A TEA PARTY
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Summary: Tom Riddle and Harry Potter sit down for afternoon tea.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J.K Rowling and co. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.
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Dear Luna did not like him going to visit the darkest, evilest wizard of their time. It was unnatural to go have tea with someone like that. She said as much to Ron and Hermione when they stopped by to find dear Luna's fine husband out for the afternoon. The two had shared a look.
They of course had approached Harry when he returned from his first trip to the Department of Mysteries. They had tried to understand. They had tried to talk him out of it. How it insulted the memory of all the innocent victims! The memory of those who had fought alongside Harry! The memory of Harry's own parents! But he could not be dissuaded.
And like clockwork, every Sunday afternoon, Harry Potter went to have tea with Tom Riddle. He never told what they talked about. Perhaps they didn't even talk. Perhaps the whole thing was a ruse, an excuse to get out of the house, to go find some young girl who wanted to spend a half an hour with the hero of her age. That was what Hermione had thought at first. But she had checked, for Luna's benefit only. Hermione knew somebody who worked as an Unspeakable. Harry Potter most certainly did have tea with Tom Riddle every Sunday afternoon. Earl Grey at that. With investigative skills like that, Hermione really was deserving of her Order of Merlin, First Class.
Dumbledore knew about it as well. He thought it rather delightfully evil, and, for just a few moments once in a while, he regretted killing Grindelwald. Why hadn't he thought to keep his archenemy alive, available for taunting at any occasion?
Harry knew they all knew. He knew everyone did. He didn't really think much of what they must have thought he was thinking. He felt he rather deserved not to have to think about those things, what arguments people used to defend or persecute his motives. The only thought he'd really had about another person in consideration to his time with Voldemort was to regret that Ron would have at least been able to play chess with the man. It wasn't often that Voldemort asked for a game of chess, so Harry didn't mind playing, (and losing). After all, didn't Harry win anyways?
Tom, however, often considered what other people must think. He knew the boy's wife didn't like it. The boy had told him that much. But other than that, he really didn't say much about it. The boy didn't act like they were anything but perhaps old friends. Or old enemies who had forgotten what they were fighting about in the first place. But, Tom thought, that's all they ever really were. Except one of them was a winner. And the other, well, the day Tom Riddle called himself a loser was the day Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape decided to start a family.
But Tom tried not to dwell on the outside world. It really amazed him that the boy seemed truly convinced things would be worse if Tom had won. He told him that much.
"It amazes me that you seem truly convinced things would be worse if I had won," Voldemort said. He was always Voldemort with the boy. It was never Tom, as everyone else had taken to calling him (It really was so degrading.) after Dumbledore had referred to him as such in one of the old fool's many interviews with the Daily Prophet after Voldemort had been captured, and it was never the Dark Lord. It was just Voldemort. And he was just the boy. Voldemort had tried to call him the Boy-Who-Lived when he'd first walked in, but Harry had asked Voldemort very politely to not call him that. With derision, Voldemort had called him the boy instead. The boy never minded. He was a boy, even after Dumbledore had coined the phrase "The Man-Who-Defeated-Tom Riddle."
"It amazes me too," the boy remarked idly, pouring them both a cup of tea. They were silent for a moment, and Voldemort wondered if the boy had run out of things to say. It made him unaccountably frustrated. He didn't want the boy there, by any means, so why did he still come? Perhaps, Voldemort mused, he should make it very clear that the boy need not come. He opened his mouth to do that, but said something else entirely.
"Why don't you just kill me? Every day you wait, my Death Eaters get one step closer to freeing me. Lucius Malfoy is a very well connected man."
The boy sipped his tea and remarked that Lucius was in Azkaban and that no one, ever, was going to get him out of the Department of Mysteries.
Voldemort did not say anything. He knew Lucius was in Azkaban. The boy had told him that before. Why hadn't he remembered? If the boy thought Voldemort was finally snapping, he did not show it.
"Tell me, how is your dearwife?" Voldemort asked, trying to unsettle the boy a bit.
He responded that she was expecting. A boy. They were going to name him Sirius Thomas Potter. The boy thought it would be fitting to include the name Thomas. He liked the name Tom. It would be a shame to have it die in the magical world because of the whole fiasco. The boy had gestured around the room when he'd said "fiasco." Voldemort looked around, nearly expecting to find them in the middle of the sight of his last duel. Others capitalized it, calling it the Last Battle. It wasn't a battle to him, or the boy, and capitalization really took something away from it. Even in letters he wrote to his old supporters, he would never call it anything but his own last duel. He wondered if those letters really got delivered. The boy insisted they did. The boy was a Gryffindor, and they were to be believed in any matter concerning letters and Quidditch.
And it wasn't even the last battle. There would be more, but not for Voldemort. That business was over and done with.
Harry sipped his tea. Voldemort seemed bored again. Harry shook his head. Such a waste. He wondered… well, it didn't matter. He had tried to change things, but… that didn't matter either. What was the point of being Harry Potter if you couldn't even be assured that your very worthy adversary was content? He supposed guaranteed seating at the wizarding world's most exclusive restaurant was really all he'd ever get out of it.
Harry finished the last of his tea, looked at his watch, but made not move to leave. Voldemort watched curiously.
Had Voldemort heard about the new wing being added the D of M?
"No. Who would tell me about that?"
The question was ignored, and the boy told him all about the new invention of the time released, self-spell casting wands that were being investigated. It would save quite a bit of time, the boy imagined, even if they could only cast very simple charms.
Voldemort was tempted to ask his first question again. Next they'd come up with a way to make cauldrons and potions obsolete. Why stop there? Soon, magic would be an entity all to itself and everyone could just die off. Surely no one would complain. Voldemort would be happy (no more Mudbloods). Everyone else would be happy (no more evil). Voldemort looked at the boy, who was standing and saying goodbye. Voldemort nodded, and watched him walk towards the door before he coughed a bit to stop the boy.
"Oh, and boy? Do come and warn me when you and your brave world of followers manage to finally end the magical world once and for all." The boy smiled, and, for just a moment, they were Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort again, both ready to kill the other with their bare hands if need by. But it passed, and the boy left, and Voldemort continued existing, waiting for the world to end.
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A/N: Unlikely? Definitely. Odd? Most certainly. Review? Please.