Disclaimer: Hmm... Harry Potter... not mine!
You guys did a good job. 39 reviews, not bad. :) But I'm going to continue being a greedy little creature and ask for 45! Here you go, some information from Tom's point of view and a nice little chess game to end it. Enjoy.
Silken black hair like feathers on the neck of a raven. Skin as pale as the snowflakes that whirl from the sky on a winter night. Lips that resemble petals tainted by blood. Eyes, a startling blue, and yet as cold as cubes of ice.
He was truly a predator, a monster, a beast who feasted on others. He was a psychopath. A sadistic psychopath with a demonic bloodlust and an unhealthy appetite for suffering.
Charm, confidence, ruthlessness, coolness under pressure – Tom Riddle had plenty of everything.
Well, not everything, Tom was fully aware he did not have a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what he did, no limiting sense of concern for the welfare of strangers, friends, followers or even family members.
He had murdered Tom Riddle Senior in cold blood.
He had no struggles with shame, not when he had committed selfish, lazy, harmful, immoral crimes against anything, anyone.
The concept of responsibility was unknown to him, except as a burden that others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. He would not take the trouble of managing a sense of duty like the rest of the mindless society.
If anyone could read his mind, they would call him a freak of nature… But nature needed him and others of his kind. The world, lovely as it was when full of kind and loving people, could only operate when there were creatures like him pulling the strings.
In order for civilisation to move forward, to progress, there had to be pitiless humans who would be ready to do anything.
Those psychopaths who became serial killers and ended up rotting behind bars were idiots. They had fallen prey to their own impulsiveness and violent character; they did not know how to use the gifts they had been blessed with.
The successful psychopaths, on the other hand, were a different matter all together… They grew up to become influential politicians, businessmen, lawyers, judges, presidents…
Tom Riddle liked to think of himself as the latter type rather than buffoons like Ted Bundy who made a laughingstock out of psychopaths. One only had to take a good long look at the media to see that the image of the rare psychological issue had been twisted into something ridiculously disgusting.
Hannibal the Cannibal, Norman Bates and so forth.
In his opinion, the written history of mankind had proven the point that power came with harshness, time and time again. There had to be manipulators behind the curtains.
Adolf Hitler, despite his atrocity, had led Germany to the top, if only for a short while.
Mao Zedong, or Chairman Mao, had been a Chinese communist revolutionary and had seen his fair share of victories but he had indirectly killed more people than Hitler.
Napoleon Bonaparte, a respected man who was accountable for the advancement of the world, had been the first man to ask himself rationally the question how to eliminate, in as short a time as possible, and with a minimum of cost and personnel, a maximum of people.
Anyone who had read books on Napoleon's conquests, or the conquests of any great conqueror, would find numerous tales of bloodletting.
To be fair, not all of the leaders had been psychopaths – but it had demonstrated that success came with brutality. It was inevitable.
To most people, Tom Riddle's condition was a strange fantasy, but to him, it was reality. He had developed the ability to conceal that his very core was radically different from the rest of the population.
Since everyone simply assumed that conscience was universal among human beings, hiding the fact that he was apathetic was nearly effortless.
He was not held back from any of his desires by worldly traits such as contriteness, and he was never confronted by others for his cruelty… The ice water in his veins was so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guessed at his condition.
In other words, he was completely free of internal restraints, and his unhampered liberty to do just as his please, with no pangs of conscience, was conveniently invisible to the world.
Tom could do anything at all, he had a secret advantage and coupled with the matching handicap of other people – morality, he was fated for success.
He owned the heart of the devil and the face of an angel… His heart, his crux, had become solid ice as his age increased… it made him stronger. His psychopathic disorder gave him perfection, and despite what psychiatrists would say, Tom needed no curing.
There was only one other who understood him – the Dark Lord, who technically was a twisted version of himself.
Tom Riddle had been content with his ice crux; he did not want to be anything else. He was callous and stony and nothing more.
But when Harry Potter entered the picture, everything changed. All that Tom recognised, including himself, was torn apart by the teenager and rearranged.
In those five years that Harry had lived with him, Tom had exerted himself to moulding the younger boy into a darker figure.
It had worked. He had got Harry to abandon his light principles. Except his approach practically backfired and became a hopeless situation. In the process of shaping Harry, he had been changed too. It was a heavy price to pay.
Tom doubted that Harry had deliberately changed him, but Tom could not have stopped it either way. Per se, Tom had no intentions of turning into a nicer person but Potter's personality had rubbed off a little on him.
Not the sympathy or the compassion or the saving people thing, thank Merlin, otherwise Tom might've fainted at the horror but he had acquired a minor fondness for Harry. The first minor fondness he had felt for anyone in his life.
If anyone asked, he would have promptly yanked his wand out and cursed them to oblivion, but no matter how much he wanted to deny it, he did care for Harry's wellbeing.
Not only was it a rather embarrassing thing for a future Dark Lord to have attachments but it was also against the very temperament of a psychopath. It was a weakness.
And if he was completely honest, Tom was feeling lost about what he should do.
At first, five years ago, Harry had been little more than a pawn to him and Tom had anticipated the day when Harry could become a black queen on the chessboard; if the boy got wiped out, so be it, no biggie.
Unfortunately, somewhere, at some place, something went wrong…
Tom loathed putting it like that. He was a mastermind; he was not designed to ever slip up and his plans had never gone awry as preposterously as this.
It was just so damn confusing. When had things ever gotten so complex for him before?
He usually relied on his genius mind, which had always managed to lay things out like a clear, unfolded map before him, but his intellect seemed to have been reduced to a soft mass of goo by Harry Aggravating Potter. It offered him no help.
He sounded like a bloody ninny of a girl.
He had no friends, only allies, end of subject.
Maddeningly, it wasn't the end of the matter. Harry Potter was a chink in his armour, a narrow crack. Tom Marvolo Riddle was beyond frustrated. He was trapped between some pitiful hybrid of frustration and unease. It was pathetic.
He knew this soft spot had not sprung up on him in one night. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day. He had spent too many years in denial, hiding from himself the fact that he took an interest in the health of someone else.
Recently, it became too difficult to continue his denial. He had bargained with Voldemort for Harry, and protected the boy, to a great extent, from all potential damage. It seemed almost as if there wasn't anything he wouldn't do to ensure the brat's safety.
And now, he had to put up with the various teething troubles that came with genuine care. If he had less self-preservation and more masochism, he might have been tempted to punch his fist into a wall.
As it was, the only thing he had been tempted to punch was Daphne Greengrass as she hurled one Unforgivable after the other at Harry while the two ducked and weaved and exchanged blows.
His one and only consolation had been that he would have shattered her heart and slashed her limbs from her body if she maimed the teenage Horcrux.
It had been a shock, a bolt from the blue, when a Cruciatus plunged into Harry's chest.
Tom had heard the loud rip of fabric, heard the scream, the exclamation of pain. He had seen the boy writhing, thrashing defencelessly.
Emotionlessness had been forgotten in the apprehension of the moment. Tom's heart, frozen against anything and everything, had betrayed him in the worst possible way.
The triumphant simper adorning Daphne's lips seared his mind, and he wished nothing more than to kill her, right then and there. Harry had tipped forward, headfirst, in a ball. Crumpling like a dead leaf. Convulsing desperately.
… Then it turned out that the Harry being tortured was a replica… and all was actually going flawlessly for the real Harry.
It was too much for him.
Tom Riddle had always been an extremist. When he hated, he hated to the extreme. No target could ever escape his wrath. But when he loved, say, the Dark Arts, well, he did that to the extreme too.
He pressed his fingers to his temples. He could think up a long list of major negatives to being an extremist.
Dear Merlin…
He was a psychopath, he was sure, but who'd ever heard of a caring psychopath? Ridiculous, ridiculous circumstances he had gotten himself into. Granted, he only cared about one person, but one was a lot.
How Voldemort would laugh if he knew.
Oh, fantastic, Tom had a pounding headache now. He pushed himself to his feet and headed for the door that Harry had exited sometime in the last thirty minutes. He'd deal his little problem with it later.
As he walked, Tom saw Daphne crawling onto her knees in defeat, features twisted into a wretched expression of incredulity. He gave her the most menacing look he could summon, promising her a bloody fate, and her face crumpled miserably when she saw him.
Served her right. Later, he would ensure that she received what she deserved.
—0O0—
'Revenge is a dish best served cold.'
Harry, truthfully, could not agree with the saying more.
Having lived for sixteen years, he had seen his fair share of appealing meals and sugary treats, but he didn't think he had ever tasted anything sweeter than newly extracted vengeance after a series of scheming.
Naturally, there were those rare species of people who proclaimed that revenge left a nasty, corrosive aftertaste like one of those cheap Russian wines that placed a lingering flavour of pureed asparagus, sea slug and mouse fur in the mouth.
Harry winced at the thought. For him, the triumph of a won duel and the satisfaction of finally getting back at Daphne Greengrass overrode everything.
Especially each time he thought of how she had mercilessly tortured his counterpart.
As soon as the duel had been concluded, he had excused himself and left, to the sound of applause from the audience.
He'd headed straight to his bedroom, eager to get there before the tiredness had fully seeped into his bones.
The aftermaths of the sorcery he had performed took its toll on him, draining his energy quicker than fire devoured wood.
It had been extremely advanced magic, to duplicate a carbon copy of himself that possessed no real life of its own and yet behaved as he would, let alone adapting the facial features of Tom Riddle.
Harry was not a real Metamorphmagus, therefore, the intricacy of the human transfiguration spell sapped at his power like mad.
The Dark Lord must've been impressed. Harry sensed the predatory eyes ploughing into his back, tracking him even as he exited the wreck of a ballroom.
To be honest, the intense, penetrating stares that appraised him were really unnerving.
It was as though Harry was a piece of meat and the Dark Lord was asking himself where to put Harry in the fridge, or maybe whether to cook him with carrots or just to throw him into a bowl of soup.
He shrugged inwardly.
He couldn't care less.
He was already the apprentice of the Dark Lord and it was rather noticeable that Voldemort was attentive where his magical progresses were involved.
Harry was used to it now…
… Even if it was blatantly annoying, and he thought Voldemort should just go and read a book on basic human courtesy… And hopefully, the book would clearly state that unwelcome staring is a sign of rudeness.
Anyhow, Harry was struck by the appeal of clambering into bed, beneath the sheets, and simply being dead to the world for ten or so hours. He would honestly trade anything for a little bit of restful sleep.
Every step, every raise of the foot, cost him effort and he literally felt like a dead corpse walking… All he needed, at the moment, was a snooze.
But he couldn't.
He was covered in bits and pieces of filth and rubble. If his assumption was correct, splinters of wood had found his tangled hair a suitable nesting home. And, above all, he had to clean his cuts and scrapes.
He had to bath first.
How inconvenient.
Dragging his feet across the floor, he, with a deadbeat sigh, made the long and painful journey to the en suite.
The minute he reached his destination, he turned all the hot water taps on full and drowsily tipped more or less half a bottle of shampoo and rose fragranced body wash into the bathtub. Large, soapy bubbles were immediately produced.
He stifled a yawn with a hand and grabbed a couple of towels from the closet, dumping them on the floor before undressing.
The cold instantaneously smacked him in the chest.
Shivering, he was driven to swiftly submerging in the bath; the bubbles came up to the underside of his chin. His nose twitched at the powerful scent drifting from the surrounding water.
Roses. Dear Merlin, he would smell like he'd been rolling in the petals by the time he was finished with the bath. Oh, well… He could not bring himself to mind just at the moment.
And oh, the warmth, the lovely high temperature…
Harry nearly crooned in relaxation. His stiff muscles, which had been straining in protest a minute ago, loosened comfortably. It felt deliciously good, to have the water rippling over his body, washing away the tension.
Reaching over, he turned off the taps, leaving only one running.
The hot liquid tricked over his neck, his shoulders. It felt so lovely that Harry never wanted to move.
He laid his head down on the edge of the tub and stayed there. His eyelids grew rapidly heavier and finally, he stopped struggling to lift them. His breaths evened out and he was just simply drifting, drifting in the water…
One of the taps continued running.
...
Harry jolted awake, wide green eyes shooting open.
Darkness.
Darkness gathered all around him, and he had no idea where he was…
He flailed, arms lashing out, and water splashed everywhere. The bathtub. He was the bathtub. Oh, right, he had been taking a bath when he…
He berated himself furiously for falling asleep while taking a bath. It was pathetic. The water was cold now, and he might narrowly avoid getting a cold if he got out quickly enough…
His hand slipped out of the tub to reach for the towels he had thrown on the floor earlier… only to grasp water. The liquid slipped through his outstretched fingertips and made an empty plopping sound as it landed back.
Shivering from the cold, Harry stood up in the tub and looked over.
Dear Merlin…
It was a gigantic mess. He could not believe he had been so careless as to leave a tap running while he took his nap. The room had been just about flooded.
The blasted water literally was all over the place, high and low, leaving the formerly orderly room in disarray. The mats were entirely submerged, engulfed, by the knee-high tap water.
Harry cursed, using some of the most obscene language he knew, under his breath. He suspected his wand was underwater too, and it would take forever to find… Damn it.
Sheer foolishness. He could hardly believe –
Brisk knocks rained down on his bathroom door, prompting a yelp of surprise from his throat. He ducked back into the tub, aware he had absolutely nothing to cover himself with.
"Harry?" the knocker, who sounded rather like Tom, shouted. "Are you in there? There is a lock on the door."
"I'm in here."
"Open the door."
"Can't at the moment, sorry," he replied loudly. "The room in practically underwater and –"
"Alohomora!"
The door burst open with a snap, slamming against the wall; as the silhouette of Tom Riddle stalked in, face taut with irritation.
If it was humanly possible, the frustrated expression pasted on the face of the Slytherin Heir turned downright livid when he realised the bottom half of his trousers were drenched with the water that swamped the room.
"Potter," he snarled, "what the hell is the meaning of this?"
Inwardly, Harry heaved a heavy sigh. It was the most embarrassing situation he had gotten trapped in, recently. Tempers were running short.
"Just get rid of it," he snapped.
Even in the darkness, Harry could catch a glimpse of the narrowing blue eyes. "You have certainly done a wonderful job," Tom sneered, brandishing his wand.
"No need to be sarcastic," Harry bit.
"Evanesco."
Every sprinkle of water vanished within the fraction of a second. Including those in the bathtub. With an alarmed squeak, Harry cowered in upon himself.
He counted his lucky stars that the annoying Slytherin Heir was not close enough to see him.
"Get out," he muttered. "And hurl me a towel."
Perhaps it was the harsh tone, or maybe the ingratitude, but something in that comment caused the leftover patience to shatter. Tom Riddle all but exploded in a bout of fury.
"Ordering me around now, Harry?" he inquired pitilessly. "You can go and get your towels yourself if you want them so much."
With that, he turned on his heels and marched out, without as much as a backward glance at the seething teen behind him.
"Fine," Harry retorted, in a mutter to himself, and he grabbed his wand that now lay on the dry bathroom floor.
...
Harry stepped out from the en suite, fully dressed in pristine pyjamas and displaying a towel around his neck that dripped water like a wet scarf. Smiling at the inviting thought that the bed was awaiting his arrival, he moved from the tiles onto carpet.
Only to freeze in shock at the astonishing picture of the two Dark Lords sitting nonchalantly on his bed, engaged in a lively conversation.
The Slytherin Heir stiffened like a wooden plank and sent a glare in Harry's direction the second he caught sight of him.
For his part, Harry ignored the undeserved gesture of hostility and said bluntly, "I was going to sleep – except I do not find the idea of you guys watching me do so… very appealing."
"Is that another way of asking us to clear out?" Tom challenged, acerbically.
Harry feigned thoughtfulness. "Yeah… I suppose it is," he replied sarcastically, determinedly taking no notice of the darkening expression on Riddle's face. "It's just a more courteous method than directly demanding you get out of my room."
"Well –"
"Forgive me for saying so," the Dark Lord interrupted his younger version silkily, "but Harry, you do not appear to me like you are lacking any naps."
"Rather expected," Tom returned, with a barbed tongue flicking infuriatingly at Harry, "especially when one considers that he chose to slumber while taking a bath."
"Excuse me, I did not choose –" Harry made it to the middle of his sentence before he was also cut off by the Dark Lord.
"In that case," Voldemort continued softly, paying no attention to him, "Harry, you may as well indulge us."
He sighed heavily in exasperation. "Are you requesting me to give up my own health in order to give you entertainment? Does not sound like a fair bargain to me."
"Whoever said I was fair?"
Harry snorted rather derisively. "Well, don't look at me."
"Still, I'd prefer you think of my… our," Voldemort added as an afterthought after a glance at Tom, "company as a rare opportunity you ought to embrace than reject. If you enormously wish for us to disappear, we will."
At those words, Harry fidgeted with his hair awkwardly.
"It is unbefitting for one to force their company on another." Voldemort cleared his throat pointedly. "And as a Dark Lord, I have numerous subjects who would be keen to gift me their grandmothers for a minute of my time."
"Um…" Harry flapped a hand dismissively, no longer bothering to waste energy on deterring the two wizards. "Oh, well… I guess an hour will not hurt… at least not as much as giving you my grandmother…"
"I knew you would come to your right mind." The Dark Lord smiled sharply.
Harry uttered a low growl at the back of his throat. "Are you going to tell me what you want to do or not…?"
"I thought we could play some… chess." Voldemort nodded almost imperceptibly at the bed cover beside him. Harry noticed for the first time since he had emerged from the bathroom that there was a chess set on it.
Instinctively, his gaze landed on one of the broad shelves which should have held the set that had been collecting dust from the time when he had initially commenced in a chess game with the dark wizard.
The shelf was now empty.
He looked back at the set clasped in between Voldemort's pale fingers. A sense of familiarity hit him.
Last time he had been creamed so ridiculously by his former guardian that he was too embarrassed to show his face after three rounds in a row of losing. The Dark Lord was a master of chess... it did not look good for Harry.
"Okay," he agreed.
He could not believe he was doing this, assenting to this. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Tom with an arched eyebrow.
"You know you will lose no matter what?"
Harry jerked back at the comment, glowering at Riddle. "Thanks for the encouragement," he drawled, "but it's really not necessary… or welcome, for that matter."
"I'll let you go first, you can be White," Voldemort said, already positioning the pieces on the board.
"Chess is not only simply a game but also training for the mind. It weaves around strategy and manipulation; one has to learn when to sacrifice a pawn for the greater gain. With that said, I doubt you can win him," Tom commented, refusing to shut up.
Harry steadfastly disregarded the scathing remarks. "Pawn to G4."
His chess piece immediately put up a heated argument, shaking its white head in aggravation. "Stupid boy," it was saying. "Appalling move!"
"Be quiet."
"I mean it, little boy, you are going to fail us."
Tom stifled a snicker of laughter and Voldemort, too, appeared like he was biting the insides of his lips in amusement.
"Hold your tongue, will you?" he ordered the piece.
"I do not have a tongue."
"Argh!" Harry hissed. "You will listen to me, you are only a pawn!"
There was an audible sigh, and the wayward thing shuffled forward onto its new position.
"Pawn to E5," Voldemort countered.
"Knight to F3."
"Bishop to B4."
In two moves, the Dark Lord closed in on the game board.
"Pawn to A3." Harry knew the bishop could not eat his pawn because it would get devoured by his defences.
Voldemort moved his bishop away onto square A5.
After twenty minutes of tussling between the chess pieces, Harry realised he had improved majorly, but he feared he would lose the game nonetheless when the dark wizard flashed him a triumphant smile and wiped out his white queen. "One more move and I will be able to check you," Voldemort said gently.
"Merlin…" Harry groaned. "You are going to win."
He was caught by surprise when Tom Riddle, who had been sneering repeatedly at his moves in the last minutes, claimed, "Not so fast, my Lord."
The Slytherin Heir leant over Harry, frowning in consideration, and ordered the rook to move forward by two squares.
The rook was instantly devoured by Voldemort's pawn, and Harry scowled in irritation at the obvious failure of a move.
A moment later, his scowl turned to a small grin when Tom nudged a solitary knight to consume the pawn. He was now in a position to both check the king and capture the queen. Harry gazed in wonder as Voldemort was forced to sacrifice the queen in order to quickly shift the king.
With a brandished sword, the knight shattered the queen.
"Good move," Harry murmured.
Tom's lips twitched. "Voldemort is not the only genius in the room."
Following such a declaration was a battle of cunning and different lines of attack that set Harry's heart racing as he watched the intense exchange.
Suddenly, it was not him against Voldemort anymore.
Tom was versing the Dark Lord.
The chess game played late into the night, lasting over two hours. Riddle and Voldemort both suffered losses and successes and the two indirectly mocked each other with neat conversations – it was rather exciting for Harry to view.
It went far past the time Harry planned to go to bed at, but none of them found it within themselves to quit.
In the end, it had been brought to a stalemate.
Tom only had his king left, alone on the board, without any protection.
Voldemort had nothing but his king and a bishop.
Neither was able to checkmate the other.
It had been a good evening. Harry hid a yawn behind his hand as the two versions of the Dark Lord bid him goodnight and left.
If I can fit it in, and if things go as planned, the next chapter will be extremely exciting. Full of Daphne and Harry... And this time, Daphne might do something so unforgivable that she just may pay with her life. Sorry for the spoiler... *Evil chuckle*
Cheers! Until next chapter! And don't forget to review if you liked it. :)