"Lily," Tom said, his voice authoritative and calm as if there wasn't a doubt in his mind, "I think we shouldn't get married."

The term had started again and with it what had felt like a moment of clarity over the holidays had instead faded as all the technical details of what marriage, what a wedding even, would entail, took hold of him.

First, there was the thought that there would be no hiding this now, no waiting for it to disappear and he could return to his respectable life as a virgin bachelor. No, one way or another, people would hear about this, people other than Minerva would hear about this and they would now always judge him.

Of course, they had always judged him and always would for things far less important than that. He was no stranger to adversity, and, in his own way, had come to embrace it for most of his life. None the less, mudbloodism was different than robbing cradles.

Second, Lily was young, he was not, there were worlds of difference between them and that he'd forgotten that for even a moment (continued to disregard it) would lead them both to their ruin or at least to a messy divorce even if proud and determined Lily Evans refused to see it.

Then of course, there was the wedding itself. Lily had been far too on top of it, had brought by stacks and stacks of wedding planning materials New Years' morning with that determined look that spelled doom for all involved. Standing dumbly on his doorstep, resisting the urge to slam his door in her face, he then realized with horror that he was expected to invite people to this travesty.

He wasn't quite sure what he'd pictured when he'd said his fateful confession of love to Lily Evans, but clearly, he hadn't been thinking.

"It's simple," he'd said as he sipped at his cup of tea that morning, doing his best to ignore stationary, pictures of venues, dresses, caterers, and more, feeling a headache building and wishing he'd never gotten himself into this mess, "We elope."

"We are not eloping," Lily said, firmly, that infuriating stubbornness evident in her voice that was not to be questioned by any man, "It doesn't have to be a large wedding but…"

"One is expected to invite people to weddings," Tom said, eyeing her across the rim of his coffee mug, "Lily, I can name the people I tolerate on one hand, and some of those are stretching it."

Lily flushed then started to count off, "Well, there's Minerva and… And Arthur and…"

"Keep going, Lily," Tom noted drily, feeling as always that cold grating against his soul that came when he was forced to acknowledge how pathetic he truly was, "We barely have enough to witness the damned thing."

She sighed, rubbed a hand through her hair then down over her face, and said, "Tom, we have to have a wedding, my parents will never forgive me if I don't and oh god, my sister… I don't even know what she'd say."

Tom suddenly wished he was drinking something stronger than tea, "It's simple, we elope."

"We are not eloping," she said harshly, then, her eyes so bright and determined she looked down at her supplies again, "We do this and we're doing it bloody right."

"If this forces me to make Arthur Weasley my best man I can't be held responsible for my actions," Tom said, as a sudden, dawning, horror came upon him as he realized it was a tie between him, Minerva, or else somehow Azrael as Lily's distant cousin.

Lily, having taken that unfortunate moment to sip from her own tea, choked and spluttered. Tom, naturally, had absolutely no sympathy for her whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the plans had moved along, a venue had been chosen, Madam Malkins approached for the dress, wedding invitations styled and formatted and ready to be sent out, term had started, and Lily had finally brought up the very sensible yet horrifying point that Tom, at some point before this wedding, would have to meet his future in-laws.

Tom, needless to say, had made it a point to not meet anyone's relatives, but especially Lily's. He'd heard of them, but not often. Lily had grown naturally distant from her parents as almost all muggleborn students did. The summer was simply not enough, and the divide between magic and the mundane was too wide to cross lightly. She spoke of them fondly, when she did talk about them, but it was clear from the way that Lily held herself and moved forward that they had become less and less a part of her life as she had moved through Hogwarts.

It was, perhaps, the reason that Tom had not had to meet them sooner.

However, more interesting than Lily's parents was her mysterious sister. Where Lily had simply drifted from her parents, from her sister, there was a harsh and bitter break. Their relationship had always been seeded with jealousy and dislike, or so Lily said, but Hogwarts had broken something between them and Petunia had never forgiven Lily for going.

In a way this had been nice for Tom, as it meant that he had only ever dealt and had to deal with Lily herself. She was cut off from her former world and ties of kinship, which was perhaps what made it so easy for her to step into his domain. However, apparently, she was not quite estranged enough, because a few weeks into the start of classes she had said gravely that she had asked her parents to arrange a dinner so that they could meet Tom, and to ask Petunia and her husband to come as well.

Which brought Tom this fine January evening, standing on the front doorstep of an ordinary muggle suburban home in England, next to a pale and wide-eyed Lily Evans with a basket of trinkets bought from Diagon Alley in offering, wondering just why he was putting himself through this.

Oh yes, and also thinking he had made a huge mistake.

"You are not allowed to get cold feet because of Petunia," Lily hissed, knuckles white as she gripped her package, "It's entirely too late to back down now."

"Too late?!" Tom hissed in turn, now somewhat affronted at this idea that he'd somehow passed some point of no return, "I never wanted to date you in the first place, I even gave you a very intimidating speech to drive you off."

Lily looked entirely unimpressed, glancing over at him with cold and unsympathetic eyes, "Clearly, Tom, it was not intimidating enough."

Considering Tom had confessed to attempted murder on multiple occasions he wasn't entirely sure how much more intimidating it could have gotten. He was about to remark on that when the door open and there, looking normal and pleasant, were the people who must be Lily's parents.

"Lily," Lily's mother stepped into hug her, taking the basket from her arms as her father did the same, both for the moment ignoring Tom.

"It's so good to see you," they both smiled pleasantly, with warmth and love at Lily, and then they finally glanced at Tom, taking in the sight of him piece by piece and fitting him together in his head, "And your boyfriend, you should have brought him over for Christmas when you came."

For a moment, Tom thought, he perhaps measured up. His suit, while dated, gave him a strange professional and academic edge in the muggle world. His classically handsome and youthful features, also, perhaps did not hurt. For a moment, Tom was an earnest, young, and brilliant professor of some subject or another, who had caught their daughter's eye.

Then Lily opened her mouth.

"Fiancé, actually," this was said with the slightest, almost unnoticeable, grimace.

There was a long, tense, pause. A cold winter wind blew through, rattling the barren trees, and even with heating charms on his clothing Tom could not help but shiver slightly. Tom knew in this perfect singular moment, that whatever hope there had been for an amicable dinner, an amicable wedding, and an amicable relationship with his in-laws was gone.

It was, Tom thought, almost like those old Norman Rockwell paintings, the ones with the rosy, smiling, faces of this stereotypical American family that could not possibly exist. Yes like "Freedom from Want", where this great Caucasian American family was spread out over a white table neatly set, all beaming forward at the place of honor, while the matriarch brought in a roasted turkey with the patriarch benignly smiling behind her as she set it down at the table.

Only, the tableau that Tom Riddle was participating in, was the version that had gone horribly wrong.

Tom and Lily had been seated across from Lily's sister and her husband Vernon Dursley. Together they themselves made a strange almost comical tableau of juxtaposing features, Petunia pale, sharp, and thin while her husband was a man entirely too large and a strange red complexion bordering almost on purple. Petunia Dursley née Evans was also rather pregnant, something that had not brought softness to her features, and seemed absurdly proud of this fact.

She petted the bump on her stomach, smugly looking across at Lily as if she should be cowering in shame over her own flat virgin stomach, and head at a tilt so that Tom was staring up into her nostrils she blathered, "Vernon works at Grunnings you know, he's quite successful, his boss told him the other day that he's going places."

Petunia then looked Tom over, once, then twice, as if she found him entirely lacking. Although the first she'd caught sight of him, after having been impatiently waiting in the living room for her sister to arrive, her expression had been harder to read. Something blank and distant, bitter and resigned, then bristling with anger and loathing.

"What does your Tom do again?" Petunia asked.

"Tom's a professor at Hogwarts," Lily said patiently, whatever she was feeling herself hidden behind a polite and pleasant mask, "I've told you this, Tunia."

Vernon harrumphed then, rather like a walrus before glancing over Tom himself, "An egghead then, you have the look of one."

"Was it the tweed?" Tom asked drily, glancing down at his muggle suit, which to be fair was perhaps close to coming out of date and unfashionable for both wizards and muggles alike. Luckily, on the wizard end, he was so appallingly muggle that no one could tell the difference.

Lily elbowed Tom, glaring ever so slightly, a reminder that his dry wit was neither needed nor appreciated.

At the other ends of the table his prospective in-laws were observing Tom critically and coldly. Clearly, they had known of him (which was mortifying and horrifying in equal measure) and had known that Lily had been seeing someone. However, apparently the recent engagement was not something they had been expecting or wanting.

Tom hated to say it, but he could hardly blame them.

"So, you're engaged now," Petunia sniffed, then narrowing her eyes at Tom, she asked, "A bit soon, isn't it, Lily?"

"We don't want a large wedding," Lily said slowly, as if she was unaware what Petunia was implying, "We just want something small with family and a few close friends and…"

"Put the cart before the horse there, eh Tom?" Vernon cut in with a guffaw, ignoring the way his in-laws bristled at the other end of the table.

"No, actually," Tom said slowly through gritted teeth, feeling for the first time in years that compulsion for mindless violence, to beat Vernon Dursley's face in until the most talented of surgeons could not stitch it back together.

Vernon Dursley just smirked beneath his entirely too large mustache, winking across at Tom, as if all this good fooling around was great between young men of the world like themselves. Or rather, as if Tom had done himself a service, stepped away from his egghead tradition as it were in order to impregnate Lily and proved himself a real man in the process.

Lord, Tom wanted a drink.

The only good thing about this affair was that Lily had yet to inform them exactly how large of an age gap there was between them, and Tom, looking the way he did, looked close to Lily's age himself. So, the worst, and more accurate, accusations had yet to come.

"When's the baby due?" Lily asked, a tad awkwardly which her sister seemed to relish.

"Early summer," Petunia said, lips curving into a smile that perhaps could fool itself into thinking it was happy, but could not quite fool Tom into believing it, "A little boy."

"Dudley, we're going to call him," Vernon cut in between bites of food, "He'll be a fine strapping boy who'll teach all the other kids a thing or two."

"Dudley Dursley," Tom repeated dully, realizing that their son would join the likes of Bruce Banner or Clark Kent, except they would have been the kids on the playground laughing at that stupid bastard named Dudley Dursley.

There was another elbow in Tom's ribs from Lily a sharp and pointed reminder for Tom to hold his barbed tongue.

"Dudley's a fine British name," Petunia said, glaring across at Tom, then sneered as she said, "You should have heard some of the names of Lily's friends from school, why, a boy just down the street was named Severus Snape of all things."

Lily, instinctively, stiffened at the name. Tom squeezed her hand and watched as she relaxed, eyes distant, likely thinking of poor Severus Snape on the island of Azkaban with his soul devoured by demons.

"Having been blessed with the name Tom Riddle," Tom said with a smile, "I can't say I have room to complain."

And at that Petunia had no room to complain either, because for all that Tom's father was undoubtedly a worthless bastard, he had given Tom an unbelievably normal name. Once, it had driven Tom mad, but now he had come to appreciate its bitter irony.

Of course, a Muggle Studies professor, would be named Tom Riddle.

Petunia's eyes slid from Tom to Lily, pinning her to her seat, "Well, I have to say, Lily, you found yourself a charmer."

"Still, it's a shame that you couldn't find yourself a more… normal man," there was a distinctive pause before that word, as if something far worse was implied in it, years of barbed history that they didn't dare to touch, then smiling with a saccharine sweetness at her husband she said, "Someone closer to home, like Vernon."

Lily for a moment said nothing, clenched and unclenched her fingers, then through gritted teeth said, "I like Tom, Tunia, I'm perfectly happy with him."

"Well," Petunia paused, glanced at Tom again then Lily, "You do suit each other, although personally I always thought you'd go for greasy Severus Snape down the street."

And that seemed to be enough, Lily stood, towering over the table even as her pale hands slammed on its surface, "Enough! Petunia, all I'm asking is for one dinner and one day, that is all I want from you! Can't you even pretend to…"

"To what?" Petunia cut her off, also standing, one hand on her stomach and the other pointing at Lily, "Pretend you're not a freak? Lily, I've been pretending for eight years that you weren't a freak but just look at you!"

"Girls!" came a shout from one end of the table, their mother horrified and rising.

"You pretend you're so high and mighty in that freak school of yours and then you're going and getting knocked up by your own high-school maths teacher," Petunia sneered, motioning to Tom with one hand as if everything vile and depraved about him could be summed up in that one gesture.

(And if there was one thing that could be worse about this situation, Tom thought, it was that. At the very least, if there was a reason he was still a virgin, then it was so that Lily Evans could not possibly be pregnant from him.)

"For God's sake, Petunia, I am not pregnant!" Lily spat, eyes narrowing and burning through her muggle sister, "And even if I was pregnant I would never get married solely because of that!"

Then, although Lily did not say it, her eyes landed on Petunia's own evidence of pregnancy, then wandered over to Vernon Dursley, an unsaid accusation hovering in the air. Petunia, without another word, threw her glass of water onto her sister.

"Petunia!"

Lily stood there stunned and wet, then, turning to look at her parents both glaring at their other daughter though perhaps not as much as they should have been, she stepped back and pushed her chair in. Then, looking down at Tom, she said, "Let's go."

Tom opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say, but then closed it realizing that whatever he could add to this situation would no doubt just be fuel for the fire. So, with that, with some awkwardness, he stood and pushed his chair in as well.

"Thank you, for having me over for dinner," Lily said slowly, coldly, without inflection, "You'll get the wedding invites by owl probably sometime next week."

She opened her mouth, trying to find more words, but then failed and shut it again shaking her head. And with that she was storming out the door with Tom eagerly falling in step with her. She did not apparate right away, but rather, with hands in her pocket marched down the suburban streets.

"You know," Tom said softly, "You don't have to marry me."

She stopped abruptly, whirled towards him, "What?"

"All this, it will all go away if you change your mind," Tom said, nodding his head back towards the house, "As it is I think your parents will never forgive me."

She laughed, a bitter resigned thing, and then smiled up at him, "Tom, I'm not sure they've ever really forgiven me for going to Hogwarts. I… I won't live my life based on my parents' approval, and certainly not Petunia's."

"That sounds rather lonely," Tom noted but she just shook her head again.

"No, how can it be lonely?" She motioned towards him, "I have you."

Author's Note: I could have made this a giant chapter but then... Well... Either way expect a ridiculous wedding chapter to compliment this ridiculous chapter, though with a tad more angst.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter