Tom and Harry sat at the dinner table, Harry picking at her food mindlessly, too engrossed in her Potions' textbook to remember how to eat properly.

Tom normally left it to Lily to chide her for this sort of thing, chiding her himself always made him feel like too much of a hypocrite. Mrs. Cole would have beat him black and blue if he'd tried a stunt like reading at dinner at Wool's, but as a young man and really up until Lily had conned him into a relationship, he routinely took hours to absentmindedly eat barely edible meals as he tried to read through books and watch television at the same time.

Tom Riddle in his thirties, not a pretty sight.

However, it seemed Lily was running late tonight. So, with a sigh, he said, "Harry, eat your dinner."

Harry blinked up at him, entirely unused to Tom being the voice of chastisement when it came to anything but obliterating her hypothetical enemies with magic, then returned her gaze to her book.

Clearly, Tom had gone soft. His hand twitched unconsciously, a silent wish for the time and date, and a wispy clockface appeared before him announcing that it was nearly eight in the evening. Lily was very late today.

This wasn't an uncommon occurrence; Lily often got the short end of the stick due to both natural talent and lack of pedigree. She often found herself either assigned late shifts or else called in to brew emergency time sensitive potions.

As a result, Tom had adjusted his schedule years ago, to always be home as soon as office hours were finished. This was frowned upon by practically the entire staff, who religiously attended breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the staff table even during the winter holidays, but there was a reason that most of them were unmarried and miserable. Tom told them that they'd have to forgive him, but if he had to choose between wandering the halls late at night so he could give some miserable brat breaking curfew detention and seeing his wife and daughter then he'd have goddamn dinner with his wife and daughter.

Besides, that was the kind of miserable work they gave to prefects.

If this meant Tom would never be selected as head of house or made deputy headmaster, then so be it. As it was, Dumbledore would never let it happen anyway, he'd barely let Tom Riddle be hired on as Muggle Studies professor.

And what kind of a fool wanted to be head of house? Tom saw the shit Minerva and Slughorn had to put up with and was more than content to leave them to it.

No, he thought as his eyes drifted to Harry, one child was more than enough.

"Harry," he started again, "Haven't you read that already?"

Harry looked up at him for a moment, blinking, then back at the text, "I might forget something."

Tom opened his mouth, about to tell her that she vastly overestimated the Hogwarts curriculum, only to close it and wonder if it was a good idea to teach his daughter to be an ambitionless slob. When he'd gone to school, Lily too for that matter, neither of them had ever done anything less than their best.

But this was ridiculous.

"It's Potions," Tom finally said in exasperation, "Potions is—"

He trailed off, not sure of a not insulting way to put it.

"Mum works in Potions," Harry supplied, finally closing her book.

"She has a knack for it," Tom said with a wave of his hand, "At its roots it's more an art than a science. I never had any patience for it."

Oh, sure, Tom could follow your basic or even more complex recipe. The complicated ones tended to only be complicated because they required expensive; rare; ingredients, careful reading of the instructions, an intense focus during key points of the brewing process, and not being color blind. Anyone with half a braincell could be decent in Potions, could even be as competent as Tom was if they bothered to read their textbooks and actually focus for two seconds.

Half the reason students kept blowing themselves up is that they'd stop in the middle of brewing to chat with a neighbor or else failed to precisely measure their ingredients.

Beyond that though, to have that understanding of how to take your Potions above and beyond, exactly how such and such root reacted magically with such and such animal appendage to produce this result on the night of a full moon? Lily was very good at that sort of thing, Tom found it hopelessly dull.

"Just pay attention in class and you'll do fine," Tom finally settled on, "Trust me, most of your classmates won't even touch that book even after they get to school. You can afford to put it aside for half an hour to eat dinner."

Reluctantly, Harry put the book aside and frowned as she ate her dinner, "It's cold."

With a sigh, feeling entirely too generous, Tom waved a hand towards her plate not only to reheat the food but to return it to its prior state of freshly cooked glory.

Harry started eating again, this time with a little more enthusiasm, then asked, "When will mum be home?"

"I don't know," Tom idly checked that homemade poor excuse of a pager he'd made for Lily back when he'd feared death for her and Harry around every corner, but there was no message, not that there always was.

Usually when Lily was held late unexpectedly, she'd be consumed by the brewing process until it was safe to either deliver the potion or leave it unattended. She often forgot to leave a message.

Harry just nodded. For a second she ate in silence, pulling long auburn hair out of her face, then asked, "You really think I'll do fine?"

"You'll do more than fine," Tom said, "And I'm not just saying that. You've started on nearly every discipline long before the purebloods even do. Hogwarts also teaches—"

To the lowest common denominator, Tom wanted to say. Unfortunately, while that was very true, it felt not just insulting to say but… He didn't want Harry to come into Hogwarts with the same cynicism it'd taken him years to pick up.

Already, he'd probably given her too many expectations about certain things and how they worked. Harry wouldn't have the same mindless awe for quidditch, for the mermaids in the lake, or so many other things that most students had.

No need for him to make her contemptuous of her future education.

"If you have any trouble," Tom said instead, "You can always come to me or any of your other professors."

She didn't look convinced. He couldn't say he blamed her; Harry had had… an odd childhood. There were Arthur's kids, Tom supposed, but she'd never seen them all that often and most of them were a fair deal older than her. Most of her childhood had been spent by herself, keeping this or that secret, and training to defend herself from dangers she should never have known existed.

Harry didn't know how smart she was or wasn't, how she compared to other kids her age, or even if these other kids would like her. Tom, with all his memories of having been muggleborn in Slytherin, couldn't even promise her that they would. He could only promise that she would do very well in Hogwarts.

Before he could offer some mild assurance, either that someone would surely like her or that if they didn't they were beneath her, the door slammed open and Lily stalked in only to quickly slam the door behind her.

That was the kind of dramatics that Tom usually indulged in, not Lily.

"Bad day at work?" Tom guessed but Lily didn't turn, didn't answer, instead she peered through the eyehole in the door and held her wand tight in her hand.

Tom slowly stood and with a wordless motion banished the plates from the table.

Then Lily turned back to them, sighing, and motioned for Tom to sit down. She walked over to the table, flopped into it and said, "Yeah, I guess you could say it was an… interesting day."

Both Tom and Harry waited, eyes wide as they leaned in for the news, but Lily didn't say anything. Instead, with a grim smile, she asked, "Is there any food left for me?"

"Right," Tom said dully, face burning, and with a wave of his hand summoned the three of them new plates of food comprised of heated leftovers in the fridge as well as a kettle of tea.

If Lily noticed that this wasn't the food Tom had prematurely banished into the void, then she didn't say as much.

Instead, she just quietly sipped at her tea, while Tom and Harry continued to stare. Finally, Lily relented, and noted, "Well, we had a case of exploding kidneys this morning, so that was fun."

"I love it when my organs explode," Tom said dully, "Is that—"

"Trauma ward," Lily explained, as if exploding kidneys was a run of the mill event in her daily life, "It's uncommon, thank god, but when it happens you better have those organ regrowing and blood replenishing potions on hand. Not to mention you have to stop the spread, and that potion, let me tell you, that potion is not fun."

"And the kidneys kept you late?" Tom finally guessed, as Lily was meant to be home by five today.

"Yes and no," Lily said, "Let's just say it's been a very long and very interesting day."

She was skirting around the issue, obviously, but she was being obvious about it which meant she simply wasn't going to talk about it here. Later, after Harry went upstairs, they'd talk. Unfortunately, Harry was old enough to be wise to this game, she knew these casual answers by heart. She may have been young at the time, but she remembered when Regulus Black lived in their basement.

However, Harry was also clever enough not to say as much, she only spared a single sharp glance for Lily, then for Tom, and then went quietly back to eating her dinner without comment.

"Well, none of my students exploded today," Tom said to fill the silence, "Though a few probably wished they'd had the excuse of spending the past week in Saint Mungo's. Then they wouldn't have had to turn in their essays."

"Oh, is it grading day already?" Lily asked with a smile.

"No, I'm not quite finished yet," Tom said, "But we're far enough into the year that some of them can smell the T coming."

It was usually by this point in the year that some of his students realized that they were, in fact, going to fail a course called Muggle Studies and they were going to have to explain as much to their parents. It was around this time that Tom's office hours stopped being monopolized by the odd duck like Lily Evans and started being filled with crying third year students begging him for some extra credit opportunity.

Dinner continued much in that vein and, afterwards, Harry made her silent and suspicious retreat upstairs. Tom wondered if she'd try to eavesdrop again, she sometimes did, and while she was clever, she wasn't quite good enough to break through his silencing wards yet. Especially not when she was wandless.

Regardless, when she was out of sight, he turned to Lily, "What really happened."

Lily sighed and the good humor of earlier faded from her expression, "I'm being followed."

She sipped quietly at her tea as she put her thoughts together, "It's been about a week now. At first I wasn't sure but—he's distinctive looking."

"A week?!" Tom asked, jaw open, wondering how the hell Lily could let this go on for a week.

"I wasn't sure at first," Lily continued, "He doesn't look like—He's tailing me, not stalking me, he always keeps a healthy distance and tries to keep out of my line of sight… He doesn't look like an auror."

"What is an auror supposed to look like?" Tom asked dully.

"He's been drunk a few times," Lily admitted, "That's how I caught him, he apparated in too loudly, cursed like a sailor, and then tried to duck behind a storefront when I was headed out to lunch. Then of course he had to catch up to me which made the whole thing bloody obvious."

"I reported him this morning to the auror office," Lily said, only to stop speaking and look out the window.

"And?" Tom asked, because there must be an and in there somewhere, with Lily acting at the door the way she had.

"And when I got done with work, a little later than usual thanks to my auror visit, he wasn't waiting for me," Lily said, "Potter was."

Lily smiled at Tom's expression, whatever his expression might be, and said, "Said he wanted a friendly chat, that it'd been too long, and that it was time to let bygones be bygones. He'd heard about my stalker problem and decided to take an interest in the case personally. Invited me to dinner, and all that."

She laughed then, "God, he must think I'm such an idiot."

She shook her head and took another sip of tea, "I apparated out of there so fast it probably made his head spin. Of course, what really was damning evidence, was that he apparated in behind me."

Tom made to stand, to stare out the window and get a better look at the wards, but Lily put a hand on his, "He knows where the wards are, he apparated in well outside of even the sensing range. He's not anywhere close to the property."

He wasn't, the wards hadn't registered anything, and peering out into the night Tom couldn't see anything either.

Still…

"I'm taking a few sick days at work, that might give him some time to cool off," Lily said quietly.

"It's not just him," Tom said slowly.

"You think it's Dumbledore's people," Lily said, but the way she said it, it was as if she had landed on that conclusion already and was simply saying it out loud.

Dumbledore's people, the Order of the Phoenix as Azrael had once dubbed them. Tom hadn't spent much time wondering what happened to them after Bellatrix Black's anarchist gang fell apart. He supposed that they had all gone back to their normal lives and lawful jobs. Without purebloods to fight in the streets there wasn't much point in it, was there?

Except Regulus had made some comment about Dumbledore's people and bills being pushed in the Wizengamot. The one Regulus had mentioned had failed, too many purebloods leery that the law could be turned against them to ransack their own homes, but it nevertheless had been put forward.

Perhaps, even after all these years, they had kept going as if the true enemy had yet to be defeated.

"Tom," Lily said slowly, forcing herself to look grimly in his eyes, "I think it might be time."

Time for what she didn't need to say, not when it had been hanging over their heads for years, and Tom's head for even longer than that. Time to leave for Ubik and never look back.

Tom didn't say anything.

"I know you don't want to go, not really, and I don't want to either," Lily continued, looking as if she were forcing the words out "I've never been outside the country. I know if we go, we can never come back. Harry will never go to Hogwarts but—We can't stay here."

"We already stayed longer than we should have," Lily said, "We stayed when people were blowing up muggleborns left and right. We stayed even when—"

Even when, in some other timeline, in some other world, Harry had died.

"That's not what Dumbledore's people are after," Tom noted.

"Oh, I know what they're after," Lily said with a small, bitter, laugh, "Doesn't make it any different."

Whether they were acting this way because Tom and Lily Riddle were muggleborns or because Tom had once been to Mars was little more than semantics to her. It didn't even matter to her whether they encompassed pureblood heirs or those more sympathetic to her origins. He knew what she meant, of course he did, and yet it didn't feel the same. Shops weren't being set on fire, civilians weren't being murdered left and right, and Tom didn't think Potter would ever go so far as to truly harm them.

Imprison Tom, yes, in a heartbeat. Take any excuse to tear his home apart, certainly. Follow his wife in the streets… That he couldn't say he expected but nonetheless he didn't think Potter meant to harm her. Potter wasn't necessarily a man of the law, he'd joined a vigilante group after all, but he wasn't truly immoral.

He wasn't Bellatrix Black.

But that wasn't Lily's point and ultimately, for reasons even he didn't understand, he was making excuses.

He sighed, raked a hand through his hair, and found himself dully saying, "It's the middle of the term—"

"That doesn't matter," Lily interjected, "No finishing the term, no two-week notice, Tom. We just pack everything up and we go. That's it."

That's it.

He'd had a case packed for years. He'd never made Lily pack one, to his knowledge she never had, but he'd always told himself that the second things went south he was gone. Before he'd married Lily, when he was awaiting his possible arrest at the hands of the aurors for Sirius Black's murder, he'd told himself he could even leave without her.

No word to Minerva, no word to Lily, no word to a soul in the world and he'd be out of the country before the auror's could get to the third knock on his humble door.

For years he'd said as much, told himself as much, that it was only a matter of time and that of course he could and would do it at the first sign of trouble. Gryffindor had never been an option for Tom Riddle, he had never felt particularly brave, and had always been rather proud of the fact that he knew when to save his own skin.

And yet he'd never left.

There had always been more time, always a second longer he could remain, some excuse that it didn't have to be now. He'd had his bag packed, his foot out the door, but he'd never left. Even when he came back, knowing he should leave, he hadn't left but instead had promised himself revenge against the world that could so cruelly kill his daughter.

Now, even when they'd been through worse, he found himself out of excuses yet desperately searching for them.

The term wasn't over yet and Tom could hardly disappear in the middle of the semester, Lily needed to give at least two-week's notice, Harry was nearly in Hogwarts, something, anything, to just give himself a little more time.

The way he had always given himself a little more time.

Once, there had been nothing he'd wanted more than to leave this country behind and never look back. Now, it seemed that for all he hated this place, for all it had mistreated him and everyone he cared about, some part of him had loved it after all.

Some part of him had never fallen out of love with Hogwarts and the wizarding world.

But they couldn't stay.

They shouldn't have stayed.

"Tomorrow evening," he found himself saying, "Since you're taking a sick day anyway, take Harry to get her want from Ollivander."

Lily looked as if she wanted to say something, perhaps point out that Harry was still just shy of eleven, or that Tom was wasting time, but she just nodded. If it came down to it, Lily could pretend she was purchasing a second wand for herself if Ollivander, somehow, uncannily knew Harry wasn't eleven as he seemed to know everything. However, if he knew that much then perhaps he'd see enough to know that it was now or never. Perhaps Ollivander would respect that.

"I'll go to work," Tom said, "As soon as I'm done with office hours, we'll leave."


The next day, Tom stood outside his office, as if his hand was caught on his own doorknob. He kept wondering if he was forgetting something in there. This was the last time he'd ever been inside, perhaps he needed to take a second look and make absolutely sure he'd taken everything he needed to.

There was nothing here to take though.

Those essays inside would now never be graded. The half written final exam would never be completed. The books inside he had copies of packed away already. His office hours were now finished, the last student begging for at least an A long since departed. There was nothing inside he needed, and yet, he couldn't seem to step away from the door.

There was no one in the hall either, both the students and staff were all preparing to go to the Great Hall for dinner, whereas Tom always used this chance to walk out the front door. There was no one to stop him, ask what he was doing, or even say goodbye to.

Because for them it was an ordinary day in an ordinary week. No one disappeared in the middle of term.

He sighed locked his office behind him and promptly made his way out the castle. The Village of Hogsmeade was quiet, as it usually was during the evenings. During the day it was something of a tourist attraction, or else a place to grab lunch when you had business in Hogwarts, somewhere to fondly remember your days as a student. Its true business, of course, came from the students themselves on their Hogsmeade weekends and then during the long summer months. At night, without the children, the foot traffic ground to a halt, the candy and joke shops closed their doors early, and even the Three Broomsticks shuttered its door long before any pub in London would.

It was, at night, nothing more than a quiet, wizarding, hamlet and one of the only pure wizarding communities left in the British Isles.

Which was why it was so easy to spot Potter.

True to Lily's word, the man must have had a very good idea of exactly where Tom's wards ended, as he was no more than ten feet from them. He was far enough from the small shopping district that he couldn't claim to be getting in one last butter beer before closing, and more, he wasn't just on the path to the sparse residences but on the one that would directly lead to Tom's house.

Tom slowed to a halt, "Potter."

Potter grinned sheepishly, held up his hands as if in surrender, "Riddle, look, the way Lily ran off yesterday, I thought she might have gotten the wrong idea and—"

Tom began walking again, not hurriedly, but instead at the same pace he'd been walking before. With a casualness he was sure didn't fool Potter for a moment, Tom placed his hand in his pocket and on the handle of his wand.

"Hey, slow down a minute," Potter said, dashing to catch up to him, "Aren't you even going to let me explain?"

The man at once looked exactly the same and a little older than Tom had seen him last. He hadn't grown, he'd done all his growing as a young man, but his features had lost the last dredges of baby fat and at thirty-something he now looked like a man instead of a boy. Though his hair, out of control as always, and those comically large glasses, helped give him a youthful sort of edge.

"I was going to say that I was sorry for scaring her," Potter continued, pretending as if they were actually holding a conversation, "I get that it looked—It probably wasn't great timing considering she reported being stalked, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I just saw an opportunity and I took it and—"

And Tom crossed the outer edge of his wards, nothing that would block Potter, not yet, but enough to get him on the radar. If Lily was in the house, she'd know that someone other than Tom was on the property, if spells were fired then she would be instantly alerted.

Potter didn't seem to notice at first, but after he walked a few feet forward he abruptly stopped.

Tom stopped with him and smiled politely, "I'm afraid I just got off work. Lily took a sick day today, but I don't know if she's home or not yet. I can't say she'd want to see you either."

It seemed though that Potter had stopped the charade, instead he gave Tom a far more assessing look, his own hand inching towards the wand strapped into a holster on his waist.

He said, "Screw it, I'm just going to go for it."

He breathed out and fixed Tom with a glare, "We know you're Ubik's spy."

Tom said nothing.

Potter continued, "Everybody and their brother knows you're Ubik's spy. You were obvious forty years ago and you're still bloody obvious now. And since Lily clearly knows you're a spy, not being an idiot, that means she must be one too. Don't even bother to deny it, it'll just insult my intelligence."

"A bold claim," Tom said.

"It's not even a bloody claim," Potter said, rolling his eyes but keeping his hand on his wand's handle, "A claim is—A claim is me saying, I don't know, that you secretly pined after Snape's mother. This is the truth, and everybody knows it."

"And you came here to tell me this because—"

Potter laughed, "I didn't come here to tell you shit. I came because Mundungus screwed up tailing Lily, I was supposed to either get a chance to talk to her, or barring that talk to you. But you weren't buying this for a second and I think you pretending not to be a spy while me pretending not to know you're a spy is just the dumbest farce I've ever heard of. So, we're not going to do that."

"Apparently not," Tom said, unable to help his raising eyebrow.

He could apparate through his own wards, but that would weaken them slightly which wasn't ideal, and he didn't exactly want to turn his back on Potter. He could stun him now, but Potter was an auror and likely quick on the draw, and more Tom suspected that he had not come alone.

Potter must have thought the same thing because he whipped out his wand. Tom did the same in turn. Potter eyed Tom's wand warily, but his voice was even as he continued, "We've come for your memories, Riddle. We suspect—we know—you know how to contact the emperor, maybe how to get into Ubik yourself, and we need that to win this."

"Win what?" Tom asked beginning to pace around Potter while he did the same, Tom casting his eyes for a sign of one of Potter's friends, Lupin or else that fat one, Pettigrew.

"The war," Potter said, as if it was obvious, not throwing a spell yet but clearly gearing up to do so.

"What war?" Tom insisted.

"The war that we're—Britain—is currently losing," Potter hissed, dark eyes flashing, "You know, that war which only five years ago nearly blew up your house and all of Hogsmeade. The war that's been fought from the shadows ever since before you exited Hogwarts. The war that will rip our entire society as we know it apart if we continue to do nothing! How about that war, Riddle?"

Were it any other situation, Tom would have stopped, he would have asked what in the hell Potter thought he was talking about. He would ask what kind of mad conspiracy theory Dumbledore and the rest of them had possibly concocted to have come up with that rant.

"Oh, don't look so shocked," Potter sneered, "I'm sure you're mighty pleased with yourself. I'm sure you thought we'd all just continue to tolerate you the way we always have. And you're right, as an auror I can't do anything about you, not anymore than I already do."

"But you don't leave things to the aurors," Tom finished for him.

And with that, Tom struck first, he sent out a stunner to Potter who sent up a quick shield to deflect it. Immediately Potter went on the offensive, forcing Tom to counteract in earnest even as he saw, yes coming down the road now were several others who had likely been waiting in the wings.

Not the fat one as Tom had expected, not Lupin either, but instead a few wizards closer to Potter's build.

Nevertheless, Tom managed to throw Potter backwards and disarm him and apparated himself further down the road and just outside the edge of the stronger wards, the ones that Potter would not be able to get through.

Potter didn't waste time, quickly springing to his feet, scrambling for his wand even as the others sprinted towards Tom's wards. They ran headlong into it, stumbling backwards as they hit the physical barrier.

They didn't waste much time gawking, probably being quite well read on how Tom's wards had performed during the burning of Hogsmeade. Instead, they began casting at it, immediately forgoing stunners and moving into blasting and severing charms.

As if somehow, that would get them through the wards faster when they'd once held up for minutes under fiendfyre.

"You think you can hide in there forever?!" Potter asked as he reached the wards and drew out his own wand, "We know where you work. We know where your wife works! You're going to have to come out eventually."

The door to Tom's house opened, revealing Harry and Lily standing inside, wide-eyed but perfectly safe. Tom walked quickly towards them. To Lily, Tom forced himself to smile and note, "You were right, time to go."

"Riddle!" one of the others cried out after him, one of Molly Prewett's brothers if Tom wasn't mistaken.

Lily nodded to Tom, a look of determination and the slightest hint of fear on her face, "I have the bags packed, we got her wand, we're ready to go."

And in some other world perhaps they would have done just that. Perhaps they would have gone inside, summoned the bags and left in that second. Perhaps it would have been that easy.

But he had forgotten that Harry wasn't just his daughter, she was also Lily's. Harry had lived under a shadow of a threat she barely understood all her life. She had been trained for it for half of her life, and while Tom had trained her to run away, he also trained her to fight.

At her age, Tom Riddle would have run. He would have burned with humiliation, vowed to one day return and destroy his enemies, but he would have run from any true fight. Death, the endless abyss, so terrified him that Tom valued his life above all else, even his overwhelming sense of pride.

But for all Harry inherited from him, she was far from his clone.

Some part of Harry came from Lily, and unlike Tom, perhaps even at this age she understood that there were things worth fighting for. Nothing you could hold in your hand, nothing tangible, but worth fighting for all the same.

So, Harry sprinted out of the house, her new wand in hand, out towards those people she must have conflated with the same people who had tried to burn down their house five years before. The people Tom had told her had not simply ceased to exist, after that year, and that she would always have to look out for. The people she knew she must one day face or else forever live in terror of them.

"Harry!" Lily cried out, drawing out her wand and pointing it towards Harry, aiming to stop her progress.

Tom tried summon Harry to him, but her will must have been strong enough that she slipped through his hold just as easily as she dodged Lily's stunners.

Tom sprinted after her, barely thinking, his legs carrying him before he could even consciously wish for them to.

As he came running, Potter and the others didn't cease the spells, but instead poured more magic into them, as if Riddle being this close and panicked meant the wards were that much closer to breaking.

Tom reached out, his hand just brushing the outer edge of Harry's sweater. He managed to grab enough of the fabric to pull Harry back, to start to throw her behind him, but at that point he'd managed to stumble through the wards.

One of the curses, a prolonged blasting curse, ripped through Tom's shoulder and then through Harry's torso just behind him.

She hit the ground inside the wards and then didn't move an inch. Blood flooded out of her, soaking the grass beneath her while her eyes gazed sightlessly upwards. Her wand fell out of her limp, pale, fingers.

The spells immediately stopped. The wizards gaped down in horror at Harry Riddle's mutilated corpse.

"Holy fuck," one of them said in breathless horror, only to stumble backwards away from the wards, and vomit into the grass.

Potter, too, stumbled backwards in horror, putting his wand away. He kept staring at her body, as if by staring long enough, he could take back that last second.

The others looked at each other for a second longer, then there were several cracks of apparition as they disappeared in panic, Potter stared at Harry, at Tom, then Lily behind them, for a moment too long then apparated as well.

In the distance, somewhere outside the numb fog descending over Tom's mind, he could hear Lily screaming, sprinting forwards towards her dead daughter.

Tom didn't wait this time.

He didn't follow the trace of James Potter's soul lingering in the air, the ripples he made in time and space, to murder him in his home. He didn't go to find Dumbledore, to murder him and everyone who had ever believed a word out of his mouth.

Instead, he pulled out that half forgotten necklace, built in another world and time, one he had been told never to use a second time, and sent himself back to a world in which this never happened.


Author's Note: It's not a transition into a new arc unless we force Tom to watch as his daughter gets brutally murdered a second time. Mmmmmmm violence. And cliffhangers too.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter