Tom's up well into the night, still trying to process everything that Evelynn told him before going to sleep - he's focusing on his relations, just to avoid a mental breakdown at the thought of a being of myths and stories, something joked about and laughed at mockingly on a regular basis…sleeping on the other side of the room.
Right, his relatives. If he thinks on Evelynn too much at the moment, his head starts to hurt. a lot, actually - a throbbing ache that quickly convinced him to leave the subject be for now.
The Gaunts are a Pureblood family, but so inbred that they've their own version of the rumored Black Family Madness - a vein of violence and instability, if his Grandfather is anything to go by. Much like Voldemort displayed at the end of the war, actually, where he'd won and hadn't even realized it - though, he's convinced the Unicorn Blood had something to do with it and so is Evelynn. Everyone has magic at Hogwarts, even if he's got more than most, but his mind? He'd rather be dead, strange as the thought sounds to him, than turn into that rabid animal, so lost in bloodshed and power-lust that he couldn't even see he'd won. And Unicorn blood always curses those who've forcibly taken it.
Tom shudders in revulsion, physically forcing his thoughts away from that…that thing he'd become in Evelynn's original time.
His mother, Merope, was the only daughter of Marvolo Gaunt…but was abused quite similar to how Evelynn herself was, but for the opposite reason. Evelynn was hated and beaten because her relatives thought she had magic, his mother was because the other two Gaunts thought she had none. According to Evelynn, it was likely that her Core had been damaged by the treatment she received - and isn't that just a lovely thought? His mother was treated so badly, beaten and degraded so much that she became physically unable to use magic? On top of however weak she probably was from birth, due to the inbreeding?
Now he feels slightly bad for thinking she was weak all this time. And he's profoundly glad the Orphanage never found the Gaunts, and that they were in Azkaban for a while - as Evelynn pointed out, if they would do that to his mother, who was a Pureblood like them, what would the two violently unstable Pureblood fanatics have done to a helpless Halfblood baby born to the woman that was never good enough for them in the first place? With a Muggle father, to boot? A Muggle father that Morfin loved to Hex at every turn? Even if he'd gone to the Riddles, if his father hadn't been such a coward and left him here, he might not have been safe. Not a topic he wants to think about, not in the slightest.
His father on the other hand…that makes his blood boil. The man left his mother, abandoned her to fend for herself after learning she was pregnant with him! Left him to this hellhole, even after the Orphanage tried to contact him about his possible son - denied Tom was his, and left him to suffer. Even with the knowledge of the Love Potions - suspected Love Potions, his mind supplies, as Evelynn isn't one hundred percent sure and it was all speculation on Dumbledore's part as far as she knows - it doesn't make him any less furious at the man. Evelynn didn't have any kids, but he's damn certain she wouldn't have left them like Tom Riddle Snr. did!
All the proof he needs is sitting in her trunk, for Merlin's sake - she could've left him here, left him out of the loop, but no. Instead, even after everything he did to her in the future, she's helping him. He can't understand it, not one bit - the look on her face when he asked if she was going to kill him said the thought had never even crossed her mind. No, instead she stockpiles enough food to last the two of them well into the school term if necessary, plus enough Nutrient Potions for the both of them and the one she's still taking, and tells him everything about herself!
He wanted to understand her, wanted to know her story. Well, he got one out of two - he knows her story, but its making her even more of a mystery simply due to the fact that he can't see why she wouldn't look at him and see a fucking monster. Specifically, that pale, serpentine, noseless, hairless abomination she was forced to watch come out of a cauldron.
She said, giving him a serious look, that she sees him, sees his bloody brilliance - exact words - and sees endless possibilities. How the Master of Death, an immortal being that can time travel and could even go back to Merlin's time if she so chose, could look at him and see so much potential after seeing one path he so easily took…its utterly mind-blowing.
As was the detail of his mother's Wards on the place - basically the same kind of Wards Lily Potter made when she refused to get out of the way and stop shielding her daughter, only much stronger and not twisted and defiled. Not twisted into Blood Wards tied to someone that never loved him, not weakened and used to trap him - its doubtful anyone ever knew about them until Evelynn pointed them out, and Evelynn had the advantage of living under similar Wards and researching them while on the run. And then learning the ones she was under could've collapsed at the slightest push, they were so weak from lack of any kind of care.
As Evelynn explained it, Merope could've tried to use magic to save her life, but given how little she was taught - if she was taught at all, as its entirely possible they hadn't even started teaching her before deciding she must've been a Squib - it was a toss-up as to whether it would've worked, and the Ministry would've come regardless to Obliviate the Muggles and found him. Probably taken him to the Gaunts and left him there when they got out of Azkaban - though, she freely admitted that she might be somewhat pessimistic of the Ministry after her own treatment in her previous life, and its entirely possible they'd have actually done their job correctly.
Or, she could willingly give her life for him, dedicate everything she had left to see him safe. She chose the latter, hence why nobody from the Ministry ever came knocking due to the amount of magic he performed on the Muggles. Though, actually feeling his mother's magic…that was a very literal shock to the teen who'd only ever known negative feelings. Being surrounded by warmth…it's something to get used to.
Of course, so's the detail that he's descended from Cadmus Peverell, as at some point the man's line married Slytherin's - which makes him and Evelynn distant, extremely distant cousins. Since they lived in the 1200's.
They talked about other things before dinner, had dinner in silence, Evelynn told him he could just legally change his name at Gringotts - pointed out the detail that there's no other Tom's in the Magical World that he's met, while the names of all the Purebloods are recycled from the family tree at least a dozen times over, and even Merlin and Emrys were so very common in the famous Wizard's time yet they all remember just the one, 'so bloody well make your name another legend instead of a ridiculous anagram, Tom' - and then soon enough they went to sleep after sharing another hidden meal.
Leaving him stuck with his endless thoughts, thoughts that seem to delight in running laps around his head. One thing's for sure, though - he's never becoming that twisted monster, if only to prove Dumbledore wrong about him. He can learn from his mistakes, at the very least. Go down a different route. Who knows, maybe even kill Grindelwald before Dumbledore does and keep him from getting such a disgustingly-large sphere of influence he'll then use to make the entire Wizarding World his chess board.
He's pulled out of his thoughts by a soft-ish thump, and looks around to see Evelynn tossing and turning in her sleep. "I did everything. Every bloody thing he wanted…"
He gets up and moves closer, murmuring "Evelynn, it's a nightmare. Calm down…"
Instead of waking up or settling, Evelynn tosses and jerks once more, hissing "I bloody died for you people…"
Tom rolls his eyes, muttering "Yes, the single most Gryffindorish thing I know you've done to date. You walk to your death, hoping the rest of them that sat back and hoped you'd save them would get off their arses and finish the job. I'm honestly not surprised you came back, there was no way a group like that would've been able to kill Voldemort." Showing him everything, he realizes, must've set off the nightmares. He eventually settles on rubbing circles into her shoulder - thankfully, it sends her into a more peaceful sleep.
Though, it takes him a good ten minutes to untangle himself from her arms - turns out in her sleep…she's a bit clingy.
And cuddly.
And needy.
None of which he's actually ever going to mention to her, since he likes living far too much to use the prime blackmail material.
Shit, Peverell… He's just glad nobody will ever learn of the ten minutes he spends sitting beside her trying to calm her down and get her to stop clutching at his shirt like its a lifeline.
By the time he finally gets back into his own rickety bed, he's finally falling asleep. His last thoughts wondering if she's going to just up and leave, go live her life at last and try to figure out what it is she wants to do with it somewhere else, or if she'll stick around after Dumbledore's destruction. He's got no bloody idea why she told him anything, much less everything, seeing as she clearly has massive trust issues. But she did, and he's not sure what to make of it.
Does it mean she trusts him? Or, at the very least, his self-preservation instincts and brains?
She must, or she genuinely doesn't care if the world burns and the people that betrayed her so thoroughly end up dead - she gave him more than enough to track them all down sixty years in the future, after all. He's not sure which case would be preferable - on the one hand, she's something straight out of a near-literal fairytale, and he's not sure what all she can do or how powerful she truly is. As she explained it, the Void acts as an endless source of energy - energy that would easily kill anything else that came into contact with it, if it was raw, and could supercharge a spell to lethal proportions - and she can call on it in a crisis. Though, it would take a toll on her body, leave her physically exhausted at the very least - one thing she's hoping will change soon, with her body getting back to a better state. Push her physical limits back, build up some real stamina, etc.
Also, she's from the future. She knows what the people of that time, the next two generations, were like, and how they more or less thought.
Any changes she'd make, with all that in mind, would likely be long-lasting and with dire consequences for Dumbledore - because she well and truly hates that man, the puppeteer of her old life and the man that not only raised her for the slaughter and ensured she has a martyrdom mentality but had her friends and loved ones turn their backs on her and hunt her down.
On the other hand, if she were uninterested in the world and what happens in it…well, he can't say how things will go if she decides to travel the world for a hundred years or more, what she might prevent or change. Or not, so to speak.
Unsurprisingly, his dreams are filled with more of these thoughts.
AN: Hey, everyone! A single chapter this time, sorry. Not really. On a brighter note, I've figured out just what I'm going to do with Dumbledore's past. Dumbledore is in so much trouble. *Evil grin* He's so screwed, when he finally pushed Evelynn over the edge.
Anyway, enjoy! Hope you like the chapter - I figured even Tom, a child prodigy in canon, would need a while to keep from having a nervous breakdown at the soon-to-be-immortal, all-powerful Master of Death just casually sitting on the other side of the room. Heck, I think I might've broken him just a bit - Tom is thirteen, after all. A very intelligent and powerful thirteen-year-old...but he's an actual teenager. Um...oops. I'll try to put him back together by next chapter! Please review!