Tom walked into the doorway as Harry looked up

A/N

Thanks for all the support so far! Credit goes to JKR, Chris Coulson for making me adore Tom, and ShinigamixGirl for being utterly awesome and taking the time to review. I'll credit you someday if you do because it literally means the world to me.

Alone

Harry sat very still when Tom walked in, but his stride was direct and his fingers curled in the loose material covering his head and carried up in a smooth motion. Harry didn't bother looking up. "Congratulations," he muttered bitterly. "You found your prize." Tom turned on his heel and strode away, waiting by the doorway, eyes on Harry. He sat with his head in his hands, gripping onto his hair angrily. "What is this?" Harry yelled, standing up and casting his arms around. "What is this supposed to be? Who are you supposed to be? Because you're sure as hell not the Tom I remember talking to!"

"You said…well, thought it yourself. You weren't expecting a human at all." Tom's eyes were angry and sharp. "I'm going to pretend I don't know why you hate me, Harry, because I know you didn't want me to know. But I also want to tell you that it was stupid, arrogant, ignorant people like you that turned me into him."

Harry snorted. "You think that I'm stupid? Ignorant?" His hate carried him forward into the corridor, marching along, Tom standing in the doorway behind him.

"I know that you're arrogant," he called after him, his eyes cool. He smirked slightly. "Just like your father," he mused.

Harry's wand flew out, pointed to his throat, feet slamming on the floor as he approached. "You speak about my parents one more time and I swear, I will kill you."

"You've already murdered that tiny fragment of me fifty years from now… why not wipe me off the earth altogether?"

Harry's hand wavered, his step faltering, before falling and hanging beside him as he halted and stared at the floor, fists balled beside him. "We've had this conversation before," he muttered through gritted teeth. "It won't get us anywhere."

Tom cocked his head, eyes glittering. "You're a coward, Potter. A filthy, dirty coward."

He turned on his heel and began marching away again. "Shut up," he said quietly to the figure watching him go. He met a wall; his hands slammed into the cool stone angrily, leaning against it with his head dropped towards the floor.

"The only reason you're still alive is because you run away, whilst your friends and family fall like flies around you." Tom sauntered forwards, grinning. "And you see it in their eyes when they die that they wonder why it wasn't you."

"Get the hell out of my head!" Harry yelled, spinning around and backing away along the wall desperately.

"Your teacher was right… Snape, wasn't it? Yes… you're weak, and you're a fool, and you're a downright, murdering, evil little coward."

Harry pushed his hands over his ears. "Stop," he snarled, but it sounded piteous and weak. He sounded like a twelve-year old again, not the person he had trained to become – the person his friends had died for him to become. "Stop." His knees weakened; he fell to the floor with a painful sob.

Tom loomed over him. "And to think. I actually wanted you to prove me wrong." He looked at him contemptuously before turning and walking away.

"Stop," Harry said again, rising to his feet. Tom continued to walk. He started to follow, getting angrier with each step. It built like a furnace inside of him and it felt so wonderful to feel again, to be a part of something, to want something. He wanted to get to Tom. He wanted to stop Tom. But when he reached out and clamped his hand on his arm and Tom turned around he had no idea what he actually wanted to do next.

Tom made the decision for him. With a mirthless smirk he bent down and pressed his mouth down again. Harry froze with confusion, and the furnace inside him sparked white-hot with… anger? Yes… but… just feeling so alive. It was something that ricoched from the very highest part of his hair to his toenails, setting the backs of his arms and the inside of his elbows on fire. He felt himself succumb to it, lose to it, become part of it, push towards it, against it. His mouth devoured Tom's and his mind soaked up the sensation, revelling in the onslaught of emotions. Kissing Cho hadn't felt like this… kissing Ginny hadn't felt like this. This wasn't kissing. This was kissing the devil, with fire and brimstone and lust and his soul curling and coiling around Tom's. This was incredible. It was beautiful. It was Tom Riddle, and he was going to crash and burn someday but this was enough to cling on to on the ride down. Tom pulled away, and Harry's eyes stayed closed for one blissful moment before fluttering open again. He found himself panting, and knew his face would be flushed, but Tom's was cool, disinterested, dispassionate. He was betrayed, however, by his brilliantly sharp eyes and the hand resting on Harry's hip, radiating heat into his body. He couldn't find the breath to murmur Tom's name, so he stood and stared and screamed it in his mind. The voices in the hallway made them jump; discovery was something that had not occurred to either of them. Tom's arms tensed, pushing him away. He nodded to the Invisibility Cloak on the floor. "Go," he murmured, and Harry pulled it on. Tom seemed to slip back into the shadows as two Slytherins walked past.

"You'll just never understand how utterly hysterical her face was when her own hands started to attack her." The elder sneered unpleasantly and the younger laughed; it was skittering and fragmented and made Harry feel ill.

"Oh, it sounds wonderful," the younger smirked, looking up at the elder with fawning, doe-like eyes that made his skin crawl.

"I miss the old days. I need some new curses, I just haven't found the time… have you seen much of Tom lately?" Harry's heart skittered unpleasantly.

"Riddle? No, he spends more time in his room now than ever. Wish I knew what he had in there to stay for…" The two voices drifted off into the horizon and Harry was left with his heartbeat unpleasantly loud in his ears. He pulled off the cloak and stared towards Tom in the shadows, his mouth opening in accusation, eyes glowing, but the other had tensed and shrunk back, eyes nervously surveying Harry, stuck in full view.

"Hullo?" Harry froze, fully displayed in the centre of the corridor. He knew that voice. He looked up, but he already knew he'd see Dumbledore standing there.

"Professor," he stammered.

The other walked towards him, a slight frown on his face. "Are you lost?" he inquired quietly, looking at the Gryffindor badge still resplendent on his chest.

"No. Yes! I think so," he garbled, forcing himself to not look at Tom behind them.

Dumbledore frowned again. "Are you new?" he said, and his voice was sharper than before.

"No," Harry said truthfully. "I've been to Hogwarts for seven years." Well, almost truthfully. He almost gulped when he saw Dumbledore's hand curling around a very obvious object in his pocket.

"Perhaps you'd better come with me," Dumbledore said, reaching out his hand.

"Stupefy!" The spell shocked the both of them, the red light reverberating around the room. Dumbledore's eyes went wide and he let out a little gasp as he stumbled onto the floor. Tom tucked his wand back into his robes and crouched over the body of Albus Dumbledore on the floor, eyes flickering around nervously. "You could try and be a little more subtle," he snapped.

Harry couldn't stop staring. "That was Dumbledore!" he said, voice dripping with awe he couldn't quite suppress.

Tom frowned angrily. "Yes, he never trusted me," he snapped, looking up at Harry expectantly. "You going to help me or not?"

"You… you can't just Stupefy Dumbledore!" Harry exclaimed. Tom rolled his eyes, pushing his wand closer to Dumbledore's head. "What are you doing?"

Tom sighed, exasperated. "Wiping his memory. If he wakes up, remembers you and getting Stupefied then we might as well sit here and cuff ourselves together." Tom raised an eyebrow. "I do happen to – "

"Alright, I get the idea," Harry snapped. "But be careful, alright? This is supposed to be the greatest wizard of all time, he doesn't need you zapping away his memories."

"Second greatest," Tom said quietly, leaning over Dumbledore again. "And trust me. I know what I'm doing." Harry's heart skipped as he realised that he did actually trust Tom. "Obliviate," the other murmured, and light seared across their vision.

--

"Something… something's wrong with Dumbledore," Harry said as they propped him in a chair in a disused classroom. "When I was… in the castle before I saw something," he said, straightening the Professor's glasses. "In a cupboard. Something… horrible." He sounded like a petulant child.

Tom raised an eyebrow cynically, but his tone was serious. "You want to go back and see if you can help." It should have been a question, but Tom knew him better than that by now. Harry nodded, straightening up. Tom stood and stretched beside him. Harry couldn't help but scorch his body with a single gaze. Tom noticed and smiled, leaning across, brushing their lips together softly. Harry closed his eyes, shuddering, and reminded himself of how horrendously new he was to this whole scene. It was uncomfortable, and… exhilarating. When Tom pulled away he ruffled his hair casually and sauntered towards the door. "We should give you some Slytherin robes," he commented. "You're about my height," he added, scanning Harry calculatingly. "I'll give you some when we get back to the dorm." Harry couldn't seem to do anything but nod, so he simply did this again. Tom rolled his eyes and walked out, and Harry followed, feeling very much like a house-elf. "After you," Tom stated, arm moving in front of him in an elegant gesture Harry was immediately envious of.

"Thanks." He confidently took the lead, winding through Hogwarts, trying to remember where he'd run when he'd been so scared… he traced his steps to the Headmaster's office, then followed his route until he found the room. He could already imagine the gut-wrenching smell, hand subconsciously drifting across his mouth and nose as he opened the door. There was no smell, this time, but what was inside the room was in full view and his stomach wrenched. "Oh, no…" he whispered.

Tom peered around his shoulder. "What? Who is it?"

He crouched beside the very-obviously dead body. "Colin?" he muttered, shaking his shoulder a tad desperately. "Oh, what have they done to you?"

"Who is it?" Tom asked again.

"Just a kid," Harry said sadly. "Just a stupid little kid who liked taking my picture and got in the way." He closed his eyes, taking in a shuddering breath. "I thought… I didn't realise…"

"So how did he end up here?" Tom's voice was soft, quiet, an anchor to sanity that Harry scrabbled at with desperate fingers.

"I'm… I'm not sure. Perhaps the same way I did…? So… he's… he's dead in the future and he falls through time back here. Dumbledore must find him and have to dispose of him, so he shoves him in a secret passageway." He let out a long, steady breath as he straightened up. "It all makes a frightening amount of sense." He frowned. "I'm talking about time-travel. How did this happen?"

"It can surprise you how your future is so totally different from what you expected," Tom said softly. Harry didn't raise his gaze, his hands still burning from when they had touched the boy beneath him.

"I… I don't think I even met his parents," Harry said quietly. "I can't leave him here, but I can't move him." He felt his jaw lock angrily. "I can't do anything," he spat, fists curling beside his thighs, his bitten nails digging into the top of his fingers. "He has a little brother," he murmured softly. The back of his arms were prickling unpleasantly.

Tom curled a hand around his forearm and tugged softly. "We must move, Harry," he said softly.

"I want to stay with him," he said stubbornly. Tom wasn't smiling; he simply tugged on his arm a little harder. He let his arm go and began to walk away; reluctantly Harry followed, leaving a very unmoving Colin Creevy alone and still in the diminishing doorway; the door closed and the sight was lost.

A/N

Unbeta'd, because my darling is in the middle of exams right now and I daren't pester her –hides-

I have posted this once but the ending was so fluffy I had to remove it.

I hope Tom's character doesn't come out as schizophrenic… ' He does a lot of changing his mind, but what I'm trying to get at is he doesn't really know what he wants either, so the I'm-very-sexy-kiss-me-Tom realises that he's supposed to be a stuck-up heartless bastard so becomes one. (Kind of like Sasuke, if anyone watches Naruto. Wait, who doesn't? ')

(I'm totally bypassing the fact homosexuality was a big no-no in the fifties, there are some obstacles I can't be bothered to avoid – a penance, if you will, means no public scenes. Unfortunately.)

I have big plot twists ahead, if you people still actually want to read… I've been so sporadic in updating I wouldn't blame you if you just deserted me and refused to speak to me again.