"Come on, Azrael, you can't deny all of divination."

A half-forgotten Martian summer night, the air less frigid, the flowers blooming and twinkling like fallen stars caught in the tall grass. Azrael had been tinkering with some contraption, not paying Tom or the wine between them any mind, while Tom tried to pester him for attention being the bored and under stimulated diplomat that he was.

The magical school had yet to be built, Tom had yet to accidentally become immortal, and it seemed as if he might stay on that red planet forever.

Azrael spared him a glance, a raised eyebrow, and nothing more than that.

"I realize you have no respect for the subject but even you have to admit that there are prophecies that have come true." The eyebrows raised higher and Tom was rewarded with Azrael setting aside his work to look him straight in the eye.

"Do you really want to have this conversation?" He asked.

"Yes, I think it's a perfectly fine topic for conversation. I actually find it a little odd that you're so uncomfortable with it." But then Tom always found a lot of things odd about Azrael, this wouldn't be the first and wouldn't be the last either.

"I'm deathly allergic to prophecies." Azrael quipped with a rather typical non-explanation, you could always count on Azrael to be needlessly and infuriatingly cryptic.

"But you don't deny that they do exist." Tom pointed out.

"Prophecies are… complicated. They're snapshots of the universe, of time, convoluted by translation into human language. They do tend to be true, but only if the universe isn't altered between one frame and the next… My mere existence has thwarted thousands of prophecies." Azrael said with a sigh before continuing, "But I really don't like the idea of inevitability, not only that, I don't really believe in it either."

Azrael motioned loosely over to Tom, "Just look at you, nothing about your life has been inevitable. You've chosen everything for yourself and wandered so far from what anyone would have prophesized you to be, even yourself."

"Is that a good thing?"

And Azrael had smiled, a true almost human smile, one that made his eyes spark in the moonlight, that strange ephemeral green that one only saw in spell light, "It's the best thing there is."

Perhaps, Azrael was right about inevitability, perhaps nothing was inevitable, perhaps prophecies were only crude glimpses of what was most likely to be. To some extent Tom would come to agree with that, because very few things in his life seemed fixed, or seemed necessary to come true.

Tom never would have seen himself as a Muggle Studies professor and he was fairly certain that no one would have seen himself as that either.

But there was a darker, deeper, side to inevitability. It was something that could not be avoided, which was led up to by seemingly irrelevant and inconsequential events, which perhaps could not have been predicted but by that point would have been worthless to predict either.

Tom had once taken the hand of a very foreign Hufflepuff, released and killed a basilisk, lived and been banished from Mars, and somehow all of these events had led to him having no choice but to accept the Muggle Studies position. That was inevitability, in its strange warped form.

And there was yet another string of seemingly meaningless events.

Lily Evans became his student, he noticed she had Azrael's eyes, every shade of green that had existed in his were somehow in hers. Arthur Weasley enthusiastically and stubbornly wormed his way into becoming Tom's only apprentice after his graduation. Sirius Black and James Potter both graduated to become successful aurors. Severus Snape apprenticed himself to an apothecary and waited, biding his time, and waiting for the moment to strike. Lily Evans decided, on her graduation, to become Slughorn's apprentice and stay in the castle.

And once, many years before, Azrael had created a device which he had cryptically labeled as insurance and never explained further.

These events, should have had little to no impact on his life, perhaps Arthur alone as his apprentice would be memorable. The others were simply passing through, going from one part of their lives to the next, while he abided as he now always would.

But they didn't remain irrelevant, they built, invisibly upon one another until something inevitable happened because of it.

This was the story of how Tom Marvolo Riddle destroyed the universe without choice, without reason, and without the slightest idea he was capable of such a thing.


"Congratulations, Arthur, you get to teach your first class." Tom said, not really bothering to pay attention to Arthur but instead flicking through his muggle bought books and making sure there was nothing too incriminating among them.

There were a few science fiction novels which, when the ministry's department of magical printing security had finally gotten around to reading, had been declared contraband. As such whenever he bought anything, or whenever that list was updated, Tom had to make sure that only the right sort of books were on display. After all, at the mercy of his own ministry record, Tom's office and apartment were one of the first places they always started looking.

If Arthur was offended by this lack of attention then Tom didn't really care, because Arthur should have gotten over it by the time he was fourteen, and if he was going to wear outdated muggle clothing like top hats then he'd better get used to no one taking him seriously.

"Not the… Not the introductory class, right? I mean, I didn't mind it but building motors, engines, and motorcycles was a lot more interesting."

Tom spared him a dry, unimpressed, look complete with raised eyebrows all while he surreptitiously removed Animal Farm from the shelf. Although, what was so offensive about Animal Farm he wasn't sure, maybe the ministry thought it was talking about them, since no one in the ministry seemed to know what a communist even was. It just went to show that while the ministry tried to be oppressive they were just so incompetent that it ended up more obnoxious than it was unsettling.

Arthur just smiled uncertainly back, his eyes begging for Tom to say something else.

"I don't make the rules, Arthur, I just nod my head and go along with them." Tom replied, and turned his attention back to the shelf. The rest seemed… fine enough. Although, now that he thought about it, since he had to do this every year they were probably basing the list off of his collection. So chances were everything else on the shelf would have to be relocated at some point.

Behind him he heard a groan of despair, "Who made those rules?"

"Whoever made all the other time honored traditions that Hogwarts abides by. Blame whoever came up with the sorting hat, that's what I do." Tom said, because he really couldn't believe that Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin all got around a table and thought it would be a great idea to make a singing hat sort people into their own personal clubs. Surely, they must have had more dignity than that.

"But I like the sorting hat…" Before Arthur could finish that damning and ignorant sentence, because no one in their right mind could like the sorting hat, Tom continued.

"An apprentice starts first by teaching introductory classes, then in a year we can add higher level electives on whatever subject you want, all while you do your own independent research and help me with my own. That's simply how it goes." And honestly not worth arguing about, although as much as Tom hated Dumbledore the man probably wouldn't have any complaints, it'd be the board of directors (who already were guffawing over a Muggle Studies apprentice) who'd have none of it.

"But I… I don't remember any muggle history!" Arthur cried, his despair almost comical with the top hat, "Alright, if I have to teach the basic course… let me change something! You don't have to teach history then, right?"

"No, but it makes more sense to." It was, after all, an introductory course.

The way it had been described to Tom, in his initial interview with Dippet, was a course that introduced wizards to the muggle world in its entirety. Tom took this to mean a very broad course on what wizards defined as muggle culture, so this meant where muggles had separated from wizards, how muggles governed themselves, cultural things. Later they could nitpick about physics and engineering.

"Alright then, I'll change it and I'll…"

Tom cut him off again, this time with a glare, "Just teach the goddamned history, Arthur."

Arthur paled then wilted, apparently possessing enough self-preservation to be terrified of Tom, or at least when it didn't concern getting an apprenticeship (because Tom had tried decently hard to dissuade him).

"You didn't think it would all be skittles and beer, did you?" Tom asked.

"I don't even understand what that means." Arthur said, his face almost as red as his hair from the embarrassment, and without sympathy Tom pulled out some of the larger history textbooks he kept in his office and dumped them into Arthur's hands.

"Read your notes, read these, watch documentaries, and then teach the bloody course." Tom said ending with a chillingly polite smile, one which exudes pleasantness as well as lethal disregard in the same moment.

"Right, will do… Tom?" Arthur looked at him frantically, "Do I… Do I call you Tom?"

There was a moment of silence before Arthur pressed bravely onwards, ever the Gryffindor, "No, really I… I mean, I can't exactly call you Professor Riddle now, can I? It would be weird… Not that calling you Tom isn't weird but… It is your name, so I call you Tom, right? Right?"

Tom didn't answer him, merely kept smiling, which Arthur seemed to take as a hint to wander off with a dazed and alarmed expression as he took in the fact that he was going to have to sound like an authority figure to thirteen year olds and actually understand centuries worth of European history.

Which was good because it left Tom in peace to decide if a Lovecraft's Dream Cycle was too damning to leave in the work place, despite being written long before Azrael had become emperor of Ubik. All the same there was something about the unfathomable horror that was Azathoth that some bureaucrat at the ministry wouldn't like.

Or it would have, if there hadn't been a tentative knock on the door and then Lily Evans stepping in. "Hi profess… Tom, Merlin it seems I was here just yesterday as a student."

He honestly hadn't expected her to stick around, he hadn't known what she would do instead, but the idea of Lily Evans somehow staying in Hogwarts had been bizarre. But there she was, Horace Slughorn's apprentice, walking in through his doorway as a coworker instead of as a student.

"A few months ago." Which to Tom almost seemed like yesterday, time moved so fast and so slow when you had so much of it, it seemed like yesterday that Lily Evans was thirteen years old. Some of that girl still lingered in her, the smile, her eyes, that overeager willingness to learn that was somehow endearing rather than obnoxious.

"Right, I'm really not that old after all." She said, flushing slightly, and then said, "I saw Arthur just walk out, he looked a little busy."

"He's teaching a course in the fall and he has a lot of work to do." Tom said shortly, forcing his attention back to the books, and with a sigh deciding that he wasn't going to chance Lovecraft after all.

He needed nice, safe, bland, but somehow entertaining books for his office. He'd have to make an effort to find some, if only so he didn't have to keep hiding is literature all the damn time. It wasn't as if the government was serious about all of this yet, but still, it was always better for Tom to err on the side of caution.

"Oh, I am too, Professor Slug… I mean, Horace, is having me teach first year Potions next year. I hope it goes well, I think it will but, well I've tutored people before but…"

"You'll do fine." Tom cut her off before she could mutter out whatever other unfounded insecurities she had about herself, "You always do."

Lily Evans really had been one of the most promising students to come out of Hogwarts in decades, often overshadowed by her male counterparts, but from what he'd seen and heard he might even say that she was one of the best since he himself had gone to Hogwarts.

"I… Thanks, Tom." And then she smiled, and for a moment he wasn't staring at her at all, but instead Azrael many years ago smiling back at him.

Only, he was also still seeing her, seeing the red in her hair and the almost unnoticeable freckles across her nose, and looking at her and the way the light brought out her eyes he felt his heart stutter.

(And all he could think then, as he looked at her, was oh god no.)

He quickly tried to shake off the feeling and move on to something else, "Did you need something?"

"No, not really, I just wanted to see you and Arthur and ask how things were going."

Well, Minerva did that, but no one else really did. And when Minerva dropped by it was usually to harass him into attending a quidditch game or chaperoning the Hogsmede trip. No one ever stopped by his office to just… stop by.

"…It's going well." He said, and judging by her expression she found that answer just as awkward as he did.

"Oh, good. I um…"

"You know, you can call Riddle, if it makes you more comfortable." Tom suddenly blurted, because really, he'd never had this issue growing up. No one had called him Tom, well Azrael had, and later Minerva, but he'd always been Riddle.

"What, I no, I mean Tom is your…"

"I really don't have a preference, if Tom is too casual…"

"No! No, it's not too…too casual, I mean, I think I should call you Tom." She finished, smiling again uncertainly, but with genuine feeling behind it instead of simply awkwardness of a conversation that had long since gone off the rails.

(And he'd seen that expression before, he'd seen that and catalogued it, and how could she look so much like him…)

"Well, anyways, glad I stopped by and… And we should do something sometime, I mean, now that we're coworkers. So, yeah, see you later then."

And before he could make a word of protest she was out the door, and he was sitting there, dumbfounded with his books feeling like something had just whacked him over the head.

He'd get used to the feeling.


Alone, at night, when he'd finally run out of other things to distract himself with, pacing in his bedroom the irony did not escape him that Tom was saying to himself all the things that Azrael had so carelessly said to him.

He was too old, she was too young, he had too much baggage, too many things she would never be able to comprehend and shouldn't bother trying too.

Rehearsing them so that he could say them to the hypothetical Lily Evans who probably wasn't even interested, or if she was, it was a superficial shallow interest at best.

Because when she looked at him she saw someone only a little older than her, a man in his mid-twenties, she didn't see someone fast approaching sixty. And even then, even if she comprehended his real age, she didn't know him and she never would.

She would never learn about the basilisk lying dead in the Chamber of Secrets, she'd never learn about Azrael and what he'd been before he was an emperor, she'd never hear about everything he was and everything he wasn't. So anything that there was must be superficial, there wasn't room for anything else.

The fact that he felt the need to rehearse this rejection speech was ridiculous because there wasn't anything to reject.

He wasn't even really attracted to her, he just… He was reminded of phantoms, he looked at her and saw everything he couldn't have, and hadn't been brave enough to confront for years out of fear of rejection. The fear which, ultimately, had been completely justified.

So it wasn't…

(But as the year went on, as she'd show up out of nowhere, dragging him to see the latest muggle film or telling him about the book he had to read, her eyes dancing, seeming all too interested, it'd grow a little worse.

He liked her, not just because she reminded him of Azrael, but because of her. She glowed with optimism, with determination, with righteousness, and when she looked at him he saw something much different than a failed Muggle Studies professor reflected in her eyes.

It'd grow a little worse and there wasn't anything he seemed to be able to do to stop it.)


"Can you believe that I have to go to Slug Club meetings?"

He didn't find any of these walks around the lake or through Hogsmede with Lily Evans unpleasant. He'd watch her face for her smile, for her eyes to spark, and for a moment it would be like everything fell away.

(And then he'd be momentarily horrified at himself.)

Even when it was winter, the snow was piled high, the lake was frozen and any sensible human being would have been huddling around a fireplace, he still didn't mind being out here with her and listen to her vent about working for Slughorn.

He felt this was a bad sign.

"You decided to become Horace Slughorn's apprentice, what did you expect?" Because really, there were reasons Tom went out of his way to avoid his old head of house. Not that Slughorn really went out of his way to see Tom anymore. Despite being a professor Tom had failed to live up to Slughorn's expectations as youngest mudblood minister of magic and he was probably still slighted by the fact that Tom had stopped going to those stupid parties. Which, if that meant he didn't have to talk to Slughorn, he would be happy if the man remained insulted forever.

"I haven't been to a Slug Club meeting since… I don't know when, my fifth year!" She placed her head into her hands, groaning, "And I can't exactly say no this time because he's basically the one paying my salary."

"If it makes you feel better Arthur Weasley now has to fill in the extra parts for the annual detention Shakespeare festival." It was one of the years where they did a play actually needing a larger cast, and as a result, Arthur was desperately trying to find some brat who was a bit too obnoxious in class or else face utter humiliation in the role of Puck. Some might say, that sort of hell, was worth seven years of suffering through Slug Club parties.

"I honestly rather would do that… I mean, I know I'm not that much older but… I've graduated, I'm working, I should be researching or preparing classes not drinking champagne with… With Sirius' little brother!" This seemed to be the real sticking point, although from what Tom had glimpsed of Regulus he was much more tolerable and mild mannered than his older brother had been. That probably wasn't what Lily wanted to hear though.

Although what she wanted to hear was beyond him. Because there were times she'd just come up to him and complain, and he'd let her, and they'd go for these walks and they'd be enjoyable but he'd just wonder why he was listening to this.

Maybe he just enjoyed hearing someone else's pain in dealing with Slughorn. That seemed like a reasonable explanation for his complete lapse in sanity. Better that then the fact that it didn't seem to matter what Lily wanted to talk to him about or where they wanted to go because he almost always ended up saying yes.

"I've found, that the best way to inspire respect, is to be absolutely terrifying. If they think that you would kill them in a heartbeat, they're liable to pay a little more attention." Tom said, and she laughed, she laughed like it was a joke (and while it'd sort of been one it had also been true). Then, like it usually happened, he was smiling back feeling lighter at the fact that he'd somehow made her happy.

For a moment they were silent, her smiling at him, him back at her, walking around the lake together, while inside his head he kept asking himself why this was happening and hadn't he gotten over these sorts of emotions when he was sixteen?

Even with Azrael, it'd only been this distracting in his fifth year, after Azrael had disappeared into the warzone it'd at least… not faded but he'd been able to push it aside. Here it was roaring back, but worse, because she encouraged it. She smiled back, laughed, blushed, and it made it all that harder to repress everything.

"Tom, what was it like for you growing up, I mean, being muggle born?" Lily said, jolting him from his thoughts.

"Difficult." Tom said, and he was tempted to leave it there, he always did with others. Arthur had asked and Tom had made it clear that he didn't want to talk about it, but somehow that resolve melted when he looked at her and he found himself saying, "I was an orphan during the depression and I wasn't… well liked."

"Oh, I'm sorry. That was… I guess that was pretty out there, you don't have to…"

"It was a long time ago." He said shortly, not adding on that he had liked them just as little, and that ultimately it had perhaps been for the best. That orphanage was a part of his shadow, clinging to him, part of his inescapable past that had once shamed him so much.

"You probably wanted to know about Hogwarts though."

She nodded.

"I was in Slytherin, so it's a bit different from your experience… Ultimately I would say that I was overlooked for my peers. In Hogwarts, by being an exceptional student, I managed to gain attention and prestige but no one expected me to do anything outside of it."

"You know, I found your academic records, in the trophy room." She said before saying, "You didn't tell me you had anything up there."

He'd honestly forgotten about it, the only trophy he remembered was Minerva's, for a special unnamed service done to the school.

"Well, considering it didn't help with anything I didn't feel the need to mention it. If it ever becomes useful I'll let you know."

She said nothing for a few moments, and finally said, "I think you're the only one who really understands that."

"Understands what?" How pointless his NEWT scores had ended up being, and ultimately that really had depended on the fact that he'd more or less gone into politics, if he'd wanted to work for the goblins or have some sort of apprenticeship they would have been much more useful.

"Others, they tell me I have so many opportunities but… I really don't, do I? I'm glad I'm an apprentice, I like it, but… Did you know James Potter was promoted to captain? He sent me a letter about it, still thinks I'm going to marry him or some nonsense. He's only been an auror for a year and he's already a captain." She scoffed before adding, "Sirius Black too, I mean… I always thought you'd have to be older for that."

"Life is patently unfair." Tom said before adding a wry and unsympathetic, "Get used to it."

She smiled, laughing a little, "Well, maybe they do deserve it. They were always great at Defense Against the Dark Arts. I just can't see that idiot Potter taking anything seriously."

Tom couldn't either, not when they were so soon out of Hogwarts, not without something drastically life changing confronting him.

While thinking on Potter and Black and what they were up to now he felt a hand slide into his, stunned he looked over at Lily who was smiling back, "I guess we muggle borns will just have to stick together, won't we?"

And unwittingly, without any real thought, he found himself smiling back.


"Tom," Minerva said at one point, inside the overcrowded Three Broomsticks on a chaperone trip to Hogsmede, having a conversation that Tom would much rather not have in the Three Broomsticks, "You're not… You're not dating Lily Evans, are you?"

It was mostly his fault, Minerva had tried to have this conversation three times before, and he'd always wormed his way out of it with a skill that amazed him.

"No, that would be… creepy and bizarre." Tom settled on, only to meet Minerva's highly skeptical expression, which she had every right to because Tom felt that he'd been somehow manipulated into dating Lily Evans.

He'd certainly never woken up one morning and thought to himself that it'd be a great idea to date his former student. Although whether their relationship could be called dating was a stretch, they'd never kissed, the most they'd done was hold hands and sure he looked at her but then she was attractive and that didn't mean anything.

She was still friends with Severus Snape, although she'd confessed that they just didn't understand each other anymore, that she felt as if Severus was slipping away from her. He'd sometimes let things slip, say things, about muggles and muggle borns and she'd just look at him and it'd take him a second or two to realize that he'd said it to her. Regardless, if she'd ever ended up seriously dating anyone, he'd always thought it would have been her childhood friend, Severus.

(Or so he told himself, almost desperately, when it seemed to be becoming too real.)

"That's what I thought, but then you always sit together at the quidditch matches…"

"I sit with you." Tom interjected, although technically he sat between Lily and Minerva, and the fact that he was thinking of Lily Evans now as Lily and had been doing so for well over a month was a bad sign.

"She brings you gifts, you bring her gifts, and you smile at her." This last one was said in an accusing manner, eyes narrowed and finger pointing towards him, as if this was the most damning evidence of all.

"Minerva, have I ever really smiled at anyone?" Tom asked.

"You smile at her! I've seen it, you two smile at each other over the staff table like two lovesick students in spring time!"

"It's winter." Tom pointed out.

"I know very well it's winter!" Minerva responded before returning like a hound with a bone to the topic, "You're avoiding the issue, Tom! She's eighteen years old, Tom."

Which was a technically legal age even if it was much too young for him, but he wasn't admitting to anything, because nothing had been done with his conscious consent. It had all just… snowballed out of his control, "Yes, she is eighteen."

"She was your student!"

"Yes, also true." Tom replied blandly before regarding her, "Are we stating true if somewhat random facts about our coworkers? I'll go next, Albus Dumbledore has a beard."

Minerva looked thoroughly unamused and didn't even bother to respond to that, she just glared, and if he was anyone else he would probably find it intimidating. As it was, given the fact that he probably was somehow, inexplicably, dating Lily Evans he just raised his eyebrows in response and put on his best poker face.

"You're too old for her, Tom." She finally said, flatly, without any room to argue against it. Which was fair because that statement was blatantly true, he was too old for her.

He'd even tried to tell Lily that, both subtly and straight to her face. Reminding her that he'd graduated Hogwarts in 1945 but for whatever reason that never seemed to deter her. Even though, by definition, he was starting to become a creepy old man.

"Well, then, it's a good thing we're not dating."

And that was the point Minerva must have reached her limit because suddenly Tom was soaked in butterbeer, sticky, golden, unpleasant butterbeer, "Was that really necessary?"

"You're being a pig."

"I thought we covered that I am always a pig." He responded, blinking, reaching for that pull of magic and wandlessly cleaning himself. There was nothing worse than being soaked in sticky beverages.

"Alright then, if you aren't dating her, then what's this really about?" Minerva said, as if he would really admit to this so easily or she would even believe what he said. Still, it wasn't as if they'd had conversations different than this.

"…I appear to be having a midlife crisis." Tom finally said, "I hear they're quite common."

Minerva looked sorely tempted to reach over and throw his still full butter beer into his face, Tom decided it was best to drink it himself before she got the chance, leaving her to silently stew at him waiting for him to admit to something he wasn't entirely certain was happening.

Instead of bickering about this she sighed, "What's different about her, Tom? Why now, why her? Don't get me wrong, she was one of my favorite students, and probably always will be but… You've had so many opportunities Tom and with so many more… age appropriate people."

He considered denying it again, but that was liable to get him hexed. Besides, Minerva was stubborn and would never let up on the topic if he didn't directly confront it, and that just sounded exhausting.

So, instead he said, "Her eyes."

"Her eyes?" Minerva asked.

It was more than her eyes but that was the easiest to identify, because it'd really been the first thing he'd noticed about her, her green eyes. However, he wasn't about to get into all of that with Minerva McGonagall of all people, so he just offered her a thin smile, stood and left her with the bill without even waving goodbye.

He'd probably pay for that later, figuratively and literally, but then as he'd had to remind Minerva every once in a while he really wasn't the moral upstanding citizen she thought he was. And if that meant skipping out on the bill and the incredibly awkward conversation about his feelings towards former students he'd take it.

Because no one should have to endure that sort of conversation even if they'd somehow, completely against their own will, been somehow coerced into dating said former students.

Author's Note: Yeah... I have the distinct feeling I'll get a lot of flack for this one but on the other hand this chapter has been planned for a long time. You know, when I got into this story, I had no idea how seriously people take the pairing/slash business, really, I've learned so much... But anyways, for those of you tired of canon-ness this chapter, the last few, and the next couple are really building up to... Tom destroying the universe. Because I realized while I like pulling the rug out from people's legs perhaps this one deserves a bit of preparation. But the good news is Azrael's probably coming back next chapter, for realz this time.

Also, for those of you who read "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" two side fics came out a while back, "Lily and the Art of Divine Responsibility" and "Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun" which are both crossovers with the "Lily" universe. So if you're into that check those out.

Thanks for the reviews, they're great, and really are what remind me to update things. Feel free to review, or complain if you want to.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.