Summary: A thoroughly impossible freak accident transports our favorite attractive psychopath forward in time from 1942 to 1996. Harry Potter/Tom Riddle slash. This chapter is something of a mirror of the last – a prologue for Tom Riddle.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, Tom Riddle, or any other people, places or objects that may appear in this humble work of fiction.
Warnings: Possible spoilers up to the fifth book. M/M, obviously. Rating is down as T for now but may, possibly, increase to M as things progress.
Author's Note: My goal is to keep this as in character as possible. I appreciate any feedback, especially if you think I've got characters – particularly Harry and Tom – acting in blatantly ridiculous ways. Reviews are appreciated, especially critical ones. Thanks for the great detailed reviews for the last chapter! I hope you enjoy this one just as much; I must admit that I find writing Tom Riddle to be more entertaining than writing Harry, personally :)

Chapter Two: An Egocentric Interlude

Tom Riddle sucked on the end of his quill, dipped the tip into his ink bottle, and scrawled down the conclusion to his essay in swift, sharp strokes. He rolled up the parchment and put it aside, sighing deeply as he did so. He would not have waited so long to complete his homework assignments if he were still at the orphanage; there, it would have been a matter of picking the lock on the cupboard in which the staff put his school things during the summer and frantically scribbling for ten minutes at a time, relocking the cupboard and returning before he was missed. He would have had to start at the beginning of the "holidays" to finish in time. As it was, he had had a great deal more free time to manage over the past two months at Hogwarts, and homework had not been high on his list of priorities.

Tom had completed his main summer project over two weeks before, and it was currently ensconced in his room, in a metal case inside his trunk, protected by a half-dozen different wards and hexes he had found in various books in the Restricted Section. He was not yet sure what he would do with it; he had originally intended to slip it inside a library book, where it would eventually be found by some witless student after Tom himself was long gone. However, this plan had a certain flaw: neither he, nor anyone else, would be in control of when it was found, or who would find it. Leaving the fate of such a dangerous artifact as his diary to the wiles of chance wasn't appealing to his sense of drama or timing. There was also the option of keeping it himself and setting it loose at the appropriate moment, but he liked to think that he'd have better things to do with his time in the future than fiddle with old playthings from school. Eventually, he had decided that giving it to someone reasonably trustworthy once he left Hogwarts – someone with just enough brains to know not to use the diary until an opportune moment arose, or to write in it himself, but with not enough brains or power to use it against Tom – was the ideal maneuver. He hadn't decided who that would be yet, but he had nearly two years before he left Hogwarts.

It was to be Tom's last day of solitude. The other students were returning to Hogwarts on the train as he sat there finishing his essay, and by early evening he would be inundated with the distracting shouts and giggles of lesser mortals. Then he would have to begin classes again and he wouldn't have as much privacy to wander the library and the grounds as he pleased. He would still have the time, oh, yes, he'd have the time, he thought bitterly. Classes had long before become nothing more than a formality for Tom; he found them rather boring, frankly. They wouldn't be so bad if the other students could pick up the concepts as quickly as he did. However, as everyone was slower and less talented at magic than he, Tom often found himself sitting at his desk, hands in his lap, for most of his practical lessons after he had mastered the spell of the day. This usually took only as long as the time he needed to say the incantation; he had never yet had to practice any spell he had been taught in class. Some others he had researched on his own were more difficult, but only marginally so.

The only teacher who had ever made any effort to keep Tom amused during class was, ironically, his least favorite person in the school: Albus Dumbledore. He knew Dumbledore felt the same way about him, which is why he was baffled as to why the Transfiguration professor took it upon himself to give Tom extra work in class – and Dumbledore even made the work interesting. It wasn't writing lines, like the way the old Potions teacher had punished Tom once for finishing his work early in his first year (and Tom was quite glad to hear of the old bastard's retirement when he got back to Hogwarts the year after). No, Dumbledore lent Tom spellbooks from his own library on Advanced Transfiguration to read and practice with while the Professor instructed and guided the rest of the class through spellwork Tom had understood the minute the incantation had escaped Dumbledore's lips. Because of this well-deserved special treatment, Transfiguration was the only class Tom ever looked forward to.

Tom still hated Dumbledore, of course, and Dumbledore still hated him – he was sure of that. If he hadn't hated him before, he definitely hated him after last year. He just knew that Dumbledore knew he hadn't been telling the truth about Hagrid. The way the man had been looking at him… Tom shivered. It felt like shards of ice cutting into him. And Dumbledore had come up with the perfect punishment for Tom, too. It was nicely subtle – a Slytherin maneuver, one which Tom would have appreciated, had he not been on the receiving end of it.

When Tom had caught Hagrid and presented him to Headmaster Dippet, earning himself a Special Award for Services to the School and making himself a hero to everyone at Hogwarts, he hadn't foreseen any way that Dumbledore could possibly strike back, even if he did know. But Dumbledore was clever; he had somehow persuaded the Headmaster to keep that oaf Hagrid on at Hogwarts instead of sending him straight to Azkaban (how he managed this, Tom would never know) and have him trained as gamekeeper. Of course, Dumbledore did this because he knew Tom happened to be friends – in a mutually beneficial sort of way – with the gamekeeper, Hopkins. Tom had been assisting Hopkins on forays into the Forbidden Forest since Tom was in his third year (the fool Hopkins couldn't aim a wand properly at anything stationary if his life depended on it, yet alone hope to protect himself from the swift creatures of the Forest) and, in return, Hopkins looked the other way while Tom harvested ingredients for illicit potions. It was an excellent arrangement which no one could have found anything suspicious about, except Dumbledore, of course – but then, he thought everything Tom did was suspicious. He'd probably watch me go to the loo if he could, the barmy old kook, Tom grumbled. In fact, he added, smirking nastily, if he had watched me go to the loo last year, he would have found out a great deal, indeed.

At any rate, now that Hopkins had the giant Hagrid, he didn't need to worry about beasties in the forest harming him, and Tom had lost an important connection. In the end, Dumbledore had gotten at least some small revenge and it annoyed Tom that he hadn't beaten his ultimate opponent entirely. Still, Dumbledore certainly didn't know how Tom had done it, or else Tom would be in Azkaban at that very moment. Tom had, quite literally, gotten away with murder right under Dumbledore's nose, so he couldn't complain much. Not that I even meant to kill that girl, Tom shrugged. It's not as though I could have known some stupid girl would go cry in the bathroom at exactly the wrong moment. Oh, well. Her loss. And the loss of the girl who had been teasing her, from what Tom heard. The ghost of the dead girl was stalking Olive Hornby everywhere she went, driving her absolutely mad. Better her than me, Tom grinned.

Perhaps this year would be different from the others, though. Even if Dumbledore did dislike him more than ever, Tom was at least entering N.E.W.T.-level classes this year. He had, naturally, gotten Outstanding O.W.L.s in every class he took – he hadn't even needed to open the letter the Ministry of Magic had sent him to know that. Tom also received a Medal for Magical Merit, not that he needed some stupid Ministry medal to tell him that he was ten times the wizard that any of the other students in the school could ever hope to be. He intended to take every class he had taken the previous year at the N.E.W.T. level, even though he had been advised against it, since the workload was so huge in the upper-level classes. Huge for most students, maybe, but for me, maybe it'll be enough to finally make things interesting, Tom thought.

Little did Tom know that his life would soon be getting far more interesting than he could ever anticipate.