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Chapter 47
Tom's Promise
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Content warning: blood, violence.
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"Holy shit," Marina murmured. "That's…"

The crowd was shouting, pointing, moving back from Voldemort and Harry in the middle of the Hall as Marina stared him, as he and Voldemort started to slowly circle each other, even steps, eyes fixed on each other, and silence fell across the Hall very suddenly.

"A fine trick," Voldemort crooned, sneering. "But dead or not, you cannot harm me, Potter. You failed." His red eyes flashed to Tom. Dread flooded Marina's stomach and she instinctively stepped forward, her grip on Tom's arms tightening as she put herself between him and Voldemort, staring at his twisted face, tense and alert.

Voldemort laughed, loud and cruel, echoing around the dead silent room. "Ah – the Muggle protector," he jeered, smiling horribly, "how low my Heir demeans himself… pathetic… I should have known that you would be taken in by Dumbledore's foolish, repulsive influence –"

"You're still so naïve, Tom," Harry said calmly, and Voldemort's attention whipped back to him with narrowed, hateful eyes.

"Naïve?" he hissed. "You dare –"

"Your Horcruxes are gone," said Harry, "you have nothing left to hide behind, it's just you now."

Voldemort leered at him, a grin that somehow reminded Marina of Herpo's skeletal face in the deep darkness of his bone-littered cave. "So you destroyed them," Voldemort whispered, "you have some great weapon, some power you think you can wield against me –"

"Not a weapon," said Harry, quite calmly, and he looked at Tom behind Marina.

Tom exhaled. "Marina," he said quietly, "let go."

Marina's head whipped around. "What?" she asked sharply.

"I have to do this," he murmured, "I have to face him."

But the dread only welled stronger and Marina's grip on him tightened, too terrified of what might happen if she let go because suddenly it hit her, the cold realisation that their time was up. That Tom's time was up.

Behind her, Voldemort laughed again. "Your weakness betrays you," he said cruelly.

"Marina, let go," Tom said again, eyes fixed on Voldemort.

"Tom," she whispered, unable to look away from him. "Don't, please."

"You understand nothing," Harry said loudly, still circling Voldemort. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don't."

"Is this Dumbledore's great weapon? Is this love?" Voldemort crooned. "Dumbledore's favourite… his only solution? Love which he claimed conquered death? Love which did nothing to stop him falling from the tower and breaking like and old waxwork?"

Tom's eyes flashed to Marina's and he lifted his hands, rested them softly against her cheeks and something ached in her so hard that she felt dizzy. "It'll be alright," he said calmly. "I'll come back."

She let out a brittle breath. "Really?"

He nodded. "But you need to let me go now. I have to fight him. You know I have to fight him."

Marina was frozen, still hearing Harry and Voldemort's voices behind her but no longer processing a single word.

"I'll come back," Tom repeated quietly, his thumbs gently brushing her cheeks as he looked down at her.

Marina forced down tears, torn so fiercely between wanting to believe him and knowing that he was lying that she could hardly breathe. "Promise?" she whispered.

Tom smiled, and she tried not to think about how sad it seemed. "I promise," he said gently.

"You have to," Marina breathed. "Tom, you have to come back. I…" But she could not finish.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead – like he's saying goodbye, like this is it, like he's not coming back at all – and drew away to look at her again. "I know," he murmured. "But it was always going to be like this."

She felt the air leave her chest, her heart seizing painfully. He couldn't be saying that, those blood-curdling words she'd heard him say a thousand times in her worst nightmare, because she knew what came next, she knew that she couldn't change it, that it had to be done, that neither can live whilst the other survives.

"You're not alone," Marina whispered. "You know that, right?"

Tom's calm composure faltered, the flawless mask he'd donned to convince her to let him go cracked by the faintest furrow to his brow and the barest tension in his lips. He nodded silently.

It was time.

She could not delay it any longer, because Voldemort and Harry's voices were growing louder and louder, the crowd more tense, the air rippling with tension, and it was time. Marina grit her teeth to stop her jaw from trembling, and she slowly let Tom go, her hands dropping uselessly to her sides.

"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" Harry said quietly behind them, and Marina's heart clenched again hard because Tom gave her one last look and then he was stepping past her, the warmth from his palms against her cheeks instantly snuffed out and leaving nothing but a cold shadow in their place.

"I am the true master of the Elder Wand," said Harry evenly.

And Voldemort struck as dawn broke across the Hall, but Harry and Tom seemed to move as one and their three spells colliding in a blistering explosion of light and heat that had Marina stumbling back in alarm.

The duel had begun.

Marina stared, wide-eyed and entranced as the three of them battled, each so different and distinct in style that she could not look away; Voldemort, sharp and aggressive with a frenetic edge, screaming curses and rage evident in his burning red eyes, Harry stoic and focused, teeth gritted and motions determined – and then there was Tom.

She watched Tom in awe. His face was almost calm, nothing but the intensity of his gaze fixed on Voldemort betraying the depth of his concentration, his wand moving through the air with a fluid mix of deadly precision and elegance. Most of his spells were nonverbal but she could see his lips moving sometimes, drowned out by the furious rage of his opponent and the fervent shouts of his counterpart.

Voldemort seemed not able to choose which he wanted to take down more, spells flying so thick and fast that the crowd instinctively drew away a little further, watching silent and alert as the battle raged on.

Slowly, surely, it turned in their favour; Voldemort was losing ground step by step. When a curse from Tom just barely whistled past his face, his red eyes narrowed and he hissed in anger.

And he looked at Marina.

She stopped breathing, terror paralysing her to the spot.

Voldemort's wand flew in her direction and she saw the green light streaking towards her, watched, horrified as Tom turned with panic on his face for the first time, lifting his wand to deflect the curse. Voldemort's attention was already back on Tom with a sneer on his face as he reared back to strike at his distracted form. As Tom's Shield Charm sent Voldemort's killing curse ricocheting away from her, a bolt of blood-red light struck Tom so hard that his shoulder was wrenched back like he'd been shot. He hit the ground on his back so hard that the breath was visibly knocked from him and Marina tried to scream but her throat had closed up and she could only watch in terror as Voldemort's hateful eyes furiously bore down on him, as Tom choked out a cough, tried to lift his wand quick enough but Voldemort's was drawing back to strike him again –

Harry stepped forward in front of Tom, wand outstretched, face determined, and Voldemort's crimson eyes flicked to him, his fury unrelenting as his wand switched targets, and –

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" screamed Voldemort.

"EXPELLIARMUS!" Harry bellowed.

And Voldemort's wand flew through the air, a white blur that Harry caught with impressive dexterity as Voldemort's body was flung backwards and a sickening, wrenching sound like crackling electricity and bones breaking beneath skin saturated the Hall. The stone floor shattered where Voldemort landed, punched in like it had been struck by a meteor.

No one moved, eyes fixed on where Voldemort lay, steam curled from the fractured stone bricks around him. Marina dared not breathe, watching, waiting for movement, for something –

A rasping laughter echoed weakly across the silent crowd.

Marina's blood went cold.

"You cannot kill me," Voldemort hissed, and there were gasps of horror because his body was not the tall, pale, snake-like figure from mere seconds prior.

Huddled in the black robes was the skeletal, torn body the size of a child; flayed, scaled skin a raw and necrotic crimson, bone-like limbs and eyes still the same hateful red, his blackened teeth leered in a grin. "You cannot kill me," he rasped again as Harry stared blank-faced at the vile thing before him.

Tom pushed himself up onto his forearms breathing heavily, and Marina saw him recognise the creature, the same thing that had crawled from the bathtub in Grimmauld Place, Marina's deepest fear – except now it meant more. Voldemort's body had been mangled by his own killing curse and yet a piece of his soul lived on, Tom lived on, which meant the creature meant more than meaningless loss, more than failure.

Now it meant Tom's death.

Harry looked down at Tom and held out a hand to him. Tom hesitated for a brief second before grabbing it, and Harry pulled him to his feet.

"I know your fear, Tom," rasped Voldemort, and Tom's eyes met the thing's at once, wide and taut. "I know that you fear that oblivion, the nothingness, the endless unknowing, rotting alone in the cold, damp earth, powerless and empty –"

"Enough," said Harry loudly.

"This was Dumbledore's plan, was it?" Voldemort croaked. "To feed you lies, to insist that love conquers all, that love will save you, that love will defeat me…" he descended into coughs that racked his whole body, and something wet was dripping from his thin, cracked lips when he spoke again. "Love until he asks you to lay down your life," he whispered, leering up at Tom, frozen in place. "Love until he needs you to die for his cause… and for what? For his so-called greater good? For some filthy Muggle?"

Marina watched in stricken stillness as Harry glanced at Tom, visibly unsure of what to do. The Hall watched on in raptured silence.

"Let me live, Tom," Voldemort whispered, "let me live, and live yourself… you do not have to die… they wish you dead but they will not kill you… they are weak…"

Tom blinked, the stricken expression on his face breaking like he'd been woken from a dream, and then, quite calmly, he looked straight at Marina across the Hall.

Time vanished. Marina stared at him, the even look in his eyes, the blank expression on his face, and with a sudden jolt of horror she realised what was about to happen.

It was always going to be like this.

She tried to step forward but Tom's wand, still in his hand, flicked up with incredible speed and her legs gave out beneath her. Marina fell to her knees, her body suddenly refused to obey her attempts to move. "No!" she shouted frantically, surprised to find her voice still her own. "Tom – stop!"

Harry grabbed Tom's arm, said something to him low and fervent, brow furrowed, but Tom just looked away, horribly calm as he muttered his reply, pointed his wand at the head of the basilisk lying dead behind them and there was a snap like a bone breaking under foot and suddenly in his hand appeared a large, curved object coloured yellowed ivory, one end shaved into a deadly point, the other jagged and splattered with blood and god this couldn't be happening, not after all this, not like this –

"NO!" Marina screamed in the dead silent hall, but her body would not move, knelt there as Harry stepped back, his mouth a grim line, his eyes hard and resigned. "YOU PROMISED!" and tears were welling in her eyes, panic making her struggle in vain against the jinx on her body. "YOU PROMISED!"

But Tom only looked at her, long and sad. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"TOM!"

"Tom," Harry said quietly, staring at him.

"Tom," Voldemort hissed, eyes wide, "don't be foolish… you do not want this, I know how much you –"

"You know nothing," Tom said sharply, eyes flashing to him. "You understand nothing."

"I know your fear," Voldemort whispered.

"Yes," breathed Tom, "you know my fear. You tore yourself apart for it, you allowed it to consume you, to control you –" and he took a single step away from Voldemort, lifted the basilisk fang in his hand and Marina's heart stopped, terror and anguish charging through her blood like a brutal fire and a crushing tide. "But it does not control me," said Tom quietly.

He met Marina's eyes once more, and perhaps she was screaming, perhaps she was unable to make a sound, she could not tell, blood pounding in her ears and she tried to move, tried to stand and get to him, to stop him but her body wouldn't listen –

Tom plunged the basilisk fang into his chest.

The world disintegrated, like prodding a charred, grey log in a long-dead fire and watching it crumble into ash.

There was no sound but the ringing in her ears, no sight but the tears in her eyes, she couldn't feel, couldn't speak, falling forward limp and only just catching herself with shaking hands. Tom's jinx was broken, its caster lying motionless on the floor ahead. Her swimming eyes somehow locked onto his face and she pushed forward half-blind towards him, falling at his side, flashes of images instead of a steady stream of consciousness.

The fang jutting from his chest, buried right to its jagged base –

His hand limp on his chest, the other lying still at his side with his wand fallen from his fingers –

Someone was screaming. It was her. Was it her? It sounded too far away to be her. Mrs Weasley, perhaps, or McGonagall –

Blood – not ink – blood on her hands, bright cherry red and hot, pooling beneath him, saturating his shirt, oozing from his nose –

"Tom," Marina whispered numbly, taking his face in her hands, stomach dropping when blood stained his skin from her hands, "Tom, please, god…"

His eyes flickered, his skin was getting paler before her eyes and she wondered how long he had (a minute? Seconds? Less?) before the venom killed him. "Tom," she gasped again, tears hot on her cheeks. She looked up at Harry, watching them in grim silence. "Please do something," she cried, "please, he can't die, please –"

"I…" Harry said quietly, "I wish I could but… the venom, it's…"

"Marina…"

The voice was barely audible, but it was Tom's. Her frantic eyes immediately fell to his face and found him looking up at her. Tom coughed weakly and her stomach twisted as blood dripped from his between his lips. It had stained his teeth red.

"How could you do this…" she breathed, "how could you…"

"If I'm alive, he can't die," he said, eyes closing in fatigue.

"We could have found a way," she whispered, "we could have kept trying –"

"Marina," he murmured. "You have to let me go."

"No!" she said loudly.

Tom's lips flickered into a very weary smile, and he opened his eyes to look up at her, all sad patience just like in her stupid fucking nightmare. "It has to be like th-"

"Stop it!" she shouted, tears breaking over her cheeks. She grit her teeth to try to stop them but there was no use.

Tom's smile faded as he looked at her, leaning his cheek into her hand. "I'm so sorry," he said quietly.

"I love you," Marina whispered impulsively, broken and raw.

Tom's eyes turned stricken, fixed on hers, his brows drawing together as he exhaled another long, shaky breath.

"You can't die," she said, her voice very nearly failing, her hands restless against his cheeks, "I… Tom, please…"

"Come here," he murmured.

She obeyed at once, leaning down to him and pressing her forehead to his just like he always did. "I can't do this without you," she said hopelessly, "I… I can't…"

"You can," he said softly, "you're the strongest person I know."

"I don't want to be alone," she whispered, broken again.

"I love you," said Tom very quietly, struggling to keep looking at her, "more than I've loved anything and anyone in my life."

And the tears welled in her eyes again because somehow hearing him say such a thing hurt more than she could ever imagine.

"I wish…" he murmured, but his eyes were drooping shut and Marina's widened in panic.

"Tom," she said sharply, shaking him slightly.

His head fell to the side and dread surged anew through Marina's body. "Tom!"

But he didn't reply. She could still see the faintest rise of his chest but she knew he had mere seconds.

In sheer frustration, in horror, she sat up, Tom's blood on her hands and hot tears on her face as she looked around in desperation and realised the whole Hall was watching them, sombre and silent. "Please," she gasped, looking up at Harry again, "please do something."

He opened his mouth, shut it again, brow furrowing as he looked down at them sadly. He could do nothing. She knew there was nothing any of them could do. Marina exclaimed in anguish, wordless and frustrated, looking back down at Tom with panic coursing in her veins –

Her eyes fell upon something.

Something that made a stupid, relentless spark of hope fizzle tenaciously in her chest.

Tom's wand lay beside his motionless hand on the ground beside him. Marina felt like she had been struck by lightning.

She knew of only one thing that could cure basilisk venom.

Marina lunged across Tom's motionless body and seized his wand, sitting back on her knees and staring at it, holding it tightly in her hands.

"Please," she whispered, voice breaking, hopeful, desperate, because inside Tom's wand was that same feather, her feather, and if there was ever a time when she needed help, this was it. "Please. Please help me."

And just like that, the air above them split with flames and Marina fell backwards, dropping Tom's wand and staring up at the phoenix with mad elation, incredulity, disbelief and burning joy that it had worked, somehow it had actually worked –

"Fawkes?" exclaimed Harry beside her, gobsmacked.

"Fawkes!" Marina shouted. "Help him! He's dying, he's dying –"

The phoenix gracefully landed beside Tom, hopping forward and cocking his head to the side curiously as he looked down at him.

"Fawkes, please," Marina urged desperately, and suddenly it felt like she was pleading with Dumbledore himself, begging him to change his mind, to consider another way. "Please. I'll do anything, just don't let him die, please don't let him die!"

Fawkes blinked at her.

"We can find another way," whispered Marina. "This doesn't have to end in death. Dumbledore said… he said love was the most powerful, please Fawkes –"

The phoenix leaned forward and Marina's heart leapt, her hands darting out and grabbing the basilisk fang still buried in Tom's chest, pulling hard and feeling sick when it slid from his body, trying not to let the panic overcome her when Tom made absolutely no reaction. She threw it away carelessly, attention fixed on Fawkes as pearlescent tears welled in his eyes, as he blinked once, twice, as the tears fell upon the gaping wound –

She held her breath, eyes flicking between Tom's face and the wound healing before her very eyes, skin stitching shut leaving nothing but smooth skin behind.

For a moment, there was silence.

"Tom," Marina said quietly, leaning over him and taking his face in her hands again.

He didn't stir.

Had they been too late? Had the venom done too much damage for even Fawkes to heal? Marina's fingers trembled against Tom's cheeks. "Tom!" she said loudly, tremor audible in her voice.

The silence dragged on. The moment felt endless, and Marina's heart didn't dare beat in her chest lest it distract her from watching his face, waiting, hoping for something, when –

Tom's brow furrowed and he very slowly opened his eyes.

Pure hot elation washed through Marina and she laughed once, disbelieving and incredulous, pulling him up without thinking into a hug and holding him so tightly that she heard him cough. "Marina," he managed to say, hands coming up to rest on her back.

"Sorry," she breathed, pulling back to stare at him in wonder, her arms still around his neck. "Oh my god I can't believe that worked…"

"What did you do?" he asked quietly, staring at her.

"Phoenix tears heal basilisk venom," she said conversationally.

Tom blinked, gaze falling to Fawkes still beside him. Fawkes let out a long caw, watching Tom curiously with his black, beady eyes. For a moment Tom was silent, like he could not fathom how she could have somehow summoned the phoenix, let alone known about the properties of phoenix tears. "Marina," he said slowly, looking back to her very apprehensively "you should not have –"

"Something's happening," Harry muttered suddenly, voice low and sharp.

They both looked up to see Harry's eyes fixed on something behind them.

Voldemort was twitching, jerking hard every few seconds, guttural breaths coming from his horrible face. "You – you see?" he hissed, but he seemed afraid, angry, his skeletal, scabbed hands grasping desperately at the folds of his black robe again and again. "You are weak… it makes you weak… you know what you have to do to defeat me and yet you cannot –"

"It's like the Horcruxes," Marina whispered, staring at the twitching body.

She and Tom looked at each other, blank and tense.

"That would mean…" Tom said quietly, staring at her.

Marina nodded carefully, barely able to believe it.

Tom blinked again, and there it was. In the dark blue of his eyes, the faintest, barest glimmer of hope.

Marina seized his arm and started to pull him to his feet, and Harry quickly leaned down to help her, pulling Tom's other arm around his shoulders and lifting him up. "What's going on?" he asked them, frowning.

"I need to touch him," Tom muttered, wincing as they took a step towards Voldemort.

"Why?"

"Look," Marina said quietly, nodding at Voldemort.

Before them, Voldemort's red eyes had widened and his skeletal chest was heaving, the twitching getting worse as they drew closer.

"It's his soul," she said softly, "it's trying to get back."

Harry blinked. "Get back?"

"It's mine," Tom said calmly.

Harry looked back down at Voldemort writhing, gasping wet breaths and glaring at them with more fury than seemed possible for such a tiny, broken, frail thing. He nodded, his face settling in determination as they helped Tom closer, stopping just a step in front of the crater where Voldemort lay.

They lowered Tom to a kneel before him, staring at Voldemort who no longer seemed capable or willing to speak, reduced to sharp, rasping gasps of air and strange, guttural exclamations of rage, his crimson eyes fixed hatefully on Tom's blank face.

Tom withdrew his arm from Harry's shoulders and reached his hand towards Voldemort – the thing cowered slightly, like it knew what was coming. Tom hesitated for a second, frowning, and then he slowly extended his hand to the creature.

Voldemort's eyes grew more and more terrified, the twitches wracking his body more violent, his breaths faster and faster, and then, quite gently, Tom's outstretched fingers touched the thing's forehead.

It let out a scream unlike anything Marina had ever heard, and before their very eyes, spreading from where Tom's fingers were touching his skin, Voldemort's broken, ruined body turned to crumbling stone, falling like ash until there was nothing left but a pile of dust.

There was silence.

Tom's hand was still outstretched, frozen in place as he stared wide-eyed at the ashen remains Voldemort had left behind.

"That's what happened to Quirrell," Harry whispered suddenly. "When I touched him…" He turned to Tom, a little wide-eyed.

"He's gone," said Tom quietly, blankly, like he couldn't believe what he was saying.

Marina's eyes slid from Voldemort's remains to Tom. "You did it," she breathed.

And Tom looked at her.

Distantly Marina heard the crowd around them erupt into shouts, elated cries and mayhem that made the rubble tremble, people racing forward to hug each other, spells and sparks exploding in the air. She saw Harry stand in her peripheral vision, saw a crowd of people engulf him in their arms, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Luna, more and more, elated and disbelieving.

But she barely noticed.

Tom reached for her, his face wrought with some unknowable emotion as he took her face in his hands, drew her closer to him and he kissed her, right there kneeling in the middle of the cheering crowd, warm and real, safe, alive, tears sliding hot down her cheeks and she was smiling like an idiot against his lips, her arms lacing around his neck and holding him tightly, laughing as his arms pulled her closer and closer.

May 3rd.

Tom was alive.

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A/N: I combined a lot of movie/book stuff here but I love that so hey!
I'm posting this at the same time as the Epilogue, so don't miss it ;)
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