Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
A/N: Hope y'all are ready for the big reveal(s). All (or most) of my tricks are in this monster of a chapter.
Pretending To Live
Chapter 24: Pretending To Live
Then Lord Voldemort spoke in a high, cold voice that was almost a hiss.
"Hello, Ariadne."
The quiet tick of the grandfather clock upstairs continued. Even through the roaring silence, I could hear it. Time passed.
An owl hooted somewhere in the night. The floorboards outside the closed door of the room creaked as it bore the weight of the mouse that scuttled across its surface.
Time passed for the rest of the world.
Not for us.
For a long time we just looked at each other. We breathed without breathing. Drinking in without drinking. I gorged myself on the changes that had ravaged his face while he devoured the permanence of mine.
Apples, Christmas flowers, blood. Incoherent strings of words streamed into my mind as I stared into those red eyes. The cat-like pupils dilated and it seemed to cost him a great effort to look away and point at the faded armchair across from him. "Sit down."
His voice sent fingers of ice down my spine, as though I had just stood in front of a freezing gale. When I made no sign of moving-how could I, paralysed by fear as I was- he gave something like a sigh.
"I'd forgotten how stubborn you are," he said quietly. "But, I suppose that is quite understandable. After all..." Voldemort's eyes locked with mine again, "...this must come as a surprise for you."
He pointed his wand and the armchair zoomed to a stop directly beside me. I flinched.
"Sit down," he repeated. "I will answer all your questions...eventually."
I forced all the strength I had left into my legs, willing them to carry me as I took the offered seat warily. His red eyes followed my movements.
Another roaring silence descended. We were directly facing each other now, separated only by a few feet of grey carpet and a low, wooden table.
At last, he spoke. "It is 11:00 pm, the 15th of July, 1998. You are in the third room of the uppermost floor of what was formerly the residence of the Most Noble House of Black...although I hear that it is being put to different use, these days."
He smiled a terrible smile and I stared at him. Malice and contempt exuded from him like poison and I looked down at my hands, feeling disgusted and angry.
Everything I had ever feared about the Tom Riddle I had once known-his fury, his callousness...his dark and terrible desires-was made flesh and blood, the living nightmare that sat so calmly before me. I could no longer deny the boy Riddle this side of his nature when the man Voldemort existed so solidly now that he could only be real.
All those people...so many people...
"Why am I here?" I said. My voice cracked on the last word.
"I do not know," he replied. He was still watching me, waiting, his body tensed with anticipation like a cat about to spring.
"Why are you here?" I said instead. Voldemort leaned back in his chair.
"Don't you remember?" He leered although his voice was little above a whisper. "It was you, after all, that told me this would happen...oh yes," he said, catching my expression.
"And what a shock it was for me to see you then, after all that time...I have waited for longer than I would care to say, for this..."
His gaze bored into mine. "Much longer," he repeated and his anger was almost palpable. In my chair, I tensed.
"But Time has not passed for you, has it?" He said, suddenly contemplative. "Only mere minutes, or perhaps hours..." The hungry look was back as his eyes roved over my face. "You haven't changed."
"Can't say the same," I whispered and his lipless mouth curled into a mirthless smile as he laughed a high, cold laugh that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The hood of his cloak shifted and I caught sight of the jagged white scar that ran just underneath his jaw.
He must have notice me staring at it for he stopped laughing and put the tip of an unnaturally long finger against it.
"An eye for an eye, yes Ariadne?" He said quietly.
Somehow I was reminded of what one of the Fates said to me-"He did you a disservice, when he gave you that."
I held up my right hand, palm facing out to him. His eyes flicked down to the twin scars and then back to my own.
"You gave this to me," I said and it wasn't a question. Voldemort's face was completely blank. Only the red eyes moved behind his mask-like countenance. "You...you..."
"Hello." I looked up at the man in the doorway. He was dressed oddly, especially for the warm season. "Who are you?"
"An old friend," the man replied quietly. I couldn't see his face underneath the hood he wore.
I eyed him suspiciously. "You're not selling anything, are you?"
He did not laugh. "No."
I shrugged and stepped aside. He entered, closing the door behind him.
"Where are your parents?" He asked me.
I yawned and switched off the TV. "Mum's in the kitchen, dad's in the study," I said lazily. "I'll go and get them."
He nodded and I glanced back at him over my shoulder; he remained standing, his hood still on.
Must be another one of their weirdo friends, I thought.
I called my parents out from their respective rooms; they seemed perplexed when I told them that someone had come to visit.
I padded back into the living room with their promise that they'd be out in five minutes; as I approached the stranger, a white, long fingered hand slipped out of his cloak and around my wrist.
I struggled but he was inhumanly strong; I screamed but no sound came out of my mouth and I was so scared, so scared-
And when he drew out a short, grey knife in his other hand and wrapped my fingers around the blade, pain burst like lightning in my palm and the inside of my fingers as metal sliced into flesh and I had never been so afraid in my entire life-
A flash of silver-
"Aria?" My mother called and she entered the room; she screamed and my father ran out-
But the man pushed me behind him and screamed words I did not understand; there was a burst of green light and both my parents crumpled to the floor-
And although it made no sense, I understood-
"No! Mum- dad, please, please don't be dead-"
I tried to run to them but the man's grip locked me into place; he turned around and his hood fell down-
His eyes found mine and nothing else mattered because all was red and I screamed and screamed and screamed because I knew that this man was not human-
I put my head in my hands, fighting the urge to vomit. My mind felt unclean, corrupted as I allowed the memory to slither through it like a snake; I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.
"Why?" I croaked.
When I looked up, Voldemort's expression remained impassive.
As I stared into the pitiless red eyes it occurred to me for the first time there was no distinction between Riddle and Voldemort because they were, and had always been the same person. The cruelty that I had been forced to endure at his hands had existed long before our paths had ever crossed-'Voldemort is my past, present and future' he had once said, hadn't he...
Voldemort had not killed my parents. Tom did.
"You knew how much I loved them," I said, my voice shaking. "How much it ruined me to lose them."
He remained silent, but something in his eyes flickered in the dim candlelight.
My mouth had difficulty twisting into a sneer because I was shaking so badly but I managed it. "I thought you couldn't hurt me," I said bitterly.
"No," Voldemort said, "I could not kill you."
"Lucky me, then!" I spat at him. "I'm probably the only person in the world that can claim such an honor, right?"
His eyes flickered again."Yes, you are," he said softly.
"Why? Why not just finish the job?"
"That was not my intention."
"Then what?" I shouted. I stood up, my hands curled into fists. I was shaking from head to toe in anger, past caring that the most powerful Dark wizard in the world sat before me, a mere girl, past fearing for my life, past sense. "Why did you leave me alive when you should have just murdered me like you did my parents you son of a-"
Ragged breaths were pouring in and out of me as I put every ounce of hatred into my eyes which, after all these years, were still locked tightly with his. He looked back calmly.
"Do you remember what I did after I gave you those scars?" He said softly.
A flash of silver. I stared at him, abruptly rendered mute.
"Come now," Voldemort moved restlessly in his chair; he looked almost impatient. His eyes narrowed and I felt a tugging at the back of my mind; a rush of pictures flooded in but I didn't fight the intrusion; I let him in because I needed to know, to remember...
"You had a knife," I said suddenly. "But...that wasn't all you were holding, was it?"
He watched me, unblinking as I sat back down in the armchair, rubbing my temples.
"Silver..." I murmured. "Silver. Small...and...burning..." I stopped. Horror washed over me and my mouth dropped open. "The Locket. Ravenclaw's Locket. You-"
-pain burst like lightning in my palm and the inside of my fingers as metal sliced into flesh and I had never been so afraid in my entire life-
He let the knife drop then and pulled out something else, a flash of silver that dangled from a thin chain and he pressed the cold metal into my bleeding hand, wrapping his long fingers around the both of them. He was muttering something rapidly under his breath and in a strange tongue-
And then the object in my hand burned like fire.
"Yes," Voldemort said quietly. "I bound you to the First Locket, using your blood...and the sacrifice of your parents."
"Why?" I mouthed the word.
"The Locket's magic is entangled with that of Time, such is the power that Salazar Slytherin bestowed upon it. It does not merely manipulate Time. It controls it. And by binding it, anchoring such a relentless, unstoppable force to a specific person, a weak mortal, it was an act against nature that I committed. And the consequences were...extreme."
"What consequences?" I whispered.
Voldemort gave yet another terrible smile. "Do you not see it yet, Ariadne?" He said softly. "I severed your Strand of Time. And then, by ensuring you were orphaned, I tangled your Fate inescapably with my own."
"I don't..."
"Think!" Voldemort said and there was a bite of impatience in his voice. He shifted, restless again. "If your parents had not gone would you have moved to where you currently live with your foster family? Would you have gone to the school as you did then? When you heard the sound of your Fate being decided-" I gasped as I remembered the sound I had heard, of a pair of scissors closing but a hundred times louder, "- would you have left your bus on August the 23rd 2010 to follow it, and by doing so step into the abandoned street where in our world Grimmauld Place rests?"
My eyes were wide as I recalled the grey, lonely street I had ended up in...and disappeared from.
"That was all it took for your Time and Fate to wrench apart," Voldemort went on ruthlessly, "something that was only exacerbated when you travelled from 1997 to 1944. The simple act of existing, breathing in the very air of a place that a part of you-irrespective of whether or not you were conscious of it- recognized that you had been before."
"That's why I kept on seeing things," I whispered. "Always the same date, August the 23rd...the day you killed them...because there was a part of me, a part of my blood that still existed in the Locket. A part of me that remembered..." Shock rushed through me as something else fell into place: a piece in the jigsaw whose final picture had eluded me for so long. "And when I fell into your world, that's why I became magic- because it wasn't just me in the Locket's power- but the Locket's power in me."
My fingers traced the red marks around my neck unconsciously as I remembered the way the Locket had burned constantly against my skin compared to how cold the Second Locket had been when I'd touched it...how it had been agony for me when Riddle had tried to make it his first Horcrux, because it could not and would not be bound to another...
And then as if summoned, another string of memories rose to the surface- I was the one who had found Ravenclaw's wedding dress, I was the one who had been able to retrieve her diadem...
Some of her magic existed in me. It must have lain dormant for the three years leading up to my expulsion from my world, and triggered somehow when I woke up in 1997...the world that I was always supposed to return to, in the end.
"I did belong here," I whispered. I looked up, searching his face, blindly seeking reassurance like a child.
He barely inclined his head. "Yes."
I wanted to laugh; I wanted to cry. Because it was a double edged sword, wasn't it- my happiness at being allowed to exist in such a place only cemented the death sentence that came with it.
"The First Locket," I said suddenly, "do you have it?"
"No," Voldemort replied and his voice was like a sigh. "The magic I used to bind you to it was ancient and potent...it no longer belonged to me once I had completed the spell. Yet it could not exist in the world that you had occupied at that time, the world that had taken me many failed attempts to penetrate, for there was no place for magic there. I assume that once it had recognized its partner in blood, it returned to the last place steeped in magic where its owner had once occupied, and remained there ever since."
"Why didn't you go back and get it?"
He actually laughed at this, although it was humorless. "Unfortunately, as obtuse as wizards these days have become, I believe that most people would notice if I simply strolled into the halls of Hogwarts school for a brief visit."
"We've got no choice," I said roughly. "You said that tonight was the 15th of June?" He only looked at me in response. "By tomorrow, everyone that the Second Locket's been used upon will be dead unless we reunite both of them! We have to go now!"
His mouth curved into a smile. "I don't think that's possible."
"Don't you understand?" I was shouting again, fearful and furious, this was so typical of him to be so calm when the world was falling apart, "The Lockets drain the user's energy if they're used separately! That's you too, don't you get it, Tom? You'll die!"
He was still looking at me, except there was a mixture of real surprise and curiosity in his eyes now. This infuriated me more than anything.
"What?" I said.
"You called me Tom," he said simply.
I stared at him and wondered if it really had been that long or if Riddle was just starting to go a little bit senile.
Before I could say anything else, Voldemort cut in, "I know, Ariadne. I have always known."
The roaring silence was back. Time passed.
I did not want to understand the implications behind his words.
"No," I said, staring at him. "No, don't tell me you've had some sort of epiphany about death, Riddle..."
"Is it harder for the one who leaves, or the one that is left behind?" He said quietly. "I have almost experienced the former, and I have experienced the latter...and I daresay you would find my conclusion surprising..."
"No," I said again, "No."
"I have only managed to resist the Locket for so long because it drew upon the energy of my Horcruxes first," he said, still in a quiet, thoughtful tone, "I have had time to come to terms with this. It was not easy. But alas, my final Horcrux is destroyed...Nagini is gone..."
I was shaking again but for a completely different reason than before. I did not know what my expression looked like- it felt quite blank, numb even- but the warmth that slid down my face and the bitter salt I tasted on my lips was unmistakeable.
His red eyes followed the trail of one tear down my face and there was no disguising the flicker of longing there. "I have killed hundreds, thousands more people since you last looked at me like that," he said quietly. "Why do you weep for me?
"You can't...I..." For the first time I noticed how tired he looked, a weariness that did not show on his face but a bone deep fatigue that echoed in his movements, that reverberated in the sound of his voice. And this frightened me over anything else I had seen tonight, terrified me more than anything else in the world. "...you didn't answer my question."
"And what was that?" He said, and there was a definite weary edge to his voice.
I got up and walked around the table so that I stood directly in front of him. The air around him was very cold. I could feel it press against my skin like a sickness.
He tilted his head upwards slightly so that he was looking up at me.
"Why?" I said desperately. "Why did you bind me to the Locket? Why did you tie my Fate with yours? Why me?"
There was a pause before he answered, during which his mouth curved into a mocking smile.
"You fool," he said gently, "Have you not realised it yet?"
And I knew then, because the taunting, pitiless scarlet eyes were telling me so, a truth he would never speak and a reality that I had to face...a reality that meant his death, and mine.
My heart stuttered in my chest and then began to thump at double the speed. Strange how this combination of agony and elation made it beat the way it did.
All this time.
All this Time.
Longing ran through me, as fierce as a live wire but tempered by the fear I felt for the approaching end and my own disbelief that he would-that he could-me?-even after all this Time...
"Lolita complex," I muttered hoarsely because it was the first thing I thought of and he laughed. I gave him a brittle smile but my muscles couldn't hold it for long and it quickly slipped from my face.
"Tom," I whispered, "where's the First Locket? Tell me where it is, let me fix this..."
Unsmiling now, Voldemort said, "It cannot be stopped."
"Don't ask me to sit here and watch you die," I said fiercely. My heart was beating a violent tattoo against my ribs and he studied me for a long time with a look that was part contemplative, part nostalgic.
"The Locket," he said slowly, "returned back to the last place it occupied, where it waits for its owner."
"The Room of Requirement?"
"Think, Ariadne," he said. "Remember..."
I ran the last moments that I had with the First Locket through my mind...I was with Tom in the Room of Requirement, we had been playing cards and I had so, so stupidly taken it off and put it on the table...
But that wasn't all, was it? Because my Time with him had ended; had been interrupted when Draco had attempted to get in...the Locket had fallen off the table...
I stopped breathing. Mouth agape, I recalled the words Dumbledore had written in a letter to me that had sat atop a small, brown suitcase upon my entrance into the room I had once shared with Hermione and Luna...
"I have taken the liberty of providing you with a few essentials in the suitcase currently residing on your bed. Some of the items may seem...familiar...if you happen to have any questions..."
"Oh my God," I breathed. "It's...? This whole time?"
Voldemort closed his eyes and nodded.
Adrenaline and fear shot through my veins like lightning, chasing away the ice that had built up there. I made to bolt for the door but stopped myself in the same movement.
"Come with me," I said to him.
He opened his eyes; they rested on mine. He stood up and I shrank back a little; if I had ever thought he was tall before then he positively towered over me now. Yet I took his hand and twisted my fingers with his; he gazed down at me with an unreadable expression as I tugged him along.
Once we left the room, I pulled my wand out.
"Accio Locket!" I said. Nothing happened.
"Figures," I muttered. Guided by the light of my wand, I manoeuvred a path through the clutter of antique furniture and piles upon piles of ancient books that blocked the hallways, and I led him past the debris of smashed ornaments where Harry and Draco had fought his Death Eaters the night we left for 1944. My pace quickened once we reached the floor where I remembered my old room was and I knocked over several candelabras and bookpiles in my haste to find it.
I checked every door along the hall but none matched the room that I remembered; both frustration and despair was beginning to build in me the longer we wandered these dark corridors. It did not help that I had only the barest memory of what the room looked like, or that in the half light of the halls the place seemed almost labyrinthine.
Fighting my rising panic, I said, "It's probably upstairs then."
I said it mostly to reassure myself. The ticking of the grandfather clock seemed to grow louder as I ascended, Voldemort following me like a shadow.
When we reached the landing, I felt him stop abruptly. I turned around, alarmed.
"What is it?" I whispered. My wandlight cast strange shadows over his face.
He only shook his head and motioned silently for me to keep moving. Uncertainly, I turned back around; I had barely taken another step when I felt him stagger; I whirled around and caught him. Terrified, I steadied him so that he was leaning against the wall. He was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow in the darkness but what little color he had left in the bloodless face drained as I watched him. It frightened me to feel how weak his grip suddenly was around my hand.
"I know, Ariadne. I have always known."
His red eyes found mine.
"Okay- okay," I said, panicking but trying to hide it, "You stay here, alright? Stay here and I'll be back, I promise-"
I brought his hands to my mouth and kissed the tips of his fingers.
"-I'll be back," I whispered.
I left him, running as fast as my legs could take me, bursting into every room and turning it over in my ferocious and desperate search; and when I found nothing I told myself that it would be in the next room, then the next one after that, then the next one...
The door burst into splinters with a bang as I cursed it with my wand. I took one look around and knew that I had, miraculously, found it.
The Death Eaters must have gotten here before I had for the furniture was torn and smashed. Even the window that I remembered I had once sat at, staring at the stars, was in glass shards on the floor.
I stumbled to my bed: yes, oh God, the suitcase was still there although it was upturned and its contents spilled everywhere. I turned it over and tore my way through it, pulling out an innumerable selection of items both familiar and unfamiliar: a multitude of socks, a worn pack of cards, a battered hairbrush, a small pillow and a man's shoe.
But the answering silver glint I was looking for was not there. Not daring to believe it, I turned over each item again hoping that the Locket had slipped somehow between the folds of a skirt, or perhaps had gotten caught on the button of a coat-but to no avail.
I threw the dress I was holding down just as the grandfather clock began to chime midnight. I was crying in earnest even though I knew that would not help things at all- I had been certain, so certain that it would be here. For if the Locket had indeed returned to the last place it had occupied then it should have been in my schoolbag, into which it had dropped after it had fallen from the table. And if it was in my schoolbag, then it should have been here in this suitcase where Dumbledore had kept all the things I'd left behind on my last night in Hogwarts-
But it was not here! It should have been here but there was no point in saying that if it was not directly in front of my face-
My eyes landed on the man's shoe that I had tossed out of the suitcase. Draco's shoe. That had been there too...I had even taken it out of my bag in the search for the Map...
And then out of the blue, a strange and most wonderful thought occurred to me: what if the Locket, once in the schoolbag, had fallen into...?
I dived for the shoe; I held it up and tipped it over. Something silver flashed in the moonlight streaming through the broken window and a searing heat burst in my hand, as both Locket and owner rejoiced at their reunion.
I let out a cry of triumph that was cut short as I noticed that the grandfather clock still yet chimed; I was back on my feet in an instant and burst out of the room.
"Tom, Tom, I found it, everything's going to be alright-" I stopped, my heart leapt up into my throat as I saw the dark figure slumped against the wall on the ground. I collapsed next to him. His eyes were still open and although his breaths were shallow, he was still breathing.
I held up the First Locket and it warmed faintly in response to the Second around his neck. I waited expectantly but nothing happened. And everywhere, everywhere was the booming of the clock's chimes.
"What do I do?" I whispered even though I was hardly audible over the clamour. "Tell me what to do..."
"Will you be the one to kill me then, Ariadne?" Voldemort said in a voice that was barely a sigh; it was not so much a real question as a taunt of his former words but it cut into me like a knife nonetheless.
"Don't be stupid," I murmured, "you're not going to die..."
The clock chimed its final refrain and the silence that followed it was deafening. He managed a weak smirk and then his eyes fluttered shut.
He was not yet dead; I could hear him breathing. But I was mourning already as I listened to his breaths in the darkness and silence of this terrible place, mourning for all the things that I could not change, for the man I had murdered and who had murdered me.
I was so concentrated on him that I didn't notice when the Locket glowed silver in its place lying forgotten on the floor. I didn't notice the Threads, like treacherous vines, creeping along the outskirts of my peripheral vision until my hands were bound once more and the pulsing auras were back.
"Tom," I tried to say, but I had no mouth. I didn't want to leave him.
Please, no, don't make me leave him.
I was gone.
888
"You are as omniscient as ever, Dumbledore."
"Oh, no, merely friendly with the local barmen," said Dumbledore lightly. "Now, Tom..."
Dumbledore set down his empty glass and drew himself up in his seat, the tips of his fingers together in a very characteristic gesture.
"...let us speak openly. Why have you come here tonight, surrounded by henchmen, to request a job we both know you do not want?"
Voldemort looked coldly surprised.
"A job I do not want? On the contrary, Dumbledore, I want it very much."
"Oh, you want to come back to Hogwarts, but you do not want to teach any more than you wanted to when you were eighteen. What is it you're after, Tom? Why not try an open request for once?"
Voldemort sneered.
"If you do not want to give me a job-"
"Of course I don't," said Dumbledore. "And I don't think for a moment you expected me to. Nevertheless, you came here, you asked, you must have had a purpose."
Voldemort stood up. He looked less like Tom Riddle than ever, his features thick with rage.
"This is your final word?"
"It is," said Dumbledore, also standing.
"Then we have nothing more to say to each other."
"No, nothing," said Dumbledore, and a great sadness filled his face. "The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom...I wish I could..."
There was a moment of tension during which Voldemort's hand had twitched towards his pocket and his wand; but then the moment had passed, Voldemort had turned away, the door was closing and he was gone.
Anger reared its head him in like a snake but he controlled it, striding through the familiar halls of Hogwarts, his first kingdom and birthright. Gone were the days of his youth when he had lashed out, unrestrained...he was a master of his anger now and although he did not deny that it would be satisfying to kill the old Muggle-loving fool, to do so tonight would be unnecessary...quite unnecessary...
He stopped in front of a bare stretch of wall, next to a tapestry of dancing trolls. Then he was entering a room that was more a maze than anything else; a cavernous room with towering walls of abandoned, illegal or otherwise dangerous artefacts.
He looked down at the object in his hands. It had once been Ravenclaw's diadem...although it was more than that now, wasn't it?
And then unbidden, a memory came to mind of a vast forest carpeted by blue and violet flowers, and a girl in a shimmering white dress-
He severed the path of the memory and without further preamble, strode through the alleyways of the room. It irritated him that Dumbledore had succeeded in guessing that he had indeed had another purpose for this visit. Then, he had always known the old fool had a talent for poking his crooked nose where it was not wanted...
He left the tiara and the room and walked out into the snowing courtyard. One of his Death Eaters (ah, and that really was a more fitting name than his previous choice because that was the foe he had all but conquered) was already waiting for him by the gates.
"Did everything go well, my Lord?" Rabastan Lestrange said eagerly, when he approached.
"Everything went as planned," Voldemort said coldly. "Although Dumbledore did not consider it...fitting to employ me as a teacher."
Lestrange shrank away slightly as Voldemort's eyes seemed to flash red and Voldemort smiled thinly.
"In any case, tell the others to go without me," he said after a moment's pause. "I have not visited my old school in sometime...and I daresay I am becoming a little nostalgic, Rabastan..."
Lestrange nodded obediently and left the gate and Voldemort walked through the grounds alone, surveying the white-covered landscape. It seemed strange, empty without the usual black-clad students for all of them were indoors, in the warmth of the castle...
He stared out at the black waters of the great Lake. He remembered sitting along its banks, underneath the shade of the old beech tree-which still yet stood, to his interest- that grew there by the lakeside.
Then he was remembering something else: an image of a girl sitting by herself underneath that same tree, almost hidden entirely by the wildflowers that nodded around her. She was playing with something silver in her hand that flashed and winked in the sun-
He was beginning to grow annoyed with himself. Voldemort turned, about to leave when he noticed something: a splash of black against the white, like ink on paper.
He drew closer and saw with a sort of detached surprise that it was a student wearing the black Hogwarts robes. She was kneeling in the snow, her head in her hands and he had time to wonder about her stupidity before she looked up and the thought was quickly chased out of his mind.
He had only ever seen eyes as dark as those before.
"Ah," the girl choked and somewhere in his numb disbelief he noticed the frozen trails of ice down her face, "Tom."
"You're back," he heard himself say.
Something close to fear flitted across her face as she stared back. Fury was building inside him, and all thoughts of mastering his anger flew far, far away as he looked into the thin and insolent face of the girl that had vanished without a trace over a decade ago.
He did not know how it happened, but he was suddenly pinning her by the throat against the beech tree behind her. She gasped for air and a savage pleasure mixed with rage filled him at the sight.
"Where did you go?" He shouted and he was no longer Lord Voldemort, but Tom Riddle, "Where were you?"
"I..."
He released her roughly; she collapsed against the tree, gasping for air.
"Ten years!" He screamed and it felt was though he were losing his mind, surely he was, for only lunatics screamed at dead people as he did now, "Ten years since you betrayed me, since you vanished from the school! Ten years since I had tried to find you until at last I accepted your death!"
The girl was crying again but he either did not notice or did not care; he seized her by her collar and pressed his wand against her throat like a knife.
"I have already come to terms with your death once," he said in a deceptively calm voice although his hands were shaking with barely suppressed anger, "I can do it again. Tell me where you were."
"15th of June," she gasped out and Tom frowned in confusion, "1998."
He let her go and he stared at her. "What?"
"I'm sorry!" She cried, tears still pouring down her face as she staggered away from him. "I'm sorry, I can't stop it-"
Tom lunged for her but she vanished; his howl echoed in the whistling and biting wind of the blizzard.
888
"Welcome back."
I gasped into life; the breath like a punch in the gut. I was lying on my back and I scrambled to my feet, staring wildly around, shivering from the snow that still clung to my robes and the ends of my hair.
I was in Hogwarts again. The corridors were familiar. Three grey figures stood at the far end and I staggered towards them.
Take me back! I gasped and they said nothing, only watched me with blank sockets. Please, I'll do anything-
"You have already done everything you can for us," the one at the very end, the Third, said.
"When your Time ends, the Keeper will cease to exist," said the Second.
Proclaimed the First: "And all will belong to us."
My knees gave out and I collapsed to the floor, holding my head in my hands. Why? I choked out in despair. Why me? Why choose me?
"We did not choose," the Second said.
"He did," said the First at the same time the Third said, "You did."
They began to speak in unison.
"When he fell in love with you."
"When you fell in love with him."
The First said: "Because of this, he severed Time to tie your Fate to his."
The Third said: "Because of this, you chose him over your friends. You ensured that he would fall in love with you. You created this loop where Time does not exist and we are all encompassing."
Something emerged from the fog of my memory, of when I had first received my wand. I had had no money and when I had wanted to pay for it, Ollivander had said: "Nothing. It is yours. Dumbledore has simply asked me to keep hold of it from when you left it, until you returned."
I remembered being confused by his words, at the time... but now I understood.
I would die here, in 1944. I would leave my wand behind. Dumbledore would find it, ask the wandmaker to keep it until the Ariadne de Lioncourt of a future I was not part of walked through his shop. With the wand, she would go back...she would meet him. And the cycle would begin again.
An endless loop. An infinite circle.
But what would happen to me then, the surplus?
I didn't want to voice the question. Instead I said, And my corpus?
"Existed only as an idea meant to entangle your Threads further. If you had not thought you were ill..."
I never would have asked him for help, I whispered. I remembered how I had despaired over my sickness, yet unknown, during my research that lasted well into the hours of the night in the Library...I remembered the strange dream I had of a crone and how I had been woken by a book falling almost into my lap, Magical Maladies & Their Symptoms. The book that had told me of my corpus defessum.
Ah.
It was only now that I was beginning to appreciate how well I had been manipulated.
But then what brought me back to the day Grindelwald attacked, in the past? I asked. Why do I time travel without using the Locket? Isn't it...?
The Third Sister gave a scornful laugh and although she had no visible mouth, the sound reverberated in my bones. "It was not your corpus defessum that brought you back. It was you."
"You are blood bound to the First Locket and so, you retained a little of its power," murmured the Second.
The First sneered. "Did you think it was mere coincidence that the night you asked him to help you with your corpus defessum and he refused, that you were brought to the future where the Tom Riddle that existed then all but told you how to convince him to help you? Mere coincidence that when you dwell upon the deaths caused by Gellert Grindelwald and his army you are brought to the day that you saw it with your very own eyes? Whether subconsciously or not, you were already using its power."
Another memory came to me: of when I had first travelled back to the day of Grindelwald's attack. I had been in the bathtub...I had wondered how he had found the ingredients to finish my corpus potion and then I had suddenly found myself in The Three Broomsticks, and I was watching Rookwood and Crabbe steal them before my eyes...
I had thought it was my wand, then.
"As your Time deteriorates, so do you," the Three Fates said in unison.
That was why Riddle's potion hadn't worked, I realized. Even though Tom had never been wrong before...
Then where's the rest of it? I said abruptly. Where did my Time go?
"It was found by a wandmaker, before you were born."
I closed my eyes. Ollivander...I murmured. My fingers gripped my wand with its core of tempus tightly and the wood warmed in response.
The Third sneered. "Yes...ironic that it should find you again."
"Even now, it seeks to be rejoined," said the Second.
I stared at the red brown wood, thinking hard. How much Time do I have left?
Their faces stretched into an awful grin.
"Enough," they said together and I turned and began to run.
888
I visited Dumbledore's office first.
I knocked on the door, recalling how I had once blasted it apart when I was still new to magic, a lifetime ago.
"Enter," a voice said and I slipped inside. Dumbledore looked up from the roll of parchment on his desk; he was wearing something like a white, star-strewn dressing gown although he seemed wide awake.
"Ari!" He said in surprise, " To what do I owe this very late pleasure?"
I wanted to apologize for interrupting his work but the seconds were ticking, ticking-
"I messed up," I said.
His expression became grave; before he could say anything, I cut in, "I'm really sorry, Professor but I don't have a lot of time. I need to ask you a favor."
I waited anxiously; he nodded once for me to continue. I twisted my hands together.
"Look after my brother," I blurted out desperately. "I've screwed everything up. There'll be a time in 1997 when you come across him in front of Borgin and Burkes. He'll be angry and stupid and desperate to prove himself. And when you do meet him, tell him..." I hesitated, remembering the last words I had spoken to him with a rush of shame, "...'It's never too late'."
I met the infinitely kind blue eyes and said quietly, "Please sir, will you?"
He gazed at me for a moment and it was though he knew everything I had done...and was about to do. "Of course."
Words could not express the gratitude and relief I felt; I could only choke out a hoarse 'thank you' before I turned away again.
"Ari?" Dumbledore said and I stopped, already halfway out of his office, "Remember that things have to be broken in order for them to be repaired."
I didn't have Time to ask him what he meant.
888
My second visit involved me travelling in time. The Fates had said that I could do it, because I was blood bound to the Locket...yet really, it was a question of how.
I had never done it purposely before. It had always been an accident in the past...
For a lack of ideas, I decided to do it like Apparition (although I had never done that before either, goddammit). I fixed my mind on the point in the past, remembering the moment as I had experienced it in that time as best as I could and let the desperation flood my thoughts.
I did a stupid twirl on the spot yet I didn't fall over; my wand twitched in my hand and then I was falling, falling-
I landed face first into the floor of the Hospital Wing. I scrambled to my feet, looking around incredulously at the dusky sunlight that streamed in through the windows. It was a miracle that I had managed to do it unscathed- but then again, I thought wryly, I had already done this before, hadn't I?
I immediately began to rifle through the room's cupboards. I was looking for the jar of purple green ointment that Madame Laroche had given me once, after Riddle had refused my request for help and he had slashed my face in our duel in the Library.
I wasn't surprised when I found it. Even though the chances that this jar was the same one Madame Laroche had used on me were extremely slim I had no doubt in my mind that this was the one. One thing about the past- everything was assured, because everything had already happened.
I unscrewed the lid and pulled out a scrap of paper from my pocket. I scrawled two words on the paper.
Not yet.
I was telling 'myself' not to give up. 'Myself', dying from a disease that was not a disease in the past...
I would see this through to the very end.
I tucked the paper into the jar and put it back into the cupboard before I turned around and started sprinting through the castle. I stopped on the second floor and saw Avery standing in front of the girl's bathroom. I had come to the right Time after all.
He sneered when he saw me approaching him. "Find another bathroom, you can't come in here-"
"Stupefy!" I shouted and he was thrown off his feet. Now out cold, I dragged him inside the bathroom and left him in one of the stalls.
I moved to the sink and splashed water over my face. I was feeling sick again and I stared at my tired reflection in the spotted, stained mirror. My corpus was...no. Not my corpus.
My Time was almost gone and it showed.
I heard the door to the bathroom grate open. When I turned, I saw Myrtle enter, her eyes pink and swollen behind her glasses.
"You can't be in here," I said.
"What? Why?" She said suspiciously.
"Dumbledore sent me," I lied convincingly, "I'm supposed to tell students that this bathroom's closed. Some idiot jinxed all the toilets and believe me, you don't want to know what they do now."
"Why should I believe you?" Myrtle said and in response, I pointed to the stall where Avery's legs were sticking out from beneath.
Her eyes filled with tears. "That's just perfect, isn't it? I can't even be alone for five minutes-"
And then she burst out of the bathroom, sobbing loudly. I let out a sigh of relief but stopped mid breath when I heard the sounds of footsteps approaching the door. That was Riddle and 'I'...we were about to make his first Horcrux. Murder Olive Hornby.
For an awful moment, I was tempted to go out and stop them-after all, what good did his Horcruxes do him, in the end- but instead, I hid in one of the stalls, closing the door quietly behind me.
"Hello?" I heard my voice say. I shut my eyes and willed myself back to my present; my wand gave a jerk and I accidentally knocked my elbow against the wall as I fell-
I was back in the corridor and the Fates were watching me yet again.
"Are you quite finished?" The Third Fate said.
Ignoring them, I stood up.
Although it frightened me more than anything, I had to make my third and final visit.
888
Tom stifled a yawn, pausing in the middle of one of the nastier potions books he had found in the Restricted Section of the school library. He had borrowed it long ago, to help with some of the theory behind Ariadne's corpus potion and had not looked at it since his initial readthrough. However, since they were now starting from scratch, he felt that it would not be unwise to look over it again, although he recalled each paragraph perfectly from memory.
His eyes drifted shut as he lay in his armchair in the Slytherin common room; he had spent nearly the entire day gallivanting about in Time, dealing with his own stubborn self (and earning a rather nasty cut on his cheek, again, for his troubles) and fighting Grindelwald's soldiers- it came as no surprise then, that sleep claimed him fully the minute he closed his eyes.
But Tom was a light sleeper and the soft groan of the dungeon door that was the room's entrance as it opened was enough to send his eyes snapping open and his wand out and pointed casually, but deceivingly, at the floor. Fully alert, he waited for the intruder- for Evans and McDonald had gone to bed long before, he knew, and there was no one left but himself- and drummed his long fingers patiently on the handle of his wand.
Then when the figure came into view of the light of the fireplace, he straightened immediately. Riddle was rarely surprised, but in that moment he was completely and utterly stunned when the person opened their mouth with a quiet, "Hello."
"Ariadne?" Tom said, suddenly wide awake. He lowered his wand and set aside the book in his lap as the figure stepped closer so that she was visible by the firelight. "What are you..."
He trailed off as he took in her dishevelled appearance. Her face was very pale and her hair streamed down her back, its ends dripping water. Her clothes were crumpled and wet as well, and some dark-colored stain was splotched liberally on the front of her blouse.
Ariadne looked around, moving further into the center of the room. "So this is the famous Slytherin common room," she said. She smiled weakly. "Bit gloomy, isn't it?"
"How did you get in?" Tom said with a frown as she put her hands out to the fire, warming them.
"I can't say it was as easy for me as it was for you," she muttered, now taking a seat in the armchair that faced his own. Tom realized that she was referring to how the portrait guarding the Gryffindor common room had once granted him entrance. " I had to Stun a couple of people just to get the password."
A silence broken only by the crackling of the fire followed her words and Tom wondered again why she was here. Ariadne was looking at him, her dark eyes fixed to his own and there was a desperate, hungry expression in them that Tom had never seen there before. Something had changed about her, in the way she seemed almost shrunken in the armchair, in the way her eyes burned in her face. Echoes of some strange but infinite grief sounded in the hollows of her neck, etched lines in her forehead, weighed on the corners of her mouth.
"You're...different," Tom said at last and her mouth tightened in surprise. The grin that it had been barely supporting collapsed on itself and she looked down.
"You know, I've always liked that about you," she said quietly. "You notice everything. Not always a good thing, but..."
He narrowed his eyes at her, not sure if she was mocking him or not. Abruptly he realized the reason for the difference: she looked older. His mind quickly connected the pieces together and he said sharply, "You're time travelling?"
Her expression was blank but Riddle caught something flicker in her eyes. "How is that possible?"
She attempted another grin. "You know I can't say anything about the future."
Tom was both nonplussed and irritated at her cavalier attitude and he said roughly, "What are you doing here then?"
Ariadne shrugged. "I just wanted to talk. Were you about to go to bed?"
"No," Tom said shortly. He was tempted to ask why she did not simply talk to his self that existed in her present but something in her expression prevented him from doing so.
Another silence fell but Ariadne did not seem to mind; she was staring at her hands now.
"This is a bit embarrassing," she said suddenly, "but can you tell me when exactly am I?"
He had to stop himself from rolling his eyes as he gave her the date and she looked stunned.
"Ah," she said and a crease appeared between her brows. "Yeah...that explains a lot."
Tom had had enough; fatigue was beginning to weigh down on his eyelids once more and he was not in the mood to play any guessing games.
"Ari," he said wearily, "Why are you really here?"
She looked away from him, clasping her hands loosely together. Riddle's curiosity peaked as he noticed for the first time the red rims around her eyes, as though she'd been crying. She shifted restlessly in her chair.
"After my parents died, things were very hard for me," she said quietly and Tom stilled at the change in topic. "I was alone for the first time in my life. I pretty much just closed my eyes to the rest of the world. Lived without living."
She stared into the fire and its flickering light glinted in her eyes.
"And then I came here," she said quietly. "and I met all these people and Hogwarts was like a home to me...and you..." Her gaze flashed up to his and it was searing again, "You made me angry and hurt and sad, and I have cried because of you more times than I have any other person in my life...but when I was with you, I was happier than I had been in a very long time." Another weak smile. "At least, when you weren't trying to kill me."
Riddle stared.
"Regardless of anything else, I have to thank you for that," she looked down and Tom had the sense that she was choosing her next words very carefully. "I stopped pretending to live because of you. And I guess I just want you to know that."
She broke off and she looked suddenly nervous.
Tom's mind was whirling; he was torn between suspicion and disbelief at what she had just told him. "Ariadne..." He began but the words that succeeded her name would not come.
She closed her eyes slowly; her mouth trembled. "Say my name again?"
He did not know why he complied but his lips were shaping the sound of it even before he realized he wanted to. She opened her eyes.
"I'm in love with you," she said quietly and a chill ran down his spine. "I want you to know that too."
His mind was blank. Utterly blank. If he had thought he was shocked before when she had entered then that was nothing, nothing at all compared to this.
She's lying! A part of him screamed furiously and he knew that that must be the truth, yes of course it was, yet he could not help the surge of a confused tumult of emotions that welled up in him like a bitter flood until he didn't know anger from sadness, hate from hope and above else, the thread of longing that ran through it all.
Ariadne's mouth twisted ruefully, as if she understood. "I wish I could stay longer, but..." Her eyes travelled almost unwillingly to the elegant silver clock above the mantlepiece. Seeming to steel herself, she stood up. She offered him another collapsing grin.
Tom's mind began to move again. "Wait-" he said, ready to demand further explanation for her disconcerting behaviour and frustrating words-
But she was already gone.
888
I arrived in a time that was unfamiliar to me.
I was standing on a grassy knoll overlooking a lake; the wind whipped my hair around my face. Rain poured down.
I did not belong here. I felt that instinctively. This was a Hogwarts centuries before I was even born. I felt transparent, strangely insubstantial, as though I were not as real here as I was in my present.
Yet something had brought me to this time.
I wrapped my arms around myself as the rain fell on me, through me. I was holding my breath, shivering in the cold, waiting for something although I did not know what it was. Then I saw them.
A man and a woman. They were walking around the lake together; the rain did not seem to bother them. The man was tall, with a strong, stern face and grey eyes that were somehow familiar. The woman was proud and beautiful, with flowing black hair. They seemed to be deep in conversation; the man said something unintelligible from my distance and the woman laughed.
I stared.
The woman seemed to feel my gaze, for she looked the direction of the knoll. Our eyes met and she frowned.
I closed my eyes as the wind sliced through me like a knife and then I was gone.
888
Laughter and conversation bounced distantly around me. I could feel the sun, warm on my face.
I opened my eyes and doubled over in pain. I collapsed on the ground, panting, gasping for air as my body fought its inevitable end. The pain didn't even disappear now; it was always present: a constant, watching stranger that dulled and sharpened like the ebb and flow of a tide. I forced myself to ignore it; I stood up and looked around.
I was not in my present and yet I recognized my surroundings to be the stone path that led down to the Black Lake. Students were sitting around its banks and their chatter drifted to me on the wind. With a jolt, I realized that this was where the knoll had once stood.
It was almost sunset; most of the black clad figures were heading up to the castle. One did not; taking the path that led towards the Forbidden Forest instead. It felt like the bottom had fallen out of my stomach when I recognized that it was me.
I realized that I was not too far from the present then: this was the very night that Draco had found me and Riddle in the Room of Requirement, only hours before.
I tasted blood in my mouth, but I ignored it. A wonderful possibility had occurred to me: I could stop it. If I could stop Draco from getting to the Room then I could somehow prevent all the terrible things that I had gone through tonight. Somehow-I didn't know how but surely that did not matter, I had to break the loop, never mind that I was dying, that my body was tearing itself apart before my very eyes-
I began to run.
Move.
My torn and battered sneakers slipped on the cold marble staircase, making me stumble into a small group of twittering, black clad people. Ignoring the stony looks I received, I pushed them roughly out of the way and fought breath after breath, trying to keep myself upright.
Move, dammit!
I was slowing down, I knew. It felt like I was running through a vat of wet cement, every step somehow clinging onto the hard surface of the ground: a scene from my very worst nightmares. Each and every individual muscle in my legs was crying, begging for surcease...it stung my bloated pride more than I could say to realize that I was crying too.
Sweat beaded across my forehead as I grit my teeth and through sheer willpower staggered forward another few steps.
What was I doing? What was I doing? I was truly a fool, like he had said. I could not change anything, I couldn't just stay here—
Focus, I thought. Focus is the key...focus on anything...the ground! The walls, the sky...
The pulse ran through my shaking body again, and I fought it off, concentrating instead on the ground beneath my feet, the place I was in, the time I was in.
One of my legs gave out then, as though part of a marionette whose strings had gone slack and I collapsed with it, snapping my head painfully against the stone wall behind me. My hands were shaking, trembling, though not from fear.
Salt exploded in my mouth; red stained my lips and then hands.
I was splitting at the seams, like flimsy burlap sack made frail from overuse. This was it.
It was almost insulting to realize that there were really only a few minutes left, that what I had been counting were not hours, but in fact, minutes. Time stood still for me, now. I was out of His authority.
I had been used.
And though I was dying, this small, insignificant thought managed to kindle the small spark of rebellion inside me that I thought had been crushed, stamped out long ago. Yes, this was it. For me.
Only for me.
As I reached into my robes to take hold of the item that had been the cause of all of this, the cause of everything, and brought it out to clench tightly in my fist, the resonating gongs of the clocktower boomed mockingly in my ears.
"It's over," I heard voices say in unison. It hurt to raise my head to look at the three Fates, standing in front of me. "Your Time is up."
My back spasmed and then was still. I could hear the ragged, disjointed pounding of my heart and wondered how it was miraculously still beating. My eyelids grew heavier; when I blinked, the periods of darkness behind them grew longer.
Tom...I murmured.
They were right. It was all over for me. I would die, he would become Lord Voldemort, he would sever my Strand and tangle our Fates together beyond saving. Ariadne de Lioncourt would find her wand that I would leave behind...she would come back...she would meet him...and he would fall in love with her...why, why, why...
"It's over," the Fates repeated and it seemed their voices had grown fainter. "Over..."
Tom, I sighed.
Only for me.
With a tremendous effort, I looked down at the object I clutched in my hand. My wand.
I owed so much to it. It had saved my life so many times. It had brought me here, the beginning and end of my life.
"It will be your decision that matters most in the end."
It had brought me to him.
Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, I brought my other hand to take hold of the other end of the red brown wood. I sighed.
"What are you doing?" The Third Fate demanded.
I sighed again, a name.
And then with an effort that killed me, I snapped my faithful wand in half.
I was so lost to the darkness that the screams of the crones did not hurt me. I barely noticed them. The cold and pain faded from my body. It didn't matter anymore.
This was the end, but only for me.
My heart stopped beating.
The air left my lungs.
My eyes slid shut, and then I felt and hurt and loved no more.
A/N: Not the end just yet.
Writing this chapter physically exhausted me. I've never put so much emotional effort into a pair of characters as these two before-like, my heart actuallyy hurts. I even had a tiny breakdown halfway through because I realized that the end of this story was near.
Let me know what you think and, as always, thank you.