Setting: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

A heavy mist rose up, obscuring King's Cross and swallowing Dumbledore entirely beneath a sheet of white. The wispy tendrils curled in closer, crawling up Harry's ankles to engulf him, too. Their unexpected weight came as a comforting heaviness, a blanket blocking out all the ill in the world for one last time before Harry would reawaken in the Forbidden Forest, surrounded on all sides by Death Eaters.

"Wait."

In that fragile instant, the spell broke. The fog receded to smoke off the ground a short distance away, like a tide temporarily held at bay, drawing back to rise again, greater and stronger than before.

Harry'a eyes snapped wide at the voice that was definitely not Dumbledore's gravely tones. The new voice, although young and soft in comparison, held a similar resolve born of a life aged in the tight grasp of difficulty. She sounded familiar, yet not at all, certainly not enough to deduce an identity just from a single word, so Harry whirled to face her.

"You," he breathed, seeing, but not quite believing. "I know you."

The words came out sounding like a question, though the were not.

Her eyebrows lifted slightly, giving off the impression of mild mannered surprise. "Really? I'm certain we've never met," she said in soothing, assured tones, completely unlike her last dying gasps Harry recalled from Voldemort's memory. She cracked a half smile, adding, "I'm a little before your time. A lot, actually. I may not look it, but I could be your grandmother. Although, on second thought..." she tugged thoughtfully at a strand of her silver-white hair, "maybe I do look like it. I've heard my hair really ages me."

"Er... no. Not at all."

She looked so different now, with life brightening up her cheeks, than she had then— ironic that she'd appear more alive now that she was dead — but Harry was positive she was the same girl he'd seen in Voldemort's memory just a few weeks prior. Her distinct features were unmistakable, almost unique, were it not for her striking resemblance to the picture he had seen of her uncle.

Not for the first time since being struck with that particular instance of peaking into Voldemort's mind, Harry could practically hear her last words echoing through his head. A pained apology. I'm sorry, Tom.

"You're that girl." Harry shifted restlessly from foot to foot. Before, when she'd just been a fleeting fragment of Voldemort's past, it hadn't struck him what an intimate thing he'd witnessed. Being in front of the object of that memory, however, made it feel real in a way it hadn't previously. "That Grindelwald girl I saw in his memory."

"That," she clucked her tongue, holding up a halting finger, "has never been my name. How would you feel feel if I called you 'that Potter boy Voldemort wants pushed off a cliff'? Doesn't feel good, does it? You may call me Ophelia, if that suits you, but I don't go by Grindelwald." Her brisk pace, giving no time for Harry to apologise — should he even apologise, he wondered? — left him feeling like he's been run over by the Night Bus. "Whose memory are you referring to, may I ask?"

"How do you know who I am?" Harry asked abruptly. He grew accustomed long ago to magical folk recognising him on sight, so it shouldn't have surprised him to hear his name out of her lips as much as it did, but she'd been dead since before he was even born.

"I..." She seemed to struggle to find the right words, her mouth mutely opening and closing twice before finally settling on, "I've wanted to meet you for some time."

"Meet... me? Why?"

"I'm a huge fan of your work," she explained glibly. "Love the way you put Tom in his place every year. It does wonders for grounding his ego, and Merlin only knows how much he needs that. Really, I can't thank you enough."

For a second time, before he could get a word in, an irritated voice spoke up, sending a shiver of icy fear down Harry's spine. "You are getting off track."

Harry instinctively reached for his wand, only to be reminded it wasn't there, probably fallen beside his body wherever it laid back on the other side with the living. With no way to defend himself, he took several quick steps away from the both of them.

How could he be here?

Ophelia closed her eyes in a very aggrieved manner and loosed an exasperated sigh. "Didn't we agree you'd stay away and let me handle this so you wouldn't freak the poor boy out, Tom?"

If anyone else his age had referred to Harry like he was a child, he would have been irritated, but for some reason coming from her it didn't sound quite so demeaning as it should have.

"We did," Riddle agreed, carrying himself smoothly over to Ophelia's side. "But, if you recall, neither of us have ever been particularly adept at keeping our promises, be it with me with Horcruxes or you with leaving me."

"You think you're so funny, but you're not. You're petty — and you hold a nasty grudge. Merlin only knows why I bother with you," Ophelia lamented. "It's a mystery."

"What is going on?" Harry demanded. While he was certain nothing could do him harm in this place, Voldemort's was never a welcome face to behold. He pointed angrily at Riddle, who stared at the offending finger the way Harry himself had often stared at Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skewts: a mixture of revulsion, disdain, and reluctant acceptance. "I saw you a few minutes ago, and you looked nothing like this! That creature was pitiful, inhuman – and disgusting."

Nothing like the handsome man before him now. Harry's thoughts first jumped to the phantom Riddle that had popped out of the diary his second year, but that wasn't quite accurate either. He seemed older, more like the Pensieve-memory Harry saw of the young, twenty-something adult Riddle soliciting Hepzibah Smith on the behalf of Borgan and Burke. That still didn't seem right, however, until all of a sudden it struck Harry that the person before him lacked sallow, colourless skin or flashing scarlet eyes, everything that hinted at Voldemort's fractured soul back then.

Riddle's dark — normal — eyes narrowed dangerously. "I don't think I like your tone."

"Oh, be quiet, Tom." Ophelia playfully batted at his chest with the back of her hand, then looped an arm through his. "What are you going to do, huh? He's killed you — what? — six times? You're outmatched, even if you could follow through with your threats here. Besides, I rather enjoy listening to someone lay into you with something other than praise. It's refreshing."

To Harry's immense surprise, the tension seemed to drain right out of Riddle when he shifted his focus off Harry and onto her. Consciously or unconsciously, Harry didn't know, but Riddle's grasp tightened, until no space separated the two and he slipped his arm free to slide it around her waist, as if it pained him to have any distance at all.

"Outmatched? Who do you think you're talking to?"

"What's going on?" Harry cut in, near the point of bursting. "How is he here? Voldemort isn't dead yet!"

Just as the words left his mouth, however, Harry felt he could hear Hermione's matter of fact tone correcting him. Actually, Harry, she'd say, We destroyed five of his Horcruxes — excluding Harry himself, of course — so if you do the math. Most of him has already been killed.

"A part of him is. Dead, I mean. The person you know as Voldemort, his soul... how do I put this? By the time... By the time I — died," Ophelia shared a brief look with Riddle, swallowing back some emotion, and pressed on, "he only had a quarter of his soul left. When he made his next Horcrux, he was left with just an eighth, and then he made four more after that. The truth is, the person you want to kill is a stranger to me. I won't bore you with the math, but half of the person in front of you right now is the same sixteen year old that never intentionally killed anyone, the same one who stored his soul in his diary, because he couldn't handle the fact that he thought I died in the Chamber. The next quarter of him is still the seventeen your old who was willing to challenge the most powerful Dark Wizard of our time, my own uncle, to keep me safe, when even Dumbledore couldn't find the courage to do so. The next eighth followed through on his words. He tried — and failed — to save my life. Do you see, Harry Potter? More than eighty percent of him is the Tom I knew, and the Tom I knew was good, at least to me. Now, all of the Tom I knew is dead, thanks to you."

Harry tensed, expecting reproach, expecting anger and hate and vitriol, but none came.

Instead, Riddle fixed Harry with a cutting look, honing in first on his scar, before moving lower to meet his eyes. "I can't say I understand how you've managed to oppose me for so long. I should have killed you by now."

Ophelia choked back a laugh, and Harry got the impression she was inwardly face palming. Oh, typical Tom. Always wanting to murder people. How cute of him.

"No need to sound so disappointed," she said, nudging him with her elbow. "We went over this, remember? We don't wish him any harm."

Maybe she didn't, but the annoyed pinch to Riddle's brow when he watched him didn't exactly fill Harry with visions of peace and friendship.

"Right..." Riddle's lips thinned, and Harry was again reminded of how he himself humoured Hagrid when interacting with a particularly slimy Blast-Ended Skewts. "We wish him all the luck in the world..."

"Tom..." Ophelia drew his name out long, like a warning, and he sighed, his tension visibly draining away.

"I know."

"Isn't there something you want to say?" she needled.

"I don't recall," he deflected stubbornly.

This time Ophelia didn't humour him with a response, letting the silence build to an uncomfortable extent, which was well and fine for her, but Harry had places to be. He wasn't so sure he liked seeing this new side of the person he so reviled. While Dumbledore showed Harry scattered bits of Riddle's past, not a one depicted Voldemort in this new light. Every one of this memories showed Voldemort at his worst, his most manipulative. Maybe it had been a calculated effort to make Harry's job easier, because killing an archetypal villain was different than killing a multifaceted person who could show real emotion beyond just greed and hate, even if Riddle tried his best to hide it away.

Harry clenched teeth and built back up his crumbling resolve. It didn't matter that Voldemort had a shred of humanity, not when compared to all he'd done. Was that why they showed up? To toy with him until he gave up on heading back to finish Voldemort off?

"I'm leaving!" Harry announced abruptly, not giving them a chance to steal back his regained conviction. He squeezed his eyes tight, willing the fog to rise and swallow him as it had been about to before they so rudely interrupted.

"Tom!" Ophelia snapped.

"You must kill Nagini first if you hope to finally vanquish me, Harry."

Surprise prompted Harry's eyelashes to momentarily flutter back open. "What?"

Although he heard perfectly, he had trouble believing Voldemort was actually... actually helping him?

"It is as I said. I regret she must die," to further Harry's disbelief, a crack of remorse actually peaked through Riddle's impassive mask, before he smothered it, "but it has to to be done. I command you to kill me, Harry Potter. Do not still your wand hand out of misguided notions of mercy, for I will not show you the same kindness. The greatest mercy you can show me is the release of death. Let my soul be whole enough for us to at last move on from this place."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I can't leave without my whole soul, and she won't leave without me," Riddle replied, looking not at Harry, but at Ophelia.

She smiled weakly. "I waited decades for you here, alone. I'm not going to leave without you now."

What Harry didn't know — couldn't know — was that she'd never felt the pull to pass over to the other side, never heard the chorus of lost loved ones whispering for her to join them, as all others had, until just a few years ago, so it hadn't been a chore to remain. She had no dead loved ones to tempt her until Fenella passed, then Ephiriam and Rabastan and finally Grindelwald. Their voices awakened within her a yearning to follow, but her desire to wait for Tom overwhelmed them. She had resolved to wait forever, if need be.

"I don't think you want the parts of you that are still alive," Harry blurted without thinking. "They don't seem... like you."

Riddle gave a curt nod. "I know. But I — the parts of me that have already died — are far more vast than what remains. Those last two pieces of my soul are like a few drops of water falling into a lake. They change nothing."

"And I will keep him grounded if that's not enough," Ophelia added. "I always have."

A new sense of acceptance settled over Harry, but he still couldn't stop himself from hesitating to ask Riddle, "Aren't you worried about what happens to you next? After everything you've done?"

Riddle didn't blink, didn't waver at all at the question. His grip around Ophelia's waist tightened ever so slightly as he said, "The worst has already happened to me. Nothing else matters so long as we are together."

There was such a sense of finality, Harry didn't dare argue.

Without prompting, the mist swelled up around them. The last thing Harry heard before waking up in the clearing deep within the Forbidden Forest was Ophelia's teasing command, "Don't make me wait fifty more years, Harry. I'm old enough as it is."

Fin — for real this time lol.

Ta da! The update literally nobody asked for is finally here! This, I think, adds a bit of closure the last few chapters lacked, I think, but feel free to ignore this whole chapter if you disagree lmao. I liked leaving everything all bittersweet before and was afraid to mess it all up by adding a new chapter, but who needs all that sadness nonsense in the middle of a pandemic. We are OVER it, amiright fellas?

I considered making it from Ophelia's perspective, but ultimately decided nah. I even wrote about half of it from her POV before scrapping the whole thing bc it didn't feel right. Really, I feel this is better since it goes along with the idea that their story (Tom and Ophelia's) concluded before the Epilogues.

Anywho, Happy thanksgiving / Hanukkah / Christmas and any other holidays coming up. Stay safe ~