Warning: Although there've been some uncomfortable things, this chapter's been the most uncomfortable for me to write. So I've upped the rating to M for the subject matter.
Year Six: Chapter 7
Once upon a time, a witch used a potion to ensnare a man. She became pregnant, but when the potion wore off, the man left her. Heartbroken, she lived only long enough to give birth and name her son.
A decade and a half later, a witch used a potion to ensnare the son. She became pregnant, and when the potion wore off, the son killed her.
It was a terrible fairy tale. Yet, even as Tom Riddle's mind shied away from the parallels, it always circled back around, prodding and examining the memories from every angle. He'd killed his own child. Even though his gut churned, and something undefinable within his chest felt tight, he still found himself thinking about it, because if he thought instead of what the witch had done to him, his vision swam and a loud buzzing filled his ears and all the world disappeared into a violent need to get away. So he thought about the child instead.
He supposed that once you'd murdered a few hundred people, you stopped being as affected by it, no matter the deceased's relation to you, and no matter how disgusted you felt to realize you were worse than your child-abandoning muggle father.
Tom shook his head and stared at his nearly blank parchment. He was meant to be finishing his transfiguration homework, but he couldn't focus. He'd only managed an introduction in the hour since dinner, and it was a poor one at that.
"There you are," came Hermione's voice from behind him. "I've been looking everywhere for you. Are you okay?"
As she sat down next to him, Tom shuddered and struggled to master the urge to move to the other side of the table. He wasn't this weak – he couldn't afford to be. He looked up and smiled at her and Occluded the hell out of his mind so no one would be able to feel him through the bond. "Of course," he said. "I'm just tired."
Hermione looked suspicious, but she, with clear difficulty, accepted his answer without comment. "Do you need help with your homework?" she asked hesitantly after a moment of glancing at his parchment. "I mean, I know you can probably do it in your sleep, but that doesn't mean you should."
Tom shook his head. "Thank you, but I'll manage on my own."
Like that, deflection after deflection, he made it through the last vestiges of the day. He washed himself and changed into his night clothes. Looking into the mirror, his stomach churned. He saw himself - Tom Riddle, instead of Harry Potter – looking back at him, tiny bruises covering his upper body. He swallowed, and the image dissolved back into reality. Tom steeled himself. He would do this.
And yet, when he went to get into bed, he found himself ordering Hermione back to the girls' dorm.
"Why did you do that?" Ginny demanded as soon as they were alone. They could both feel Hermione's hurt through the bond.
Tom swallowed and tried to say something, but he couldn't explain. Couldn't say that he barely saw Ginny as human, let alone female, but Hermione was undeniably both, nor could he explain to her why that mattered now when it never had before. So instead he pulled Ginny closer and ran his fingers through her hair, the motion soothing. "I wanted to spend tonight with just you," he said, choosing how to word the truth carefully to create a lie.
The younger girl flushed pink and hit his leg weakly. "You should still apologize to her," she muttered, but it didn't take long until she fell asleep.
Tom glanced down at her, then stared back into the darkness blankly until dawn.
Things didn't improve. By day, Tom was a ball of nervous energy, and by the week's end, he'd accidentally cursed Ginny twice and Luna once when they startled him. Hermione escaped that fate only because she was ignoring him (likely because he still hadn't let her back in the boy's dorm), and Severus was so studiously not looking at him that it was even worse than if the man had been giving him the same concerned glances as everyone else.
At night, he simply stared at the darkness and tried not to think, and the bruised-looking skin under his eyes grew steadily darker as he continued to dodge sleep. Twice, he raised his wand to his temple, prepared to give in and remove the offending memories for some future version of himself to deal with. Twice, he found himself lowering the wand as a foreign resiliency rose up within him. It wasn't the resiliency of Tom Riddle, the boy who'd survived the orphanage doing whatever it took, nor did he think it was the resiliency of Voldemort, the Dark Lord who'd spent a decade as a wraith and come back undeterred from his chosen path. In fact, it felt like a particularly Gryffindorish refusal to give up or give in no matter the cost. Tom blamed Potter. Clearly, Gryffindorishness was genetic.
It was under these circumstances that a note from Dumbledore came requesting a meeting on Saturday evening. The first meeting of Tom's group would be the following morning. Tom finally had to admit it: he needed to do something about this, because ignoring it wasn't working. .
What did muggles do in this situation, he wondered. It was no use thinking about what magicals might do – he already knew the prescribed treatment for most forms of trauma was to ignore it and hope it went away on its own. Mad-Eye Moody came to mind as a prime example why that method was less than ideal.
Unfortunately, what he knew of muggle methods wasn't promising – electroshock therapy and lobotomy had been spoken of in hushed whispers and nervous giggles at the orphanage – but that had been quite a long time ago. Potter's memories held the vague idea of talking to a special doctor, but Tom wasn't sure how that would help anything, and even the idea of talking about this with some doctor felt like taking a grater to an open wound.
He'd come no closer to a solution by Saturday morning as he searched listlessly for an answer within the library, which is where Astoria Greengrass and Ron Weasley of all people found him.
Astoria frowned and pushed Ron forward a step, then backed away, still within hearing distance, but far enough away to give the illusion of privacy. Ron grimaced and took several calming breaths. "What happened?" he asked bluntly, eliciting a look of pure dismay on Astoria's face. Clearly, she'd been expecting him to approach this with more delicacy, which proved she didn't deal with Gryffindors often.
Tom's eyes narrowed. "I don't know what you mean," he said coldly.
"Come off it, mate. First day of classes, you're suddenly twitchy and pulling away from everyone and you expect us to believe it's nothing?" Ron frowned at him. "Look, you can talk to me, or you can talk to Greengrass over there, but you need to talk to someone. Get a new perspective so you can fix whatever mess you've got going on in there. If not for you, then for Hermione. This is making her miserable."
Tom's fists clenched, and he stared resolutely at the shelf in front of him instead of at Weasley. "If there were something to talk about, don't you think I'd have done so already?"
The eye roll was clear even through Ron's voice. "'Course not, because if you had, everyone wouldn't still be walking on eggshells around you. Unless you're telling me you meant to nearly kill my sister, in which case we can have an entirely different conversation."
Now Tom turned to face the boy, annoyed. "I did not nearly kill Ginny. Her face disappeared. Briefly. I fixed it long before she could have come even close to suffocating." His lips twisted. "I already apologized for that anyway," he added as an afterthought.
Ron nodded very calmly and reasonably. "And the thing that made her intestines come out her mouth? Was that not nearly killing her?"
Tom grit his teeth. "I don't know, let's try it and you tell me." His wand was already in his hand, and the only reason he didn't curse Weasley was that Astoria stood there as a witness. That was probably why she was there in the first place, now that he thought about it. In any event, he'd fixed that too, if with quite a bit more trauma on Ginny's part.
Ron just stared at him, face white but expression resolute. "And you set Luna on fire," he added just when it seemed like he might have a modicum of self-preservation.
Magic surging, Tom bared his teeth at the boy before him. Two words, and he'd never bother him again. They stood there for several seconds, Tom shaking with the effort to restrain himself. At last, Tom returned his wand to its holster and started away from the other boy. "Just leave it," he ordered.
A moment later, a tiny slip of a girl followed him, staying a little more than an arm's length away from him. She tilted her head. "Do you want to know what I think?" she asked.
Tom was aware that now Ron was playing bodyguard, and he wondered when these two had gotten so friendly. "No," he snapped.
Astoria shrugged. "Too bad. Professor Snape said you'd Obliviated yourself at some point, and that you'd recovered the lost memories."
Severus was dead. Tom switched his destination.
Undeterred, Astoria continued. "I've been watching you. You're angry, yes, but more than that, you're skittish. Especially around Granger." She wrinkled her nose. "Who is, for whatever reason, the leading contender in the betting pool to become your girlfriend."
That stopped him. "There's a betting pool?" Tom interrupted incredulously, mind temporarily derailed by the absurdity of the idea.
"Yeah." Astoria grinned impishly. "I put a few sickles on Professor Snape, just in case you wanted to win me some money. I mostly did it to see Corner's expression, but if you did decide to take up with him, I'd make a killing given the odds."
"No," Tom said again shortly.
"Oh well. Anyway, so I've been watching you, and I've been investigating some things, and I know something about self-Obliviation, as it happens." She suddenly sobered. "I think you were raped."
Tom froze. They were in a corridor: empty, but it was mid-morning, so there was every chance someone could come along at any time. There weren't any portraits, and she'd spoken softly enough that he wasn't sure even Weasley had heard, let alone anyone else. They'd passed a few students in the halls already though, so if Greengrass turned up dead or missing, he'd be the obvious suspect. He turned to face her, smiling a non-smile. "Yeah? You think someone was stupid enough to rape Voldemort?" He'd thus far avoided even thinking the word. Saying it made a nervous energy rush through him, and a buzzing sound began building inside his head.
Astoria nodded seriously. "Maybe not him, but then Tom Riddle wasn't quite him either, was he? It was Moaning Myrtle, wasn't it. Ginny says you killed her for no reason, but I think that you Obliviated the reason behind killing her from your memory, leaving you with the impression that you'd done it on a whim."
He could barely follow her logic, his thoughts scattering as his breath started to speed up despite his best efforts. Speaking of Obliviation, could he cast it on both students before either could defend against it? He thought he could. But if he was going to remove this memory from them anyway… He spoke, voice tight. "Why bother confronting me? Even supposing such a thing happened, what purpose would this conversation serve?"
Ron, looking uncomfortable but still determined, came closer, eying Tom's wand warily. "We want to help you. I borrowed that book on muggle psychology you got for your birthday, and it seems like just talking about things can help."
Tom wavered. That meshed with what little Potter knew about that sort of thing. Everything was starting to gray around the edges though, so he had a feeling this conversation was about to end regardless.
Astoria pressed on, changing tack. "Aren't you going to rule over Magical Britain?" she asked cooly. "How are you going to manage that when you can't even handle a little bit of talking?" She paused, then added, "Is this all Tom Riddle amounts to?"
The gray turned red, and between one heartbeat and the next, he found himself pinning her to the wall, hand around her throat and squeezing. Ron had his wand out, and he was halfway through incanting a cutting curse. Tom shielded himself. He hadn't meant to attack Astoria (not physically anyway), and her fear screamed through the bond like nails on a chalkboard. He dropped her and clenched his fists, looking away from both of them. "Fine," he growled. "Fine."
He followed them to the Room of Requirement and his own personal configuration. He sat stiffly on a chair while the unlikely pair sat beside each other and looked at him. "What do you want me to say?" he asked, growing irritated at their hesitation.
"How did it happen?" Astoria asked.
Tom clenched his jaw and stared at the fire. "A potion. At one of Slughorn's parties. She disguised herself, so I didn't find out until later who she was."
"You didn't kill her right away," Astoria noted. "What changed?"
Tom closed his eyes, trying to keep his breathing under control. "She revealed herself to me and claimed she was pregnant."
Astoria studied him for a moment impassively. Then she asked, "You killed her because you didn't want to become a father?" The words might have sounded judgemental, but her tone was so neutral, it was hard to believe she felt anything about the subject matter.
"No," Tom said slowly, hesitatingly, hating himself for being unable to speak with his usual confidence. "That was… Discovering, after, that she'd been telling the truth was the trigger. For Obliviating myself. I hadn't planned on that."
Run cut in, ignoring Astoria's glare. "Wait, so you were alright with having a kid but not with Moaning Myrtle?"
"Of course not!" Tom snarled and it was like something broke in him. "Her identity had nothing to do with it! She announced it expecting me to be excited, all giddy about it and when I asked her, she admitted to using a love potion like it was nothing. Like of course she used one, because I wouldn't have slept with her otherwise so what else could she have done. Like it was the most common sense thing in the world. Like it wasn't a violation of… Like she had any right to do that!" He fell silent, breathing heavily, realizing that he'd been shouting and that, at some point, he'd stood up. He sat back down and stared at the fire and tried to calm down.
Several minutes passed before Ron continued. "Did you - had you ever done it before then?"
Tom turned and glared at him. "No."
"And since?" Astoria asked now.
"No," Tom said again. After a moment, he added, "As Voldemort, I gave up the ability altogether in exchange for power."
Ron winced.
Astoria sighed. "What about before? What did you think about sex before then?"
Tom hesitated, frowning in thought. "I don't think I thought much of it," he said at last, slowly, tasting the words for the truth in them, "I expected it would happen eventually, because that's just what happened, like getting your Apparition license or taking your NEWTS. I… wasn't looking forward to it, but it was just… a box to be marked off. No more emotional component than that." He grimaced, hating this conversation more every second.
Astoria nodded. "And now? What's the first word that comes to mind when you think about producing your necessary heirs?"
"Dread," Tom said immediately before snapping his jaw shut in horror at having revealed even more weakness.
Astoria nodded again, one side of her mouth quirking up in a sympathetic sort of smile. Then she had to open her mouth again. "What about masturbation, do you ever do that?" She said it so calmly, so clinically, that it took Tom a moment to realize what she'd asked, and Ron looked to be choking.
"No," he said after considering whether she had any right to that information and deciding it didn't matter, since she wasn't likely to end up a disembodied soul able to retrieve this memory anyway. "I did it once as a teenager, decided it wasn't interesting, and never did it again."
Now Astoria turned to Ron. "How does that compare to the way most boys feel about it? I mean, I know my feelings, but I've heard it's a bit different for girls." She paused thoughtfully. "Well, I've also heard that it's not different, but the point is that I don't know, having never been male."
Tom rolled his eyes, deciding to spare Ron. "Mine is not the typical reaction," he said. She had to be related to Luna, which somehow made him feel somewhat less tense.
"So you have zero interest in sex? You're not even interested in the power dynamic?" Astoria asked.
Tom was about to say no when she'd added the second sentence. He frowned.
Correctly interpreting his expression, Astoria said, "Sex can be about love and romance and pleasure and all that," she waved the notion away impatiently as she spoke, "but it can also be about power. You seem to see it as a lack of control, but it can also be taking control." She shrugged. "When you take potions out of the equation, the side that wants it more has to bend to the other's will. Most pureblood women teach their daughters this."
Ron hissed at her (as though Tom wasn't sitting right there able to hear him anyway). "Do you want to make him even more of a psychopath?"
Tom ignored him, taking a moment to consider Astoria's words. Put in that context, sex sounded… slightly less terrible. Still messy and distasteful, but he didn't feel the same bone-chilling, gut-churning sickness at the idea when she put it that way. It didn't change anything, not really. But… He frowned. "I'm done," he said and stood. He aimed his wand at Astoria. "Obliviate."
Ron had his wand out and a shield up before he realized that Tom was leaving. "Wait, what about me?" he asked. "I mean, not that I want you to erase my memories or anything but…"
Tom gave the boy a flat look. "I don't want to know what Astoria would do with that information. You, on the other hand, I know will do your utmost to forget it whether I Obliviate you or not." And, he didn't add, if for some odd reason he found himself needing to resume this discussion, he had no desire to repeat everything.
"Well, you're not wrong," Ron grumbled, but he did relax enough to lower his wand. Before Tom could open the door, he asked, "Did it help? At all?"
Tom blinked and took stock of himself. "...It might have," he admitted. He still felt on edge, but perhaps only teetering on the edge instead of dangling off it.
Ron nodded, looking awkward. "Well, good. I think. I mean, I hope you're feeling better. But, you know, if you're not, like if you start feeling worse, then you can always talk to me. If you want."
Tom nodded shortly, ready to be done with this whole experience. He still had to see Dumbledore that evening, and he needed to clear his mind of everything not-Potter beforehand.
Author's Note: So before anyone jumps on me about anything, I want to say that these are definitely all my character's thoughts. Many things had to be rewritten several times as I thought "would this character really think that?" For instance, Tom grew up in the era where mental health was still seen as a moral weakness, and I can't imagine the Dursley's gave Harry any useful information. On the other hand, with the existence of love potions, culture around them aside, I think the frankly awful idea that 'men can't be raped' would be less of an issue in Magical Britain. So accidental positive side effect sort of, I guess, if you really want a silver lining to them.
Ron does an actually fair attempt at playing counselor, I think. Better than some of mine have anyway. (Not even kidding. One counselor told me "That's evil," about something I did as a child. At like… 6.) Astoria…. It's not really her calling. But she does succeed in framing things in a way that lets Tom cope with some aspects of this, even if it's not in a healthy way. And everything else aside, talking things through and reframing is generally helpful.
To Hippothestrowl: Ah, I always thought she didn't know about it, because if she did, I thought she'd definitely work on doing something about Sirius. But in any event, the Order didn't really do much in the year it existed before she died, so there wasn't much reason for her to know they were up and about again. Since she didn't die and was, instead, brought to Grimmauld Place, I don't see why she wouldn't agree to join so long as they weren't asking her to do anything illegal (and since he wasn't actually ever convicted in a fair trial of his peers, technically it wasn't really illegal for Sirius to leave Azkaban, and he's not really an escaped convict). It did go over kinda quickly though, which is my fault because I forgot she was even there for a while and then had to rush back and be like okayyeahshejoinedandleftGrimmauldPlace, and I'm never at my best when I'm scrambling to fix something after having written several more pages already. If there's ever a rewrite, I'll definitely see about spending more time on her stuff.
