Title: The tortoise and the hare
Summary: Harry goes back in time to raise a young Tom Riddle - except Voldemort gets there first. (Tom is left in the dubious care of two not-fathers who occasionally try to kill each other.)
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"Aren't you a bit young to hoarding trophies like a serial killer?" Harry muses, peering curiously into the ratty wardrobe of Tom's room on Wool's Orphanage.
"Aren't you a bit young to adopt me?" an adorable eight-year-old Tom Riddle accuses Harry, a cute little scrunched up look on his face.
"Touché, child," Harry accepts, seventeen-years-old and fresh from the future, still half hysterical because everyone is fucked and this is really the last resort. "Is that a tooth?"
Tom gives him a deadpan state. "You just skipped weeks of government-mandated probation, and stacks of paperwork, by declaring that we would make a good family because you had a farm - with lots of rabbits I could kill. And then declared you were also a Satanist with demon powers."
"I mean, it worked," Harry scoffs, turning to Tom and crossing his arms. "Do you want to stay here? Because I'm hearing that you want to stay here."
Tom's mouth twists up. "I'll pack."
"Thank you," Harry huffs. "And leave the weird trophies, they're so unhygienic, I don't want you catching some kind of disease."
Tom very pointedly starts packing his trophies first, into a little satchel that has been patched up one too many times.
"What are you going to do with a gross bit of ribbon?" Harry complains. "Tom, seriously, is this your version of being sentimental? I'll get you a whole roll in rainbow colour if you want."
Tom pauses, Matilda's hair ribbon in hand. It's a greyed-out red and fraying, not particularly nice even when he first took it.
Tom's eyes are sharp when he looks up at Harry, and there's magic in his words. "Promise me. Swear it."
Harry pulls out his wand and ribbons of all colours and sizes and fabrics start raining down in the room. "It's ribbon, Tom. You're leaving here now, don't cling to these people who mean nothing in the long run. You won't even remember their faces in a year." Harry sits back on heels, looking up at Tom now, and smiles. "We're leaving. Don't let them drag you back."
Tom looks away first. He puts the hair ribbon back and picks up a nice green one from the floor instead, the same colour as Harry's eyes. "I'm keeping the tooth."
"I'll get you a dragon one?"
Tom darts a glance sideways at Harry. "This bracelet-"
"Okay!" Harry cries in exasperation, standing back up. "Yes, Tom, whatever you want, if I can't conjure it I'll buy it - within reason. Can we please go soon? I still think they might call the police on me."
Tom purses his lips and then drops the satchel and starts walking out.
Harry vanishes the left over ribbon and follows. "I take it to mean you have a secondary stash somewhere else?"
Tom looks over his shoulder, the green ribbon wound tight between his fingers, his skin bleached white around it. "I don't need trash, Harry, I have you now."
"Great, now say that again without the terrifying look in your eyes-"
"Adorable," Voldemort says as they turn the corner of the hallway, in a pristine three-piece-suit and barely pushing thirty-five, spinning a yew wand in hand.
Harry dives for Tom to pull him away but a dark yellow spiral hits his chest and sends him flying backwards, crashing through a thin plaster wall into another child's bedroom - thankfully empty as it's school hours. Tom turns with a gasp but Voldemort glues his shoes to the ground before casually flicking away a disarming spell aimed at him.
Harry staggers out of the hole in the wall, plaster in his hair and clothes, probably asbestos too considering the decade.
"Harry Potter," Voldemort begins.
"Shove it up your ass-"
Harry flies across the hallway, stopping centimetres from the end of Voldemort's wand, hovering a few inches up in the air and no longer able to speak.
"Do not talk back to Lord Voldemort," the man tsks, plucking Harry's wand from frozen fingers. "I have no qualms burning this entire building down, you should know that."
Tom slips out of his stuck shoes and kicks Voldemort in the shin because his usual torture ability doesn't seem to work on the man.
Voldemort looks down at him and raises his wand. "You...dare defy your father?"
"Harry says you're my future self," Tom lectures. "And considering the lack of knowledge on such intense temporal magic, it's not confirmed whether any actions affecting me would also effect you. So go ahead, I'm curious. Let's see if you feel my pain."
Harry blinks rapidly.
"Harry Potter said no such thing," Voldemort scoffs. "I can tell when you lie, boy."
"He told me the first half and I extrapolated the second," Tom admits easily. "And judging by your caution, it's true, you don't know what would happen."
Voldemort grits his teeth and apparates all three of them.
They land with a jolt because of Harry's struggling and Voldemort throws Harry into an empty, black tiled cell and an invisible barrier rises up as a one-way mirror.
Voldemort takes a deep breath and looks down at the younger version of himself. "Follow the house elf to your rooms and stay there. Call Tripsy if you require anything."
Tripsy pops into being and bows, big ears flopping. "Young master, Tripsy be-"
"I want Harry," Tom says.
Voldemort, half turned to leave, sneers down at the boy with undisguisable anger because this is getting to be too much, there is only so much he can tolerate. "You can't have that one, Harry Potter is going to be dead as soon as I find a method to do so."
"Give him to me in the meantime," Tom demands. "If you have no use for him, I don't see why I can't have him."
Voldemort leans down, looming over the young boy. "He is not yours to have."
"He doesn't act like he's yours either," Tom points out.
Harry bangs on the barrier, only seeing black tiles from his side. "Voldemort, you little bitch, if you hurt Tom I'll-"
A hand plunges through the tiles and grabs Harry by the collar, slamming him against the wall. Harry claws at the wrist, looking wild-eyed up at a furious Voldemort.
"You are alive because you are my horcrux," Voldemort snarls, leaning down but looking through Harry, hellfire blazing in his red eyes, a madness to him. "Do not think you piecing my soul together means anything. Lord Voldemort is not dictated by a soul, I am not a simple-minded, unevolved-" Voldemort cuts himself off and grits his teeth.
Harry is dropped at Voldemort's feet, wheezing slightly from the way his collar had cut into his neck.
Voldemort's expression is carefully blank. "We will continue this discussion later," he says lightly. "Stay in the manor and do try not to get yourself killed."
Two weeks later, eating dinner, Voldemort pauses and lays down his utensils.
"Let me deal with it," Tom says and wipes his mouth on a napkin.
Voldemort raises an eyebrow as Tom walks out of the room, rumpling his clothes and creating little tears.
Harry slips around a corner, having just stolen back his wand from Voldemort's study, ready to make a break for it, and freezes when he sees Tom waiting in the corridor for him.
"Tom," Harry blurts out, hiding the wand behind his back.
Tom looks up at him with wide eyes. "Are you leaving me?"
"No, no," Harry reassures frantically, hurrying up to the boy. "I'm just...I can't stay here."
"You adopted me!" Tom cries, grabbing Harry's sleeves. "We're meant to be a family."
Harry wavers. "We need to get away from him. You can come with me."
"We can't," Tom says, looking around in worry. "He's too powerful, we don't have supplies, he has too many allies that we know nothing about."
Harry pauses, biting his lower lip in worry.
"He won't hurt us here if we just stay and behave," Tom tries, maybe a bit too forceful so he backs up a bit. "Harry, please, he scares me, stay with me."
Harry lets out a shaky breath. "Okay. Okay, Tom, but if he hurts us then we leave, okay? Please, Tom?"
"Okay." Tom sniffles and definitely doesn't smirk.
"Partners," Harry clarifies immediately, once more readjusting the stiff collar of his dress robes. "I'm not a servant or anything."
"A...partner?" one pureblood something-or-other political dude echoes, probing deeper.
Harry pauses. "Well, I suppose brother-husband does our relationship justice."
There's a pause from a wide radius around him as people have been trying desperately these past months to understand one Marvolo de Ruy Slytherin who swept his way through the political arena with ease. Considering this is the first time anyone has seen Harry or Tom, they were immediately mobbed when Voldemort left to go talk Dark Lord stuff with one of his followers.
"You see," Harry begins with far too much glee. "I am also a Parseltongue, of the noble Gaunt line. Marvolo is my older brother and Tom here is our son - by magical means of course." Harry laughs lightly. "You understand how important it is to keep the line pure."
Tom is already looking around for Voldemort to stop Harry.
"Why, my mother -who is also Marvolo's mother- is the niece of our father," Harry continues with a shit eating grin on his face. "When Tom here grows up, we'll match him up with Marvolo, as is traditional." Harry leans forward. "Quite the scandal but our sixteen-greats aunt, twice removed, fucked a house elf and we've been quite busy purging it from the line-"
"Harry," Voldemort says, towering over the teenager.
Harry's lips wobble until he gets himself under control but his eyes are bright as he slowly turns to look up at the man. "Oh, there you are, husband-brother."
Voldemort leans all the way down until his lips brush Harry's ear, almost entirely folding over Harry's form. "Leave. Before I hurt you."
"Okay," Harry chokes out and leaves, but only because needs to get the laughter out of his system and if he breaks now it'll makes the story seem much less convincing.
Voldemort straightens up and turns to the people watching with wide eyes, a few in the back thinking they're far enough away to whisper at each other without Voldemort hearing. They're wrong. "Pardon him, he thinks he's funny."
A woman clears her throat and steps out. "So, Marvolo, the lovely Harry is your...partner?"
"He's a nanny for my child," Marvolo says, placing a long-fingered hand on Tom's shoulder. "I don't believe I've introduced Thomas to you yet," he says, ending that conversation.
Normal chatter starts picking up and people swarm closer to greet a perfectly polite Tom.
Harry hurls a book because he's already lost his wand, rolls under a jinx and dives out of the first storey window.
Voldemort huffs, running a hand through his hair to smooth it back down. "I swear he's immortal."
"Are you jealous?" Tom asks.
Voldemort looks down at him. "Don't test me, boy."
"Ah, Harry, there you are," Voldemort says, walking across the ministry atrium with not quite a fast gait.
Dumbledore's eyes twinkle furiously as he matches Voldemort's pace, a bright smile on his startlingly young face.
Harry blinks and then he's being swung around in a too tight hug, placed pointedly between the two as a meat shield.
"Harry dear, this is Albus Dumbledore," Voldemort introduces, hands like claws in Harry's shoulders. "And - oh, is that Diggle calling me over? You two talk, I'll come back to pick you up, darling."
And Voldemort makes a break for it.
Harry looks around nervously, avoiding the twinkling. "Um, I was looking for the bathroom?"
"Right this way!" Dumbledore says cheerfully, sweeping out a hand and leading Harry off. "Why, one time I got lost on the second floor I do believe, and ended up in a quaint town in Wales run by pixies."
"Put the book away, it won't teach you anything useful," Voldemort says.
"I would like to read it anyway," Tom points out.
Voldemort summons the book. "I will not have you wasting your time when there so much information you need to catch up on."
Tom frowns. "Just know that you forced my hand."
Voldemort raises an eyebrow.
"Ow, stop!" Tom cries out in pain.
Harry bursts into the room, having been passing by, his bright red jumper being what caught Tom's eye from a crack in the door.
"Harry, he hexed me!" Tom says, clutching his upper arm that was definitely not hexed.
Voldemort ducks a disarming spell. "Harry, he's a liar! All he does is lie. I'm not even holding a wand."
"Hurt him again, I'll burn down your library!" Harry yells back and yanks a statue into the way of a particularly dark curse.
Tom summons the book back to him and goes back to reading as spellfire is lobbed over his head.
"I know where you can get basilisk ingredients," Harry says pointedly to the potions mistress Voldemort is trying to recruit.
Voldemort pinches his back, even through the jumper. Harry jolts and while he keeps the smile on his face, he reaches back and grabs at Voldemort's large hand, a few fingers in each of his own.
A tug-of-war starts.
Voldemort lays the papers neatly inside a folder and sighs because he can feel Harry has done something stupid.
There's a shout from the Aurors guarding the chamber and further panic when the politicians either still packing up or still arguing catch sight of a streak of blue-silver.
Voldemort slides the folder into his bag with all the other stacks of paper and stands just as the patronus reforms into a massive stag beside him.
"You're taking a while," Harry's voice says through the patronus. "Me and Tom are going to head off to lunch first."
The patronus flickers away.
"Tom and I," Voldemort grumbles before he turns to the stunned room as a whole with a charming smile. "Apologies, it seems I'm late for lunch."
As Voldemort strides from the room, chatter starts up about their shock over seeing a facet of the patronus spell that wouldn't be discovered for the next thirty years.
The papers the next day are full of blurred photographs from pensive memories of Voldemort being visited by such a bright, powerful patronus that people automatically assume it was Dumbledore's.
"Oh my," Harry says in delight, reading the newspaper over breakfast. "How romantic of Dumbledore to reveal your clandestine meetings by so boldly whispering sweet nothings to you in front of-"
Voldemort taps his wand on the table and the entire thing jerks forward, slamming into Harry's chest and making him topple backwards to the ground with a wheeze.
"Yes, Lord Mister Slytherin, Sir," Harry says happily, enthusiastically and repeatedly bowing as he backs out of the room, to go get the biscuits Voldemort suggested they should bring over for tea.
"I'm constantly surprised that he's not dead yet," Tom muses, stirring some sugar into his tea.
"I can't," Voldemort grits out. "He's holding my soul hostage."
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A/N: If I could restart my Two For One fic, I might have added older!Voldemort and older!Grindelwald too just for fun XD.