally, a single sentence was written, "Hello Tom."
It was his own handwriting, no… Better than his own handwriting, more practiced, with an air of ease and leisure to it that Tom's handwriting no longer possessed. It was the handwriting he'd had in Hogwarts, when each essay had been a work of art.
There was also something sardonic in that sentence, some darkly amused undertone that wasn't detectable in the words themselves, or even in the writing, but just the general feeling to the air, like without hearing his words this other Tom had whispered in his ear and all the inflections of human voice had crammed themselves in Tom's head.
"I was wondering when you'd break down and write something," it continued, and there was a smile behind these words, Tom's own cruel and cutting smile, "You've been thinking about it for some time, haven't you?"
Curiosity killed the cat, you know.
… That hadn't been written, and wasn't something Tom would say to himself, but there it was all the same inside of his head. And suddenly Tom couldn't help but feel far more unnerved about this than when he'd been talking to Slughorn about horcruxes.
It'd seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Suddenly, Tom found himself absently agreeing, that perhaps seven of these things was far too many.
"And yet, I think complacency has left far more corpses," Tom finally wrote on the page, and once again there was a pause, all the writing fading.
And then, out of nowhere, appearing far quicker than the other words, "Touché, that was very clever. But then, we've always been clever, haven't we?"
The words faded almost before Tom could make them out, suddenly replaced by a new sentence, "I'm sorry, I'm being rude. It's just… It's not really what we expected is it? Me, in here, in this white, endless, potential forever while you get to be out there and… Well, sorry, Tom, but I'm starting to wonder if I didn't get the raw end of the deal."
"What deal?" Tom wrote furiously, gritting his teeth, wondering if he'd ever sounded this… Well, cavalier, brass, obnoxious, it really was like talking to a wittier Evans, like Tom had had Evans' personality grafted onto him, "There wasn't any deal. I split my soul in half to obtain immortality…"
Words wrote themselves over Tom's interrupting him, "There are two halves of the soul involved, Tom, one for you and one for me. Now, I don't know about you, but I never asked to be the half stuck in a goddamn diary forever!"
Tom scoffed, "You are a memory."
"Strange, I don't particularly feel like a memory," his own soul seethed back at him, words choppier and larger, taking up more space on the page, "I don't feel like an impression, a passing thought Tom Riddle once had in an idle daydream. In fact, the way I see it, the only real difference between us is that you have the body and I don't!"
Finally, having more than enough, Tom scribbled out furiously, "Would you rather be dead?"
The sudden white of the pages, seemed almost auditory, like a deafening silence.
"Better, for this, than for both of us to meet oblivion," Tom finally wrote, because that was the point of a horcrux, the ultimate bargain, to live forever you had to tear out something of yourself…
After a lengthy pause, the diary wrote back, his handwriting returned to its original pristine state, "He fascinates me."
"What?" Tom scribbled out after blinking at the sentence.
"Harry Evans, Harry James Potter, he fascinates me." A pause then, "Don't you ever wonder about where he come from? What sort of a childhood shapes a man like him, where at the age of fifteen he takes down a basilisk with only his wand, attempted to learn occlumency with the help of someone he hates, has words carved into the back of his hand… Have you borrowed that one yet, for your own prisoners, forced them to carve 'I must not tell lies' into their own skin, over, and over, and over again?"
He'd… No, it hadn't crossed his mind, only now he couldn't stop thinking about it, thinking of himself and more, thinking that someone had done that very thing to Evans in a world where Voldemort had been more than an idle fantasy of Tom Riddle…
A picture of Evans appeared, sketched in casually yet accurately, of Evans seated in a dark room, inked shadows cast over his face, eyes wide, a quill in his hand and a sheet in front of him as some dark shadow loomed over him, grinning.
"It's a pointless exercise," Tom swiftly wrote over top of Evans' features, "I don't care where Evans came from."
"No," the diary responded rather shortly, "You just don't care to confront the might-have-beens and if-onlys, you don't want to think about the Voldemort he knew, the one you'll never manage to live up to, and you think anything from Evans' past will just feed into this."
A pause, the picture fading, then, "If I didn't know any better, I'd almost call it sad, Tom."
"I have enough things to worry about," Tom responded, which was certainly true enough.
"Ah, yes, the war… I've felt the war, you know, tasted your blood, Evans', and many many others… I've touched their souls, you know, all of their dead and dying souls and they scream at me in foreign languages begging for god or their mothers."
Hands are sketched, rising from the bottom of the page, clawing at the white for something, anything, while at the top, staring down into this pit, Tom Riddle is sketched looking down at them with something inexpressible in his eyes.
"Perhaps that is another reason I sketch Evans, I've tasted his soul so many times I almost feel as if it's my own, and he never begs, never screams, he just… glows, so very very brightly, too brightly to ever last as long as he does."
And Tom briefly had the thought that he felt like Evans sometimes lingered in his own head, that they had some unnatural and unknowable connection that Tom could never place and…
"Too much for you, Tom?"
Without a word, Tom slammed the notebook shut.
He breathed out shakily, closed his eyes, then opened them and looked back at Evans, who, as Tom had predicted, hadn't noticed a bloody thing.
The air was filled with the scent of blood, smoke, and powerful magics. The unmistakable scent of a wizard's war, the buildings practically saturated with both dark and light magic, sometimes taking to glowing strange colors in the twilight.
Noon on a Saturday, and Earnest Smith's words had proved prophetic enough, there they were, right on time, thirty men who were not the worst that Tom and Harry had encountered but not the dreaded elite among Grindelwald's forces.
Enough that Harry and Tom, as well as the men they'd stationed there, easily disposed of the threat.
So, leaning against a wall, watching as the living enemy were stunned, their wands removed, prepped for interrogation with Tom later (of which he was certain he'd get absolutely nothing of interest or worth off of any of them), Tom found himself acknowledging that Smith's intelligence hadn't been worthless.
Had, perhaps, been unnervingly accurate.
This did nothing to improve his mood, as noted by those who were with it enough, or had been around long enough, to recognize that one did not prod a sleeping dragon, and when Tom Riddle got a certain look on his face you steered clear.
Of course, Evans had never been counted among those people with a reasonable dose of self-preservation.
Evans wandered up next to him, his clothes torn again, stained again, dark hair practically standing on end, but that smug grin that Tom hated so very much stretched across his lips, "Well, Tom, don't you have something to say?"
Tom spared him a dull and unamused glance before returning his attention to those captured men, silently setting up a notice-me-not and silencing ward around them, as Evans' tended to lack finesse with his borrowed wands.
Evans didn't even blink as he began to goad.
"Come on, Tom, I'll start you out, it goes a little something like, 'Harry, I was wrong and…" Evans trailed off, his smile dimming and instead that constant exhausted look taking over his features, "Merlin, the way you're looking you wanted him to betray us."
Yes, in some ways that would have been more reassuring, quicker…
Evans didn't seem interested in whatever Tom thought though, as he scoffed and lightly accused, "I think you just can't admit that there are still good people out there, even in all of this… This is a good sign, people believe in us, in what we're fighting for. If there are more people like him, then we really do stand a fighting chance. And I don't just mean with numbers either. People believe in us, Tom. Aren't you tired of war?"
"I'm tired of convenience," Tom said coolly back.
"You really are a paranoid bastard," Evans said before sighing, rolling his too green eyes skyward as if Tom was the one being unreasonable, and then asking, "Alright, I'll indulge you, if he was really out to get us, then wouldn't he have lied about today? And more, wouldn't you have picked up on that?"
"He wasn't lying about today," Tom replied, knowing Evans would deliberately miss the point.
"I know, which clearly means that…"
"He might be lying about tomorrow," Tom said, "And if not then, then one day, all he needs is one day…"
For a moment Evans said nothing at all, then, "I don't want to live in that world, Riddle. I don't want to live in a world where I'm just waiting for a knife in my back, unable to trust anyone at all. Hell, if I can learn to trust you, trust you with my life, then as far as I'm concerned anyone is redeemable."
"Good to know I'm still your standard for scum of the earth," Tom scoffed, wondering, why, after all these years that still stung as much as it did. You'd think he'd get used to Evans' offhand insults about his morality by now.
"You say that like I don't know you and I don't know exactly what you are," Evans said, and then his eyes seemed through peer through Tom entirely, "After all, I'm the only one who knows what Voldemort was supposed to be."
"Yes," Tom said with a sigh, "And what a bittersweet memory that is."
"For you," Evans said darkly, "For everyone else… Believe it or not, I still think the world is better off without him. If we win this, when we win this, then I can't regret that I prevented…"
"My conception?" Tom asked with raised eyebrows.
"Merlin, Riddle, don't…" Evans shuddered, "That was the wrong word and you know it."
"And once again, you have no taste for poetry," Tom said.
"That wasn't poetry! That was… gross sex words!" Evans said, "I mean, there are a couple things I never want to think about, and your parents snogging and making babies is one of them!"
Yes, strangely enough, Tom actually agreed with him on that point. He'd rather not think about his parents and how Tom had come into existence either.
"Anyways, back to Smith, I think we should trust him, until he really gives us proof otherwise… And not reading his mind every time he looks in your direction either!"
Tom merely grimaced but offered no response.
As if Tom hadn't seen that complaint coming, no, ever since the thirty men had shown up Tom had known that Evans would become completely unreasonable. Because the truth was that he wanted to believe in the inherent goodness of men, that only a stark few were unquestionably evil and totally irredeemable (Tom, ironically, being among them). Evans was comfortable in a world of black and white, where those who were evil and terrible had few redeeming features, he did not consider the greed and cowardly nature of ordinary men.
Of course, Tom could be wrong, perhaps Earnest Smith truly did mean to help, had somehow managed to get contacts on the other side of the war. Perhaps, as Evans put it, Tom was simply a paranoid bastard unable to see the goodwill of his fellow men flickering inside each of their souls.
Evans stood uncomfortably, perhaps expecting more of an argument, but eventually he caved and said, "Well, at any rate, I'm going to talk to him, see what else he knows. You can…"
"See to the rest of it," Tom said, motioning to the captured men, to the hours of work he had ahead of him which he knew would likely yield nothing of interest, "I know the drill, Evans."
"Right, well, later then," Evans said, slapping Tom on the back with that camaraderie that Tom had always hated so very much. And then he was off, finding and chattering to a grinning Earnest Smith who had just stumbled out from behind a building, leaving Tom behind to stare at him both and wait for the other shoe to drop.
The inherent goodness of mankind, honestly, how Evans could believe in something like that, while also practically calling Tom the antichrist, was patently ridiculous.
"You know, it's strange how something as horrible as war can change people for the better."
Tom glanced to him, noting Minerva McGonagall who'd just walked up next to him, looking quite decent for just having emerged victorious from a battle. Didn't anyone realize that there were certain moods you didn't dare to talk to Tom in?
Either way, even with him dully glaring at her, she continued.
"I'd never thought Smith would have done something like this, risked everything like this… You for that matter either, I guess there's more Gryffindor in all of us than I'd ever thought." She paused, offered Tom a grin, a similar one to what Evans had just offered him not so long ago, "I think you've both, you and Smith, have become better people since Hogwarts."
Watching Evans and Smith walking away, Evans' arm slung over Smith's shoulder, Tom felt his eyes narrow and that dark suspicion claw at his mind, and all he could do was listlessly agree, "Yes, I think we've both changed."
But the successes kept coming, Smith was as good as his earnest word, and suddenly they were making more progress than they had in months, beginning to gain territory once again and head ever closer to London itself.
And with each success Earnest Smith drew closer and closer into Evans' confidences while Tom's doubts continued to nag at him relentlessly. Where Evans was reassured, hopeful even, Tom found himself wondering how it was that Smith was so comfortable being seen with Evans. How was he so confident in his own safety? Particularly since it was no secret that Tom would not go too far out of his way to protect him.
This young man who somehow managed to look younger than either Tom or Harry despite being the same age, a certain arrogance in his smile and eyes that just grated against Tom's nerves every time he saw it, even when Tom peered into his mind time and again and always heard that small but muddied clang of truth to his words.
And every single time his intelligence would pan out and every single time Evans would try to make Tom eat his own words.
As for Smith, well, if Tom was Smith then he wouldn't be doing nearly the same things. Smith didn't mind being seen coming or going and while he never revealed his sources he often revealed that he had sources to just about anyone who would listen. And yet, not the slightest flicker of concern that some enemy agent within their own troops would have him eliminated or report back to their German masters.
And as for Tom… Well, it wasn't anything obvious he could pinpoint, just small observations that built up on one another, feeding into his own unease and yes, perhaps even his paranoia. Because the truth was that Smith had had many opportunities by now, too many opportunities, but each one passed him by to the point where Tom was wondering if he wouldn't be forced to swallow his pride and concede that Evans had a point.
That perhaps, underneath the greed and mediocrity, there was some inherent nobility to people that Tom simply… lacked.
Where, at the worst of times, they would all band together regardless of Hogwarts houses and sing kumbaya around a fire, talking about what a grand old time they'd had there and wasn't it wonderful they were all friends now, except for Tom, who had somehow never managed to learn the words and frankly had no desire to… Merlin, somehow it made him ill even thinking about it.
And there were always larger things to be concerned about than Tom's own rather unique sense of morality, no matter how many times Evans felt it necessary to bring up.
Still, Earnest Smith nagged at him, and in the end, it'd been the diary that had pointed it out.
Sitting on top of a roof, enjoying the few scant minutes he had to himself (having managed to lose McGonagall in some other village and Evans off either inspiring the masses or conspiring with his favorite double agents), the words seemed particularly dark against the white pages of his soul.
"Isn't it interesting, how small these victories are?"
Tom paused, not sure he wanted to indulge whatever abomination his other half had turned into inside of the diary, but in the end scratched out in rather lazy penmanship, "We've gained more territory than we have in months."
The diary was rarely flat footed, despite claiming not to have eyes on the physical plane, and Tom always wondered how he dared to feel so confident about situations which were only revealed to him through a rather reluctant Tom. He was though, extremely confident, "But nothing earth shattering, nothing to turn the tide either. We're still not doing particularly well, are we? Tell me, where is Grindelwald? Where are the reinforcements?"
Why is this suddenly so very easy?
Yes, Tom had been wondering that too, as he sat in the bars under disguise, listened to gossip, and pondered their rapid march through the countryside when, months before, when they'd finally been promoted from terrorists to guerilla revolutionaries, the hammer had come down and come down hard upon them.
Where was the hammer now?
And why was it so much more unnerving that the diary was asking after it?
Tom didn't respond, the words fading back into the diary, but soon enough new words replaced them, oozing that same easy sly confidence that the diary appeared to enjoy so very much, "The reason we've been getting nowhere fast for months is that Grindelwald is better at this than we are, or at the very least has been doing this much longer, with better supplies, with funding, and with more able men. More, he adapts, he changes strategies, when we first started making progress he held us back, kept us contained but now here we are on the move again and… Where is he supposed to be, France?"
When had the man last been in England? It was a rare event, he spent most of his time on the continent, but eventually Evans and Tom would push him out of hiding… But today was not that day, despite their progress he wasn't here. And that said something, something that had been nagging at Tom for months now.
Complacency, far more than curiosity, was the rode to stagnation and to death itself. Tom had never once doubted that, and as his eyes rose to the skyline, and he imagined himself staring at the muggle façade of London, he couldn't help but feel that it was complacency hanging over their necks like a guillotine, ready to drop at the slightest moment.
And it would only be Tom left standing at the end of it.
Author's Note: I blame the delay on writing this chapter being akin to pulling teeth... Originally this was about the halfway mark, and then I realized my outline was ridiculous (and that having chapters over 10k is not only exhausting for me but also for you all). That said, this will still probably wrap up in a few chapters, as far as I'm concerned at least. ISN'T THAT EXCITING? I'LL ACTUALLY FINISH SOMETHING... aigriaghairgh.
Yes.
Also, I know it's been a while, but there was a side fic for this "Children Will Listen" which is a crossover with "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" so check that out if you're interested.
Anyways, thanks to readers and reviewers, you all are fantastic. Reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter
