Tom should have taken Azrael's suspicions more seriously, or, rather he should have remembered what the suspicions of a god amounted to.
Tom morosely or cynically predicting the downfall of a nation was one thing, Tom knew only what he knew, and for better or worse he would not deny that he was a man of his time. He could guess, make plans, but as most people did, he found himself going about his daily life and making only small adjustments here and there as life moved past him.
He became a professor, he got married, he had a child, and he never left the United Kingdom. In that Tom Riddle was not so different from the likes of Arthur Weasley or even James Potter. James Potter, who in a few years' time, married one of the more tolerant pureblood heiresses whom his father and mother had no doubt approved of.
Perhaps they could have approved of Lily, the Potters liked to think of them as protectors of the unfortunates and what better a status symbol than Lily Evans the brightest witch of her generation, beautiful, and hopelessly muggleborn. However, the pureblood families were all closely intertwined and, even had Lily entertained the notion of becoming serious with James, Tom still wondered.
It was hard to see outside of your little moments, to be able to look past yourself and say, "Ah ha! That was what I missed!" Tom imagined that even in retrospect, even with years upon years of retrospect, he could never find those tiny crucial moments.
The consequences of them, certainly, but those subtle moments which paved the path to them? That was harder.
Azrael, though, he was not like Tom. In some sense Tom had the feeling that the man was always looking backwards on life. Always seeing Tom Riddle's childhood, Britain, and everything else from the other end. As if he was Merlin, in "The Once and Future King", living in time backwards so that he was always saying goodbye when you were first saying hello.
Tom should have remembered that.
After all, it was him who had said he suspected it would get worse.
Suspected, he hadn't suspected anything, he'd damn well known it.
Five years later and disco was blissfully fading from the muggle world, Tom Riddle was still the Muggle Studies professor, Lily working as a potions master for Saint Mungo's, their daughter was five-years-old, and London was burning every other week.
But that was the trouble, when patches of Diagon Alley were perpetually burning, when the small sprouting muggle district had been flattened time and again until their owners simply threw their hands in the air and set out for some other less volatile business, you got used to it.
You took your daughter and your wife to the other parts of town, the central street of Diagon Alley, and you learned to watch the shadows in every alleyway. You started abandoning your pride and your muggle suits and hoped that you were not as distinctive as you had once insisted on being.
And it simply became life, another small facet in the only time you would ever have.
And sometimes it took your young wife pointing it out for you to remember that once, perhaps, things had been different.
"Jesus, Tom, what happened?"
Tom breathed out in relief as well as exhaustion, wiping soot and purple spell residue away from his face and off of the shoulder of his dark robes. He stepped inside his house, their house, and gave Lily a dutiful wave and ironic smile, "The usual five o'clock riots."
Lily stood, approached him with far more seriousness than Tom felt he deserved, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes, "Tom, you know that isn't funny."
No, it wasn't, but else was?
He just smiled fondly down at her, curling a strand of vermillion hair behind her ear, "Where's Harry?"
"Napping," Lily responded, "I just got her out of daycare. But Tom—"
Tom brushed her off, making his way towards the kitchen with the single thought that perhaps tea could somehow make this all less exhausting or put something in perspective, "I may be Muggle Studies professor, Lily, but I'll remind you I had record breaking scores in Defense—"
Lily followed him into the kitchen, eyes narrowed beneath critical brows, shadows stretching under her eyes, "Years ago, Tom, when was the last time you even thought about dueling someone?"
Orion Black, on the glowing fields of Mars, so many years ago.
"I wasn't doing the dueling," Tom assured her as he summoned the kettle and started the fire beneath it, "I was simply getting out of the way."
The odd patches of arson had turned into full-blown riots, pureblood heirs in masks marching through the streets and burning down anything that so much as hinted at anything muggle or worse yet Martian, and of course the aurors then coming down on them like the hounds of hell regardless of who happened to be in the way.
And to think, it had not been so long ago, that Tom had taught some of them.
Tom rubbed at his face as the kettle whistled, pouring first himself a cup and then Lily.
"Tom," Lily started, she didn't add anything to it, just looked at him exhausted from more than just a full-time job and looking after a child.
"I know," Tom concurred softly, "But I suppose these are the times we live in."
He had warded the house beyond all reasonable expectation, knowing that both as a muggle and a visitor to Mars he was the perfect status symbol, worse in that with James Potter rising through the ranks Tom very much doubted he could count on their support.
It was Harry, he supposed, that was vulnerable. During the summer it was not so bad, Tom was off then, but during the schoolyear Tom often thought of the fact that she was hidden so poorly in plan sight. If someone wanted to, if someone was clever and ruthless enough to make a statement against poor, proud, mudblood Tom Riddle…
If Tom was in their position, he would not have hesitated to make an example of the daughter.
"The times we live in," Lily scoffed, sounding more like Tom with each passing day, it didn't suit her, "Tom, it's a bloody revolving door is what it is. We know who's out there, everyone knows, but because it's the Blacks, the Goyles, the Crabbes, the Notts, and the Malfoys funding it all no one is touching them."
Every week, it seemed, they'd go into the auror department and then only a few hours later Bellatrix Black and her ilk would be walking right back out.
"It's worse than that," Tom said, looking down at his tea and his own exhausted reflection, "It's not simply because of who they are. The Wizengamot itself, Lily, believes in their cause."
They were the Wizengamot, the Blacks, the Potters, the Crabbes, the Goyles, each family having held onto a seat of their precious council for generations. Wizarding Britain liked the idea of democracy, pretended to play at it, but the bare bones of their government had not changed so much from those days when the wizarding community was ruled by the autocracy.
With a smile, Tom noted to his wife, "It wasn't the aurors today."
"It wasn't—"
"The aurors decided, I suppose, not to make an appearance this time," Tom said, "Apparently, they now believe that those darn kids will tire themselves out if they give them enough time. Or, so they say, I like to think they're giving them enough time to get rid of all those things they find inconvenient. All those shops that have the gall to sell ballpoint pens!"
He slammed down his tea, ignoring the hot liquid sloshing over the side and onto his hands. He breathed in and out again, more than aware of how frazzled he must look, covered in a glittering rainbow of violence. Harry wasn't old enough to realize what it was quite yet, but she was precocious enough Tom thought, that she knew whenever Tom looked like this, whenever he was so brightly colored with his hair sticking out away from his face, that it was never good.
He'd had to learn to give himself time, to prepare himself, before he walked in on her.
Lily leaned against the counter with him, face grim, "So then, we're on our own now…"
"Not entirely," Tom said, "There's still that vigilante gang running through the streets."
Tom didn't know their names, they took enough means to disguise their identities (more than the rioters and arsonists tended to), but he'd spotted them more than once recently patrolling what was left of the muggleborn sectors of Diagon Alley . Which, with muggleborn shops closing left and right was sneaking closer and closer to the actual alleyway itself.
"I suppose there is that," Lily said, not quite with relief, as Tom felt much the same.
They were now in a nation of gangs fighting gangs for territory, the auror department had lost all hint of control, and Tom could not help but wonder where it would go from here. Would the government choose to confront this now or would something more have to occur?
Would Tom be relieved his daughter was so young right now, that she might not remember this, or grieve that she had lost the opportunity for these relatively peaceful days? Tom couldn't say, all he could do was cast cleaning charms on himself, straighten up, and nod at Lily before climbing the stairs to his daughter's room.
"She's very clever."
Minerva had said this more than once regarding his and Lily's daughter, yet each time she said it she seemed more surprised by the words. Amused and wonderous all at once, as if she had forgotten how precocious children before the age of eleven could truly be.
In Harry's hands she held a butterfly made of light, wishes, and magic. Watched in joy and awe as this creation of hers took flight like a golden snitch already caught. She did not mind the winter weather, the crunch of the snows beneath her boots, or the eyes of her keepers while her mother was away at work and Tom had time off from Hogwarts to spend with her.
"I see you haven't confronted her about magic yet," Minerva said, turning a reprimanding and disapproving eye to Tom.
"I hardly know what you're talking about," Tom said slyly in turn, "All magic before the age of eleven is purely accidental."
He then grinned as the girl ran towards them, dark auburn hair flying behind her and pale green eyes gleaming, "Daddy, look, I made a butterfly!"
Tom caught the butterfly on one outstretched finger and his daughter in his other arm, inspecting it as he did so. It was crude, a child's image of a butterfly with none of its realism, and yet for all of that there was more craftsmanship here than Tom had seen in seventh years' work. He smiled at it, leaned close, and blew softly causing its translucent golden wings to flutter. With a thought he painted cobalt and scarlet patterns on the wings and sent it into flight once more, this time with the energy of a snitch which wanted to be found.
With a shriek Harry took after it, leaving Tom and Minerva behind.
"You'll break her heart when she goes to Hogwarts and has to leave all this behind," Minerva warned, but there was a smile on her face, as if she could hardly blame him.
"She'll tolerate it," Tom said, after all, her mother had tolerated it, and long before Lily Evans Tom had tolerated it in far worse circumstances.
Then again, Tom thought as he watched her, Harry Riddle might not live in a world where she could tolerate it. There were so very many people who hated the very idea of her and who would hate her more so if she dared to live up to her potential.
If she couldn't defend herself outside of Hogwarts' walls…
"How are you, Tom?" Minerva asked, and Tom startled, realizing he must have looked quite grim for a moment there.
He considered lying, for a second, simply reporting that everything was fine or as fine as it ever was. However, looking at the aged face of his friend (so much older than his own for all that they were the same age) he couldn't help but tell the truth, "These are troubled times, Minerva."
"Yes," Minerva said, her expression grim as well, and for the moment it did not matter that Tom had created this warded bubble of a world for his daughter, the shadows of reality crept in regardless.
It was too early, Tom thought, much too early for that.
"For god's sake," Tom said with a bitter laugh, thinking of Madam Malkins' which had its glass shattered for daring to sell to muggleborn children, "They're even in Diagon Alley now. They're tearing up their own business, those same places they buy their own school supplies, because they loathe me and mine so much."
"And the aurors of course have shown their true colors at last," Tom spat, rubbing a hand through his hair and sighing. What good would righteous anger do him now? He was much too old for it, burnt out as it were, those were the emotions of a younger man.
"Tom, you know, one does not have to rely on the aurors," Minerva said slowly, she turned and gave Tom a rather meaningful look, as if he was supposed to be reading more into this, "There are others, aurors among them, who know and will do good even if our government will not."
"Tom," Minerva said quietly, her words barely above a whisper as if even now, even here, someone might overhear them, "I remember that you were once very good at Defense."
"Minerva," Tom said slowly, not quite sure what he wanted to say or how he wanted to say it, "If we have lost the police, if we're to become vigilantes or rely upon them, then we are already lost. If I could simply charge in and bundle each and every one of them and toss them at the feet of the aurors, if that would be enough, then I'd do it."
He couldn't help but smile, even as Minerva gave him an almost pitying if fond look, "But Minerva, we've done that already. They keep walking in and keep walking out. So, what would we do then, you and I?"
"We would try—" Minerva started but Tom shook his head and cut her off.
"We would become revolutionaries," Tom said, "We would have to rip apart our very nation, create it into something where the sons who inherit everything inherit nothing, we'd have to become that very thing they fear and hate so desperately. A world, where someone like Tom Riddle, can have the power to throw them into Azkaban."
He would, Tom suddenly realized, have to take up that forgotten mantle of Voldemort.
"You go too far, Tom," Minerva scoffed but Tom was hardly finished, seeing out into the horizon of necessities as he was.
"And do you think they would stop at nothing short of death to see that through?" Tom asked, "The streets, Minerva, would run red with blood. No, I'm just one man, and a rather unambitious and old one at that."
He had stayed this long, Tom thought, but when the time came to stir the embers of this great nation and see what spark caught because of it…
Tom would wish them luck, these young fools who fought the good fight, but as for Tom and his family. Well, if it was coming to this, then perhaps it was time to leave after all.
Tom hadn't realized, though, that it had always been time to leave. He had simply been too distracted to judge the moment properly.
As for Minerva's revolution, well, Tom would not think about that for a long time.
"No."
That was Lily's opinion that night in bed, a simple, inarguable, stubborn "no" as if that was all the answer she needed to give.
"No?" Tom asked in turn, moving so that he could look at her more closely, look at her in those green eyes of her and see what exactly it was that made her think now was the time to say no, "Lily, there isn't going to be a better time and—"
"You have a life here Tom, a role in Hogwarts," Lily started, rubbing at her face and sitting up fully, already tired of the argument before it had even started.
"Life can go on elsewhere and—"
"I know you don't think it, Tom," Lily spat before he could finish, "I know that for someone with your talents, your pride, you have such little self-worth it isn't even funny. But Tom, Hogwarts needs you, now more than ever. You're the muggle studies professor, you're proof that people like us exist that—"
"I'm a parselmouth, Lily," Tom reminded her.
"Not to them and you know it," Lily said, "They need you here, Tom, otherwise all they'll have is Bellatrix Black telling them what a muggle is. They don't have to take your course, they don't have to listen to you, but seeing you in and of itself is worth something."
She held up a hand before he could respond, before he could say that she gave him far too much credit, that attendance in his classes was at an all-time low and that the pranks against him had gotten bolder by the minute.
"And I have a life here, Tom, your daughter should have a life here," Lily said, "She should go to Hogwarts, where you and I went to school not—"
"Ubik would be fine," Tom said, "Better than fine, she would—"
"How on earth do you know that?" Lily asked, eyebrows raised, "Have you been there recently? Did you even see their school before you were kicked off the planet? And what will they say when they know she's your daughter?"
"I know what they say here when they know she's my daughter," Tom responded in kind, and he knew what they'd be saying in a few years, because he'd heard it all himself before and Lily had as well.
Harry hadn't heard it yet, not in any real context, only passing shouting in the streets as Tom gripped her hand tightly and pulled her swiftly to wherever they were heading. Even then, these days, direct apparition was better. If Tom wanted to loiter around, he'd do it at home.
No, what he suspected Lily wasn't saying, what he was above pointing out, was that it would bring Azrael of Ubik careening like a meteor back into their lives. Instead of Tom's strange, distant, pen pal he would become the uncle that Vernon Dursley never could be. A strange, alien, eternally youthful former flame of Tom that Lily could never understand and never truly block from her life. Tom knew that Lily wanted anything in the world but that.
Even if it meant staying here in the heat of a revolution that had not had the decency to break out yet.
"What good would come of it, Tom," Lily said slowly, cupping his face in her hands gently, "If everyone ran away?"
They would live, that was what would come of it. Tom was a Slytherin for a reason and why Lily would think he'd have the nobility for words like that to work on him was beyond him. More, even if they would have once appealed to him, he was no longer a sixteen-year-old boy with dreams of grandeur. This was the life he had made himself, this small simple thing, and he would do his best to preserve it.
Even if that meant running away.
"You mistake me for a Gryffindor," Tom said, his hands curling around hers, however Lily did not look insulted or cowed.
"You have more courage, I think, than you know," Lily said, "Look at your muggleborn pride, even without really being a muggleborn at all—"
"The suits didn't last," Tom said, sadder somehow than he had any right to be, as if going about in public in wizard's robes really had been the end of something instead of simple pragmatism.
"But you still have Muggle Studies, and you still have parseltongue, even though you've never used it," Lily reminded him.
That was different, if he revealed that the Chamber of Secrets fiasco would eventually land back on his own head. More, what good would it do them truly, he had still married a muggleborn and had a half-blood daughter. It didn't matter that he was descended from Salazar Slytherin himself, it would never matter, and at only sixteen Tom had realized that.
But perhaps that was what courage was, having enough pride to stand in place even when you should fold. And he did not want to be known as the man who had been the first to run.
He sighed, leaned his forehead against hers, "Lily, you will ruin us all."
She just grinned back.
"Tomorrow morning," Tom said, his eyes fluttering shut beneath a sudden exhaustion, "I'll be cutting us off from the floo network."
Author's Note: Ah Tom, you try so hard. New in the world of "October" we have "Glimmers of Fatherhood" which is the last chapter essentially from Lily Evans' perspective.
Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter