"To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers"
Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
"Evans."
Evans looked up, head bent towards Smith, over a hand drawn map of an outpost, grinning at Tom's entrance into their latest reclaimed village, and perhaps their most startling victory since they had started all of this. This final outpost containing the portkeys that would lead them to the garrison containing all the great coveted portkeys, those into London, Hogwarts, Dublin, Paris…
The island had been cut off since the invasion, apparition wards all over the country, and only by portkey could one bypass the customs stations littered throughout Great Britain. If they took this next village, if they held it, they had their front door into London itself.
And while the war would not have been won the tide would turn dramatically in their favor.
Or at least, if Earnest Smith and his intelligence were to be believed.
"You're late," Evans commented with far too much amusement for the situation, like Tom should feel bad about being anything less than perfection, perhaps when he'd still been a prefect it might have stung, but Tom had learned to let things go during the war… Or perhaps he'd lost that in the chamber.
"I am not late, I'm simply not early," Tom said before joining them, "And I'm very busy."
Smith scoffed, "Not sure why, you never seem to turn up anything useful."
"Are you telling me how to do my job?" Tom asked, and perhaps Smith did have some self-preservation after all because he did pale significantly under Tom's glare, and he refused to meet his eyes.
"Hey, knock it off, we have work to do," Evans said, "I'm not in the mood for your mood-swings, Riddle."
"My mood swings?" Tom asked, wondering if Evans could even be bothered to see the irony in that, but apparently not, as Evans was turning back to Smith.
"Right, well, like I was saying before Riddle…"
Voldemort, really, was it that hard. Why was it that no one ever seemed to call him that? Was it simply that Tom didn't want them to, deep down, or was it that Evans never took it seriously? Or did Smith just like playing with fire?
"…Interrupted, we really have one shot at this. According to my sources they don't know we've taken this place yet, so we have to act fast before the information leaks out, and more, my sources also say that the forces at our target will be depleted as lord Grindelwald will be making an appearance in London."
Evans didn't even blink while Tom was left with the perverse impulse to gape. Surely, Evans couldn't be believing that.
"And you don't think, when Grindelwald hears that one of the few garrisons containing military grade portkeys into his cities has been taken by rebels, he'll sit idly by twiddling his thumbs?" Tom asked, eyes searching for Smith's but now he was resolutely staring at a wall.
"Not if we're fast enough," Smith insisted.
"Yes, and why are you so certain they don't know we're at this particular garrison?" Tom asked, "I find it unlikely that no one would have heard, that the wards wouldn't have been triggered…"
"We took down the wards!" Smith said, "Look, you were the one in charge of that so if you're doubting anyone then you're doubting yourself! Besides, if you don't risk anything you can't gain anything either."
Tom opened his mouth but Evans beat him to it, "He's right, we haven't lost yet and we're not going to lose now! Not when we're this close and not with this opportunity! We can't lose, if we all believe in it, if we hold strong, we aren't capable of losing…"
There were no words, nothing at all, all he could do was stand there like an idiot while Evans and Smith finalized the details of who to take, where to approach from, the position of the wards…
Finally, with a far too self-important look on his face Smith left, and it was just Evans and Tom that remained.
"Did you notice, Evans, he didn't once look me in the eye," Tom said.
"Oh," Evans said with vehemence, still turned away from Tom, his knuckles white against the table, "I knew it, I knew you would say something like this, even after everything he's risked and done for us and…"
"He doesn't act like a man with the barrel of a gun against his head," Tom pointed out, "Don't you find it odd, how it's only me that seems to make him nervous, when he's risking everything for us?"
"Maybe because he knows what he's sacrificing, has accepted it, but he doesn't have to accept his own people stabbing him in the back…"
"Is that how you see it?" Tom shook his head, "You're a fool, Evans."
Tom then looked at the map, "He said to bring everyone, everyone functioning… We're risking everything for this, for something I have no other reports of, I'm not even sure these portkeys are in this garrison. The portkey we're taking there, for that matter, could lead us anywhere. I am not comfortable with blind faith, Evans!"
"And what are we supposed to do, Riddle?!" Evans asked, motioning to their surroundings, "We can't stop now! I can't stop now! Not when we've made it this far with everyone believing in us…"
"In you, Harry," Tom snapped, "They believe in you."
And then, it was as if a curtain had been drawn back over his eyes and he saw for the first time what Harry Evans, Harry James Potter, truly was. They shook his hand and theirs trembled, broken men cried at the sight of him as if they had been reborn merely by standing near to him, they whispered that he would be the one to save all of Britain.
And Evans had never once blinked, had taken it all eerily in stride, not like he'd been born to that kind of attention or even truly wanted it but…
"And you believe them," Tom said, "You believe all those people we picked up, the ones who worship you and think that you can topple empires with your hands tied behind your back, wandless… Don't you see what they're turning you into?"
"An idea, Evans," Tom spat, "That's what you are! That's why you have to push and push and believe and never stop and think even when it's beyond suspicious! Why you have to have such ridiculous faith in humanity and condemn me for even slightly doubting someone's intentions! You've always been too ready to martyr yourself and me along with you…"
Evans scoffed, dark brows lowered and an irritated grimace on his face, "I am not…"
"Yes, you are!" Tom interjected, "For them! But I was there first, your right-hand man in every sense of the word, and I haven't been wrong yet! And if you listen to this, if you go into this blatant trap blindly because of what you think you have to do…"
Tom started laughing, not sure what even to say, just knowing that Evans wouldn't listen. He rarely ever listened, not when it came to things like this, it would take Smith murdering them all for Evans to consider listening.
For a moment Evans said nothing, finally, calmer than Evans ever seemed capable of, he said, "You're more likely to betray me than him."
His eyes practically burned, and wasn't it strange, how they looked so similar to how they had years ago in the Chamber of Secrets, even when then they had been hidden behind glasses, "You've always been more likely to betray me than him."
"How is it, that we spend so many years with each other, and you still can't seem to read me at all?" Tom asked, and then he sighed, suddenly beyond exhausted, and even as he saw the battlefield and the blood before he said, "Fine, Evans, have it your way."
Lead them all to their glorious deaths, divine light shining around them even as they were all slaughtered down to the man, except for Tom whose soul had already been sheered in half, in preparation for this very moment.
And as Evans lay dying, Tom would smile down, say that he had told him so, right before he plunged one of Evans' knives straight into the man's heart. Perhaps then, the bastard would finally listen.
"So, this is it right?"
Minerva McGonagall had a habit of showing up when she was least wanted. Although to be fair, in these last moments, as Evans gathered all the able rebels they had, all those with most of their wits still intact (which basically meant everyone who wasn't already at death's door), there wasn't any real place that Tom could hide.
Still, all the same, he'd have enjoyed a few more minutes to wish death upon Harry Evans with his eyes alone. Evans, needless to say, hadn't even bothered to look in Tom's direction.
That was so very typical of him.
"I mean, this is it, this is the key to everything, right?"
Tom spared Minerva a glance, a dull unimpressed glance, before returning his attention to the horizon.
"So, you're going to be like that, are you Riddle?" Minerva said before pointing out, "You know, this could be the end, for either of us, is this really how you want to be remembered?"
"Better to be remembered as I am than what I wasn't," Tom finally deigned, which seemed to be enough for Minerva as she offered him a triumphant smile. Her face though, it was much thinner than it had been in Hogwarts, her clothes far more worn, so while the expression perhaps bore some familiarity it was fleeting at best.
No one was quite what they once were in Hogwarts.
"You mean like Hogwarts? I don't know, you weren't so bad there, best of the Slytherins at least… Do you remember the slug club, how every month we'd have to go to those god-awful parties?" A soft nostalgic smile painted itself on her lips.
"How could I possibly forget?" he asked, "It was the bane of my existence."
"Oh, but Slughorn loved you and you always encouraged it, you were both trying to get something out of the other one and looking back it was damned hilarious, Riddle."
"Tedious, I think is the word you're looking for," but there was a reluctant smile on his lips, as looking back, he could see easily see that desperate and wasted effort Tom Riddle had put into charming Horace Slughorn.
Although, perhaps not entirely wasted, it'd gotten him a horcrux after all.
"No, no I mean hilarious, he'd just talk for hours in your ear and there'd be you smiling and nodding and probably thinking of bashing your own brains in. Although, I was always glad you sucked up the attention for the rest of us, very considerate of you," and now she was laughing, and perhaps it was the war and his own exhaustion but dammit he was laughing too.
"Oh, you have no room to talk, you were Dumbledore's lap dog."
"Oh, don't you dare go comparing Dumbledore to Slughorn," Minerva said, "Although you two always did hate each other, you and Dumbledore I mean."
"Well, when we first met, he did set my wardrobe on fire," Tom admitted before dazedly adding, "It left an impression."
She spluttered, looked at his expression, the quirk of his lips, then barked out a sharp laugh. Eventually though her laughter faded, her smile died, and she said, "I wish we could know what happened to him."
"Dead, I suppose," Tom Riddle replied, "It hardly seems to matter now, does it?"
"No, I guess it doesn't," Minerva responded distantly, "It should though, it should matter more than anything."
At once he eyed her, this dark haired Scottish girl caught out of her depth but still plunging ahead almost despite herself, friendless as he was in this place… And at once it struck him, that he didn't want her to die. Perhaps, perhaps there should be something left of Hogwarts when this is done, and why shouldn't it be Minerva McGonagall?
Tom wouldn't mind seeing Minerva live through this.
So, looking her directly in the eyes, taking in her quizzical expression, he said, quietly, "Watch yourself out there."
She opened her mouth to rebuke him, perhaps to say she was already going to do that because while a Gryffindor she wasn't a total fool, but he cut her off, eyes darting to the right, where Smith stood chattering to Evans about last minute details.
"We're walking straight into a trap," his eyes narrowed on Smith, "I'm certain of it."
He wasn't sure what he expected from her, after a moment of silence where she too took in Smith and observed him, but it seemed there was some stupidity that ran through all Gryffindors, because she looked and with a proud indifference replied, "You don't know it though, not really, and even so… Sometimes, Riddle, you have to walk in even knowing it's a trap. That's what bravery is, I think."
No wonder all the Gryffindors were dead.
He felt his lips twist into a cruel and bitter smile, and, stepping out from beside her and towards Evans he offered only a parting wish of, "Good luck then, Minerva."
There was a moment, as the portkeys, the portkeys gained through blood, sweat, tears and Smith's own information, took hold, a single moment where Smith was neither lying nor speaking the truth, a moment of infinite possibilities where neither Tom nor Evans could truly claim to be right.
Where Smith's string of successes was weighed against Tom's own paranoia.
And as they were pulled through time and space Tom allowed himself, for that brief instant, to consider a world where he was wrong, and where this truly was what Evans said it was. There they would win, and London would be freed… And in the end, where would that Evans and Tom be? Rebuilding the government, reopening Hogwarts? A softer world, long after the trials for traitors to the Germans, where the war was an unspoken thing of the past, and Tom could finally rest his eyes for a moment or two…
Would he and Evans be friends then? After this war was over and fate had ceased to throw them together?
Strangely, he imagined they would be, or rather, they would continue to be what they were now, whatever you happened to call that. Brothers in arms, friends, even after the blood of their kinsmen had stopped overflowing in the gutters.
Yes, for that single instant, Tom could almost picture it.
But then, as they appeared in the center of the wizarding village turned military fort, and were met not with a few straggling unprepared men but instead dozens of fully staffed and fully armed wizards of experience and wards flaring to life around them, the image was snuffed out forever in Tom's mind.
"Everyone get down!" Evans shouted immediately, throwing himself to the ground, and though Tom too dropped it was not quickly enough to miss the sight of spell light and the heads of several of his comrades exploding outward, blood and brains now hitting Tom's hair and face.
Screams of agony sounded around him, Tom looked up, at the wards, unfamiliar, but judging by the man who had stumbled into them not to be trifled with. Apparation wards too, now those Tom knew the sight of even at a glance.
Evans threw a shield over himself and whoever was nearest to him, it held, for a moment, but appeared to waver.
Everywhere people ran, running straight into the wards, or often over top of one another, and were either taken out then by spells or else incinerated as they crossed over the boundary of the wards.
Time seemed to slow, people stumbled, Tom found himself crawling over severed hands, limbs of people he had known, men he had known and fed and kept alive all this time…
Everywhere was the scent, not only of blood, but of human death and decay, of brain, bone marrow, bile, pus, and all the fluids in the human body that wreaked of illness and death. Tom crawled forward with a singlemindedness, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, time slowing until only the back of Evans head was visible.
(Tom did not intend to die here, Smith intended him to die here like a pig for slaughter, but Tom would not die in this place.)
Around them the wards shimmered, magical energy thrown against it, but they did not buckle. And somewhere in the mass of noise, Evans was screaming, or rather, his soul itself seemed to be screaming, screaming inside of Tom's head relentlessly as this singular moment painted itself over every death he had ever witnessed.
Where before there had once been a boy in a cemetery, a man in a purple turban being burned alive, a red-headed woman pleading over his cradle, and then the many many deaths they had seen before this, now there was only the blood of this moment, the blood and the screaming and the people running everywhere and a man suddenly next to him is dead and the shields aren't strong enough…
Someone fell onto Tom's back, blood soaking through Tom's clothing, a heady sticky read trickling down past him and onto the ground beneath him. He shook the man off, not even blinking when he noted that the head fell separately, staring up at Tom with the dead eyes of a fish at market, his tongue sticking out of his bloodstained mouth.
Finally, he reached Evans, and with him the two others that Tom had hoped, before, might survive this. There was Smith, crouched beneath Evans and staring up at horrified eyes at the wards surrounding them, shaking like a leaf, and McGonagall, deep gashes in her side, one hand hanging uselessly at her side, putting everything she had into a shield around the three of them as her hazel eyes took in what were to be her final moments.
Yes, none of them should die here, in this place. There were tales yet for all of them and as for Smith, well, as fitting an end as this would be there was something more required from him before he went to meet his maker.
Using his bloodstained hands, he drew all three of them in, and with his equally bloodstained will, that will that saw his own death as inconceivable, he moved past the noise, the death, and the inhumanity that was to be this end, pulling Evans soul along with his, they breached through the apparition ward.
Leaving the rest of the rebellion behind to die.
"In Flanders field the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place; and in the sky the larks, still bravely singing, fly scare heard amid the guns below…" Tom trailed off at Evans' approach his footsteps somehow deafening even over the sound of the sea in that lonely abandoned cave of Tom's childhood.
Finally, when Harry Evans stood shoulder to shoulder with Tom, a haunted glassy look in his eyes, but he said nothing, simply stared at Tom, a single silent question haunting his eyes, 'why'.
Tom offered him a bitter smile, but did not answer that, instead he said, "A muggle poem, about World War I, the war to end all other wars… What a thought."
Harry Evans, Tom Riddle, an injured Minerva McGonagall curled up on her side pale and feverish, practically dead to the world though the bleeding stopped as well as Tom could make it, and Earnest Smith petrified where he stood, the terror written in every cell of his body as he stared forward into the darkness.
"We're finished," Evans said then, finally, quietly as if he could scarecely believe the words himself, "He's won, he's destroyed us completely, the revolution's finished."
"You… You could have gotten them out! You got us out, you made a hole in the wards, why didn't you get them out?! Some of them out I…"
Evans stopped, looked at Tom again, and perhaps remembered that most of them had died long before Tom had gotten the four of them out, and even then, even then, there was no doubt in Tom's mind that those apparition wards had been back in place long before anyone with their wits still about them could make use of them.
"You didn't say, 'I told you so'!" Evans accused, tears gathering at the corner of his eyes, "You promised you would! Well, aren't you going to Riddle? Tell me! You were right, you're always right, and I always… Every single time, every time I mess up everything! It's not even the first damn time, this is how… I was tricked, into going into the department of mysteries, did you know that? Tricked and I led all of my friends into a trap and I don't even know if they're still alive, if they can still be I… Say something dammit!"
Tom said nothing, not in sympathy, pity, or even the belittlement that Evans seemed to need so very badly. Tom had already said his thoughts, before all of this, and with drying blood still on him and a horcrux stuffed under his clothing and strapped to his skin, there seemed to be nothing worth saying.
"You were right," Evans finally said weakly, "Goddammit, you really were right."
He sighed, attempted to shove his hands into his pockets, only to keep them out when they realized they had stiffened with the blood and dirt on his own clothing, and closing his eyes he started, "We… We need a plan a… Something now, we need to start over but… Smarter, we need to be smarter and..."
He stopped, gave a hiccupping repressed sob, shook his head, and asked so quietly and in such a frail voice Tom was almost wondering if he was imagining it, "How many more deaths can I possibly be responsible for?"
Tears trickled down his face leaving clear streaks amid the dirt and the blood, and Evans shook his head quietly before whispering, "There was a prophecy, you know, in the department of mysteries. A prophecy about me and you but I… I have no idea what it said. Even after all this I have no bloody idea what it said. And sometimes I wonder if…"
And as he stood there, out into the gray Atlantic sea, the wind blowing back his dark hair, half in the light of the world and half in the darkness of the cave, he seemed almost transparent somehow, as if only half of his, his mere image stood here with Tom Riddle, while the other half stood somewhere outside of the world itself.
Evans looked him the eyes and in them there was despair.
Quietly, without another word, Evans looked at the frozen Earnest Smith, covered in blood, sacrificed by Grindelwald just for that one chance to destroy Evans' rebellion. Tom silently handed Evans his own wand, pressing it into his fingers, and then watched as Evans raised his arm, pointed Tom's wand directly at the back of Smith's head.
The cave, for a moment, was an eerie and fluorescent green, and then it was blindingly dark once again, Minerva still feverish, Evans a silent god with his hand still outstretched, Tom still a shadow at the edge of the sea staring in at it all, and Earnest Smith still frozen in place as if nothing in the world had altered itself at all.
The cave, this forgotten cave, it was becoming far too familiar.
"I'm not getting better, am I?" Minerva stared up at him with bleary eyes, a dull and amused sort of resignation in them, because she was right, she wasn't getting better.
"I'm not a healer," Tom responded softly, there was no need to though, Evans was sleeping again, slumped against a wall, half curled on himself, eyes closed… Evans always seemed to be sleeping these days. Perhaps he found it easier than anything else, because when he was awake, it was as if his eyes themselves were screaming.
"You haven't found any other though, have you?" she coughed at the end of this, the sea air doing nothing for her lungs, but then, she wasn't wrong. He'd looked, as the days passed he'd gone into what villages had used to be theirs but doors slammed in his face everywhere he turned.
There would be no more sympathy from Britain if there ever had been in the first place.
In the weeks that had passed since that last disastrous ambush, the massacre of the rebellion, it seemed as if the entire country finally knew that the jig was up. No, there would be no more healers for them, not without an imperious curse or lies of an unbelievable magnitude (because what kind of an accident could have happened to Minerva to make her look like she did, no, a healer would know in an instant).
"No, I'm afraid we're stuck with each other," he said and she smiled at that, tried to laugh, but it mostly turned into coughing.
"It's fine, I'm… I'm not afraid to die, Tom," she said finally, and she truly meant it, he thought, there was no doubt in her that she would not quake before the thought of oblivion.
"I am," he admitted slowly, "Death has always terrified me."
"Well," she said, lifting her hand, her good hand, with shaking fingers so she could rest it on his, "It's a good thing I'm the one dying then."
"Do you think that it… That it will look like Hogwarts?" Minerva asked, almost desperately, "I hope, I hope it looks like Hogwarts, like Hogwarts used to."
Darkness, an empty cruel darkness, that was what Tom had always imagined. But something in him stopped him from this, perhaps the coldness of her hand in his, and said, "I think that it will look like whatever you want it to… I don't see why it can't be Hogwarts."
"Gryffindor… We'll win the house cup and the quidditch cup," she said with a weak smile, "And I'll be headgirl, I think, and you… You'll be head boy."
"But I won't be there," he pointed out softly, but she didn't seem to mind, seemed to be drifting further and further from him and this small cave by the sea.
"Of course you'll be there," she said quietly, "It's Hogwarts, you have to be there… And we'll have such good times, you and me, and we'll take our NEWT exams…"
Her hand relaxed in his, dropping out of his fingers, and her eyes fluttered shut as she slipped into fevered dreaming once again. In and out of reality, that was Minerva McGonagall these days, and one day, perhaps soon, she wouldn't come back at all.
But of course, with Evans constantly sleeping, it seemed that Tom was the only one left with his feet firmly planted in reality.
Wand over her, remembered spells from the room of requirement, he checked over her once again and, slowly, again, poured his strength into a spell that he hoped this time managed to stick.
The weeks trudged on and with Evans sliding headfirst into despair and McGonagall headfirst into death Tom found he lacked motivation for strategy or war and instead found himself, in whatever free time he had left between Minerva's illness and Evan's depression, he found himself in muggle pubs.
The muggles, the British and the Americans and the Soviets from the east, they were closing in on Germany, on Berlin.
The muggles, against all prior predictions, were winning their war.
And reading the papers, listening to the talk, something very concerning or interesting was happening because of it.
What happened, when the muggles won their war but the wizards lost their own? What happened when Grindelwald, in power on the continent now for more than two years, and with a strong foothold in England (unquestioned now with the rebellion's slaughter), finally delivered what he had promised?
In Germany and France, the statute of secrecy was breaking down, British muggle newspapers showed men with wands on their front covers, spell light burning holes into tanks, guns blazing as they fired back at German dark wizards… Hitler's last stand, they were leerily calling it, but even in the newspapers there was a tone of it being anything but of this being something else entirely.
Grindelwald had vowed to put the muggles into their place, to enslave them and likely their mudblood offspring, and he had chosen to do so at the worst possible time.
Looking down at a paper now, muggle beer in hand, he cast his eye about on these people who had survived bombings, who had survived rations, who had survived war and bloodshed on this tiny island, and he thought of how these people, after all this, were to take Grindelwald's declaration of war once it became clear to them.
How had their prime minister, Churchill, put it again? Years ago, when it had caught Tom's idle attention as it played on the orphanage's radio, back when muggles were mere worms beneath his feet, worms who could very well cause his death with their bombs from the Luftwaffe.
"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never –in nothing, great or small, large or petty –never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
And he wondered, as he took in these people in their plain muggle clothing, that had been through one war already, if they would somehow have better luck than he and Evans had. He hoped, perversely, against all common sense, that they would give that German bastard a run for his galleons.
That they would indeed never give in.
At any rate, even as they celebrated now the end of the coming war, they were about to find themselves locked in a far greater one than even that.
"The war to end all wars," Tom muttered to himself into his glass, "What an idea."
Evans, slumped again against a wall, staring blank faced into the fire. Well, awake this time at least. Though it was hard enough to tell, as there was no reaction as Tom dumped food and jugs of water into a corner with a loud bang.
"So, you're still alive then," Tom remarked, Evans didn't even flinch, not as Tom continued, "I'd seen more movement out of Minerva."
Minerva herself was still curled in on herself, sleeping again, making up for the fact that Evans was awake, he supposed.
"Also, I think it's official, we've lost the country, of course, you already knew that," Tom said remarked as he grabbed an apple for himself, "The muggles have done well for themselves though, invading Berlin as we speak."
Tom sat himself near the fire, across from Evans, warming his hands, "I wonder if this has ever happened before, the muggles winning while the wizards lose, it seems so often we're tied in together. Where the British empire goes we follow, into China and India… Now though, they will face Grindelwald, and we're not there to shield them."
And for the first time in what seemed like weeks, Evans opened his mouth, a spark of awareness appearing in his eyes, "What do you mean?"
"You don't think he'll spare them, do you?" Tom asked, not remarking on Evans' sudden return to life after having been a zombie, "These uppity muggles."
"But.. They're muggles."
"Haven't you read his propaganda?" Tom asked, "Grindelwald doesn't believe in the statute of secrecy, he believes these muggles should know their place."
"You mean he… He's going to tell them, show them?" Evans asked in horror, "Everyone?"
"I imagine he's going to kill them," Tom said, "But he'll make no pretense of hiding it."
"He… He can't do that, Riddle…" Evans lifted his head, moved forward, closer to the fire, "He'll kill us all. He'll destroy the world."
"Destroy the world?" Tom asked incredulously, eyebrows raising as he took in Evans clear panic, a panic he'd never seen in him before, even at the worst of times, "I think you give Grindelwald a little too much credit, he may be an overpowered bastard but…"
Evans leaned forward, terror inside of as he corrected, with an energetic insistency that he hadn't been capable of in weeks, "No, no, not him but… The muggles, the American muggles, they've built something. They've built a bomb, a horrible bomb that we've never seen like anything before. A single bomb that can wipe out an entire city, can cause cancer for decades… They can do it, Riddle, they can kill all of us, and if he makes them… And Grindelwald has no bloody idea."
A bomb… Tom remembered the bombs, he remembered the Blitz… It always was going to be a bomb, wasn't it?
"Well, that is bad," Tom said half-heartedly but whatever life had left Evans seemed to come rushing back and he practically burned as he stared Tom in the eye.
"Yes, Riddle, it's very bad! Very, very, bad! We all… Everyone could die!" He threw his hands out wide, breathing deeply, eyes blazing. And then, suddenly, almost feverishly, "We have to stop him, we have to stop this now, we have to stop Grindelwald from breaking the statute of secrecy from… from enslaving the muggles or whatever he's doing."
"Evans, we lost that fight," Tom said slowly eyes widening, feeling something plunge into his heart, "You said it yourself, we have tried and failed."
"We have no choice now! We can't afford to lose!"
Tom shook his head, almost unwillingly, "We're out of time, he's made moves in France and Germany, the muggles are in his territory…"
"August," Evans said suddenly, "August, 1945, I don't know when they finished the bomb but that was when they dropped it, in my timeline, in August. We have until August."
"August… A matter of months to retake England, cross the channel and liberate France and Eastern Europe… It cannot be done, Evans."
By an army it could not be done, but they were only three people, one a school girl half dead, one foot half out the door already, and Evans with only a sporadic will to live. What possible hope of success could they possibly have?
"We… We assassinate him, Grindelwald, it's the only way." Evans continued, almost feverishly, sweat on his brow and shaking, "It's our only hope now."
Tom just stared at him numbly, feeling… empty, empty and drained, and so much more tired tan he used to, "We've tried and failed to do that for years… Dumbledore, himself, likely tried and failed to do just that."
"It's all we have," Evans said and then, motioning to their surroundings, to Tom, to Minerva, and to himself, "It's all we've got left."
Three failed rebels, refugees in their own country, in a world torn apart by war and death, and the only prospect they had was the assassination of the greatest dark lord western Europe had ever seen or else face annihilation from the muggles themselves…
No, no he could not bring himself to believe in this future, not with the desperation of Evans.
In fact, Tom wondered if he had any faith left to believe in this world, in any future it possessed, at all.
"You know," Evans said to him, later, in the dead of night, breathing the words into Tom's ear, "Sometimes I think I never should have been born. All I do is cause death and destruction, and every time I think it can't get worse…"
Tom said nothing, just stared him the eyes, this eyes that had come out of a future that no longer could possibly exist, Evans himself existing as a paradox, yet so very solid here in this cave with Tom, as if he belonged here just as much as anyone else did.
"If you could go back, Evans, would you?"
"Go back?" Evans asked.
"To your own time, leave this place, leave the muggles and the wizards and all of this death and destruction…"
"I… Would they even recognize me?" Evans asked instead, "It's been years now… I'd be too old for Hogwarts, even."
Tom said nothing to this, instead, closed his eyes and asked, "What is it like, in your world?"
"Not peaceful but… There's no war, not like this, and Hogwarts is standing and my friends are… It's wonderful, I miss it so much sometimes." Harry said, "But I can never go back, I've… I've eliminated myself from history, how can we all go to Hogwarts if it isn't even standing?"
"You played quidditch," Tom said, distracting him.
"I… Yes, I was seeker, since my first year," Evans said distractedly, "I loved that sport."
"If you went back, would you still play?"
"Oh, of course, in a heartbeat," Evans said with a smile, "I'd do everything again, even detention with Snape I'd do again..."
Evans trailed off and continued to look at the ceiling of the cave, but Tom, he laid back and thought, and in his head, there was a single beacon of hope, one tiny spot of light in the overwhelming dark.
There was no choice, he must research time, even as they madly prepared to assassinate Grindelwald, he must research, to send himself, Evans, and perhaps even Minerva back to Harry James Potter's 1996, and forsake this doomed world that Grindelwald had created for them.
In the diary, Tom idly flipping through it, he came across a picture drawing itself, Earnest Smith, tied to a cross, his face slowly morphing into that of Evans while a crown of thorns, drawn in the blood that splattered the diary's pages, engraved itself around his head.
Author's Note: Oh Smith, "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" At any rate, fun times certainly lie ahead, don't they?
Anyways, thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are always much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter