"If you're about to accuse me of having a shotgun wedding, Minerva, I will point out that my future brother-in-law has beaten you to the punch in a manner that frankly, you can't even hope to top," Tom had decided, on approaching Minerva regarding the upcoming date of the wedding which really was starting to loom over him like some great unavoidable wave, that the best defense was a good offense.

Mostly because flat denial was no longer possible, and neither was crawling out the window of the Three Broomsticks and leaving her with the bill. Tom was officially left out of reasonable options. The trouble was… Well, if it was anyone else besides himself he'd have some truly caustic and scathing remarks along with a whole barrel filled with unflattering unspoken opinions.

The great irony was that this was his life, the life he would have mocked relentlessly as a child and adolescent, the kind he had thought suited to the thoughtless masses and yet the life he had somehow ended up in despite himself.

He had never once predicted this, the idea of being a tyrant, being minister of magic, or even failing all of this and dying tragically young and in the gutter (that dread fear of being passed over and forgotten and leading an utterly meaningless existence), had all been far more possible than becoming a humble muggle studies professor preparing for his poorly timed wedding to a woman decades younger than him.

All of this, of course, bringing him to Minerva's office after office hours were done, interrupting her yet again looking over the Gryffindor quidditch roster with far more focus and attention than was healthy.

"Shotgun wedding?" Minerva balked, looking at the elegant invitation (Lily's design, of course, for all of Tom's many gifts the arts had not necessarily been among them) Tom had placed in her hand with wide eyes and a floored impression, "Tom, I don't even know what that…"

"Muggle phrase," Tom explained, remembering that Minerva likely had no real idea what a shotgun even was, "The idea is that the man who impregnates the woman with the intention of a fun one-night stand or two is then forced under threat of painful death to have some honor and marry her. Which, I will remind you, I did not do."

Minerva's mouth hung open ever so slightly, and from the look on her face even quidditch was forgotten, a feat not to be taken lightly. She then looked back at the card, at the date, then back at Tom again who was now taking this moment to look suave, sophisticated, and entirely above reproach in the seat across from her desk.

"Merlin, Tom, you didn't..."

"I didn't," Tom interjected over her own words with the small and rather lame explanation of, "There just seemed little point in waiting."

There really hadn't at the time, because at the time it hadn't so much been the idea of the marriage or the wedding through his mind as what came after, the decision he had slid into, the buildup, had mostly been to saying it beyond that lingering in this in between state had seemed obnoxious and distasteful.

Later, with all the planning, it was still obnoxious and distasteful, and he was coming to the opinion that this was one of those things that was best done quickly and painfully so that at the very least it was done with.

"Little point in…" Minerva's eyebrows lowered, she pointed him, and for a surreal moment, though they were the same age and by all rights should look the same, with his face and hers, she looked a little like a chiding and disapproving mother, "Tom, you have barely even admitted to dating the girl! And now you're getting married?!"

"Time flies, doesn't it?" Tom mused, as if it wasn't spiraling out of control rather quickly, but instead simply the moving forward of time in a manner that neither of them could have ever suspected.

They just grow up so fast, don't they?

And just like all those years ago, Minerva, when you pushed the right buttons in the right order, was so very easy to rile up, "That is not an appropriate response, Tom!"

"Yes, I do believe you're right," Tom said, sending her a chiding look in turn as if it was he that was terribly disappointed in her, "I believe the words you're looking for, Minerva, are, 'Congratulations, Tom, I'm very happy for you."

She stopped, took in a deep breath then let it out again, then, slowly, too slowly, she said, "Tom, I would be happy for you, if you were not an overgrown child stuffed into the body of a fully grown man! As it is, I heartily disapprove of your choices and think that you should spend some time thinking through your actions."

Ah, the tried and true method of, "Sit in the corner like a naughty little boy and think about what you've done!" If Tom were a student he had no doubt that by this point he would have lost fifty house points and have ten detentions in a row for good measure. Also, an irony, given that Tom had not once earned himself a detention while actually a student in Hogwarts.

Tom could only sigh as he looked at her, and recognize that for all their friendship, and for all the years of Hogwarts they had shared, he and Minerva lived on different planes. Because for anyone else she would have more than a point, one Tom would bow to no matter his pride or humiliation and yet…

And yet there were conversations that Minerva did not know about and never would, so many small and large details of his life that she would never know, and so at best the Tom Riddle she saw was a pleasant illusion.

Lily, for better or worse, didn't, and Tom found that he couldn't let that go a second time.

Minerva's advice, her warnings, her frustrations with him… They did not and never would apply to the Tom Riddle beneath all of that.

"Well, approving of my actions or not, you are invited," Tom said, nodding to the invitation in question, "More, due to my unfortunate circumstances of being friendless and kinless, I'm afraid that you're my first choice for best man."

Otherwise it really was down to Arthur Weasley as Tom wasn't sure how he would pull off, let alone if he wanted, Azrael standing beside him then. As it was, there was an invitation put aside for him but that…

There was feeling there, and as of now, an invitation alone was as far as Tom was willing to go.

She gave him a truly withering and disapproving look before it slinked into one of resignation, "Sometimes, Tom, you are worse than any student I have ever had."

Tom opened his mouth, about to point out the oh so recently graduated self-proclaimed marauders but then wisely shut it. Sirius Black's murder, Severus Snape's trial, all still hung in the air like an ever-present smog even months later. It might take years, even, for the air to truly clear.

So instead he simply gave that wry and charming smile, "I do try."

"You would do better to try less," Minerva snorted, turning back to her quidditch roster.

His smile grew a little less wry and a tad fonder as he thought back to the subject matter in question, namely, the indomitable Lily Evans, "Well, I can't take all the credit, it does take two to tango after all. And I won't hesitate to admit, in this case at least, I'm hardly leading the dance."

Say what you would about Lily Evans, but from the beginning, even with opposition on all sides and continuing to mount, she had not once truly faltered or buckled and reached her goal against all the odds even Tom would have placed against her.

"Oh, please, Tom, do not go blaming her in this," Minerva said without a shred of sympathy for Tom's plight.

"Why not?" Tom asked before leaning back in his chair with a shrug and expanding, "If it were up to me I would have remained a steady and stagnant bachelor. I will give credit where credit is due."

He had given her outs time and time again, more than enough reason to doubt him and turn around, even now he still kept the door ajar and yet… Yet he didn't think she would take it, not just because of pride, foolishness, and determination but something brighter and purer than that.

Perhaps it was this idea though that Tom as the older party, or simply as the man, played the role of the seducer and cradle robber which Tom frankly thought did Lily a disservice. However, no one had clamored around for his opinion, just as they never clamored for his opinion on his own damn subject.

It had become something of a theme in Tom's life, no one listening to a word he said on subjects in which he was actually a figure of authority.

"Regardless, you will come, won't you?"

She sighed, looked across at him, at once fond and exasperated, "Of course I'll come, I can't have you standing there embarrassed and alone with only your apprentice there."

"God forbid," Tom said holding off a hand as if to stave off that unsightly future, though to be fair, having two standing on his side of the aisle was hardly better. However, even stretching his list of tolerable acquaintances as far as it could go, two it had remained.

He was, at best, on decent terms with most of his fellow staff members. Though Tom's eccentricities, his own standoffish introversion, and that otherworldly air he carried with him since Ubik kept all these relationships at a healthy distance.

Slughorn and his relationship had chilled into a jovial false and rather strained politeness due to Tom's swift spiral downwards from the best student Hogwarts had ever seen to the Muggle Studies Professor. Well, that, and snubbing the Slug Club invitations had not done Tom any political favors. Tom had no doubt that at his ridiculous parties he would every once in a while drop some joke about dear old Professor Riddle, the nutty professor, and you never would have believe what he'd been like when he was a student in Slytherin (yes, Slytherin, with Muggle Studies you'd think it had been Hufflepuff).

It would be a cold day in hell when he invited Albus Dumbledore.

Thus it really did dwindle down to Minerva, Arthur Weasley, Azrael, and Lily herself of the people who had any real importance in Tom's life.

There was something to be said about not even running out of fingers on one hand to count off the number of people who, in even the barest capacity, could be said to know you.

Still, for all the dreams he had once had, all his ambitions and the clear visions of grandeur he had entertained himself, somehow (perhaps simply because this was the life he had lived), he couldn't imagine it having been any different.

And two, perhaps three, at a wedding could be more than enough.

"Do you think he'll come?"

They were at Tom's house once again. For whatever reason Lily seemed to like Tom's small sparse house in Hogsmeade far more than her own flat in London. Perhaps it was merely the amount of space, perhaps it was his basement of delightful contraband, but Tom suspected it was something more than that.

She would look at the walls as if searching for him inside them, in the small assortment of holiday gifts Minerva had graciously bestowed upon him through the years, the state of his silverware and china, how he stored food in the fridge, as if somewhere beneath the barren and bleak nature of his house was Tom standing in disguise.

Such as now, where they sat not in his basement but just at his kitchen table with two cups of tea and a stale collection of biscuits between them. Looking out of his window into the night, where, somewhere travelling with only a thought and a wish, a letter raced between one world and the next.

From Tom's pen and into an emperor's outstretched hand, while with the other, he controlled Mars and the cosmos…

Tom considered Lily's question, considered the god emperor Death who had once been his friend and perhaps still was when it counted, and Azrael's words to him that were still so poignant and bitter, "Yes, I think he will."

Certainly, it'd be a ridiculous amount of effort and a bit infuriating if he'd gone through asking Tom for an invitation only to say he couldn't come.

However, there was no written response, and Tom wasn't sure he expected one. No, perhaps he expected Azrael simply to show up, disguised as Harry Evans once again and slip into the crowd with none the wiser.

Tom glanced over at Lily, took in the furrow of her brow, the slight frown, and the creases beneath her green eyes. Softly, he concluded out loud, "You don't want him to come."

She started, attempting to smile sheepishly, "No, no, it's not that, he's your friend, maybe your only real friend besides me and…"

She trailed off as she realized that Tom was hardly fooled and that he had played the game of hiding himself beneath layers of insincerity longer than she'd been alive. Her smile faded and was replaced by a resigned sigh as she said, "I don't like him."

Then, grimacing, gripping her tea, she added with an embarrassed flush spreading across her cheeks, "Sorry."

Tom felt his lips unwillingly quirk into a smile, amused despite himself, "Lily, you do know that he's extraordinarily unlikeable and off-putting. You're hardly alone in that opinion."

She gave a small laugh, "That shouldn't bother me, Sev was hardly a likeable guy, and we were best friends. But it's…"

She motioned with a hand as if grasping for the words, "There's something about him that I just don't… And he stares."

"Stares?" Tom asked but she just nodded vigorously as if by that alone she was proving her own point.

"Yes, he stares, at you which I at least understand, but also at me. And at first, I thought it was because, well, you know but he looks at me like he's seeing someone else where I'm standing. He… He has all these thoughts and opinions on people I know he's never met, and he doesn't say anything, but you can just see him thinking all these things that aren't true and that…"

Tom felt something cold slink through him, because he'd known and he hadn't, that there had been something there. Something akin to the way Azrael had always looked at him, as if measuring Tom against some unseen template forever and always, then using that template of a man who did not exist to measure the world.

Somewhere in his mind there was a Lily Evans who was destined to marry James Potter.

Lily then shook her head, "And if I'm being honest it's not just that, that's the… The weirder part of it, but, well, he was close to you and you can tell by how he looks at you and you at him that you know each other. Plus, well…"

Lily gave him a rather pointed look, unsaid being Tom's confession to homosexuality or at least bisexuality, and his rather awkward and disastrous attempt to give it a go with his old friend the god emperor.

Tom couldn't help but laugh, throwing his head back in hysterics as he even tried to imagine how that would possibly happen in this day and age, "Oh, oh no, not now, not after the first time."

He had been recovering from dying and losing the ability to die, he had laid out everything on the table in a moment of aggravated despair, only to have it be spit back in his face in the worst manner he could possibly conceive.

"Why not?" Lily asked, face red and eyes burning, apparently having thought about this far longer than Tom himself had.

He just looked at her, wondering how long she'd been mulling this over, and then slowly said, "Lily, you weren't there, but you have to understand… I will never willingly go back to that. Perhaps I'll extend a hand in friendship once again, why not, but to be that vulnerable again?"

Sometimes it felt as if it had only been yesterday, that defining moment in his existence, and the cold, pitying, certainty in the god emperor's eyes as he'd looked down at Tom. No matter how Tom's own excuses echoed his that day, no matter the years that passed by, he was certain the answer would never really change.

"You said it yourself, Lily," Tom said with a laugh and a shake of his head as he looked at her, "He doesn't really see me, never has even in the beginning, just… Just this idea of an unflattering Tom Riddle he's concocted in his head. One close enough to the truth in enough respects to dazzle me years ago but now…"

And until Lily perhaps that would have been enough, no, it was enough, because it was closer, truer, and more poignant than anyone had ever dared to be before. To the point where he had forced himself not to realize what Azrael saw when he looked at Tom. He could no longer content himself with playing whatever scripted part Azrael demanded of him.

"I think, that if I had given him my deathbed confession as I had you," Tom said looking at her, "He wouldn't have flinched, perhaps wouldn't have blinked, but it would only be because he had expected half of it already."

Perhaps it wasn't the love confession Lily was looking for, but for whatever reason, it appeared to be enough.

And as if on cue, in Tom's outstretched hand, a single plain envelope arrived with Tom and Lily's named etched on the front in Azrael's ghastly handwriting. Opening and laying it flat on the table was only a short sentence, "Harry Evans will be pleased to attend."

Lily groaned while Tom couldn't help but smile, "Well, I'll be damned, looks like he's playing the part of your estranged cousin after all."

Minerva, Azrael a la Harry Evans, Arthur Weasley, and Lily's disapproving and distasteful relatives… Well, it'd certainly be a night to remember.

"You know," Tom said after a pause, "We can still elope."

And if, in the coming months, sporadic violence and unrest in Diagon Alley as well as a renewed focus and propaganda campaign against the dangers of Ubik kept attention away from fluff stories and gossip such as eccentric Tom Riddle's marriage to Lily Evans.

If even inside the walls of Hogwarts as Gryffindors and Slytherins splintered further and further apart from one another, so that Tom's small and few wedding invitations slipped by unnoticed, then Tom was hardly one to complain.

Author's Note: Because I know an actual wedding chapter is going to be very very long because of shenanigans/cringe/hope/angst and would just make me too tired to fit into this chapter.

Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter