Chapter 113:
Harry dragged Tom, rather forcibly, up towards the Headmaster's Office.
If his movement was restricted to ten metres of wherever Tom went, then he was just going to have to move Tom when he wanted to go somewhere, wasn't he?
He hadn't managed to get the ring of Tom yet, despite several attempts - much to the amused bemusement and horror of the Slytherins - but was working on it. The ring wasn't at the forefront of his mind, but it was better if Tom thought that was his single-minded focus.
They arrived at the Headmaster's office, despite Tom's protests to the contrary, and even threats. Harry didn't relent his grip on Tom's shirt, smug in the knowledge that when Tom wasn't fighting dirty they were pretty equal…he supposed that had been what Tom was getting at.
They'd always been equally matched when they both played entirely to win, ruthlessly, and without regard to other players. Dumbledore froze as they entered, straightening as his desk, eyeing the both of them.
"Harry…Mr Riddle," he greeted, watching the Slytherin Heir with an unreadable, albeit guarded, expression. Harry noticed his eyes had snapped to the ring, frozen.
Tom merely stared back coldly, quite obviously not wanting to be there, and not bothering to bring forth a mask to hide it either.
"Just ignore him, Professor," Harry said, lightly. "I do."
Dumbledore regarded them both for a moment, seemingly slightly unsettled and debating over what approach to take now, and what words to say. In the end, the Headmaster just inclined his head towards the familiar Pensieve.
"There are two new memories. I will…elaborate on them at a later date."
"By all means," Tom said airily, smiling dangerously, "don't hold your tongues on my account. You know I'm Harry's Occlumency teacher, don't you Professor?" Tom paused, tilting his head. "…Unless you don't trust Harry's discretion in bringing me here?"
"Something tells me he didn't have much of a choice," Dumbledore replied, his smile equally cold. "The two of you have been very close this past week."
"Very," Tom smirked, with a drawl to his voice. Harry rolled his eyes.
"How about you two have your pissing contests outside of my time? I've kind of got a busy schedule."
They both turned to look at him. He arched his brows.
"Say your piece, Headmaster, at this point it is scarcely going to make a difference."
No, that wasn't at all bitter. Dumbledore cleared his throat, casting Tom a dark look that really shouldn't have amused him so much.
"For the sake of time, then, I shall give you a quick account of Tom Riddle's last years at Hogwarts. He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you would no doubt have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. His classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts, and nearly everyone expected spectacular things from Mr Riddle."
Tom looked distinctly smug, and Harry shot him a cutting glance.
"I will not go into details, for obvious reasons," Dumbledore continued tightly. "However, Mr Riddle refused all offers, and the next the staff knew he was working at Borgin and Burkes."
Harry resisted the urge to parrot the name of the shop in shock, containing his surprise, and he was very surprised. Tom…working in a shop?
As in, serving customers?
He shot the other a bewildered look, before frowning, deep in thought at the challenging expression Tom returned to him.
He thought quickly for the reasoning, before lighting upon an answer in seconds once he searched past his initial amazement, and his jaw tightened.
"Horcruxes?" he questioned, not sure which of his companions he was directing this to.
"I believe so," Dumbledore said, seeming to pointedly not be looking at the young Dark Lord who was wandering about his office, studying objects with a demeanour of nonchalance. "However, his first choice of job appeared to be to remain at Hogwarts as a teacher."
Harry didn't need to ask for an explanation this time, and the Headmaster's brow creased slightly at his lack of, apparently expected, comment.
Hogwarts was home, and held many secrets. As a teacher, Tom would also be able to continue influencing people, recruiting.
No, he could see perfectly well why Tom would want to stay.
Tom had stilled marginally in his movements, but not stopped entirely. Whatever indifference he was projecting aside, Harry knew he was paying this conversation careful attention. A thought struck him.
"Petty thing, aren't you?" he asked Tom, his eyebrows raised once more.
If Tom was a teacher, it would be Defence Against the Dark Arts, and the job was cursed; conclusion, Tom cursed the Defence Against the Dark Arts post because he didn't receive it.
"You don't think I'd make a good teacher?" Tom smirked in response. "Don't go forgetting who taught you now, darling."
"Doesn't stop you being petty," Harry argued. "The only reason you had to teach me anything in the first place was because you cursed the job so almost all the teachers who would take it by my time were incompetent!"
"Details," Tom waved a hand dismissively. "Besides, I thought you didn't like lumping me with older versions of myself…let's see…we've had denial, anger, attempts at bargaining….you could have cried yourself to sleep over me, I'm not sure…so this could be…acceptance?"
"Er, no," Harry said flatly. "And I directed it at you because it's something you'd do, and Voldemort's not around for me to throw these comments at."
"The point is," Dumbledore continued tightly once more, apparently deciding the best course of action was to ignore the other person he was conversing with, for now, and to some extent. "Tom Riddle took up a job at Borgin and Burkes, where he quickly rose from the role of a mere assistance into a more…specialised role, that can only be found in a place like Borgin and Burkes, which specialised in objects with unusual or powerful properties. Mr Ridde was sent to persuade people to part with their treasures for sale, and he was, by all acounts, uncommonly gifted at doing so."
Tom looked smug again. Dumbledore waved Harry towards the pensieve.
"This, is one such scenario."
He dove.
Harrry landed, alone (Dumbledore, it seemed, was staying in the Office with Tom, and oh dear about the two of them being alone without a mediator…) in front of an immensely fat old lady wearing an elaborate ginger wig and a set of Umbridge-esque pink robes, making her look like a melting iced cake.
She was peering into a small jewelled mirror and dabbing rouge onto already scarlet cheeks with a large powder puff. A tiny, crinkly, ancient looking house elf was lacing her feet into tight satin slippers.
"Hurry up Hokey," the woman said imperiously, "he said he'd come at four , it's only a couple of minutes to and he's never been late yet!"
Harry couldn't claim to like her very much, on immediate first impressions. The women tucked away her powder puff as the house-elf straightened up.
"How do I look?" the women asked, examining herself in various angles of reflection.
"Lovely, madam," Hokey squeaked. Harry mentally responded with a resounding 'horrible.' Both mistress and elf jumped as the doorbell tinkled. "Quick, quick, he's here, Hokey!"
Harry could feel a unwanted fascination building inside him, a curiosity he really shouldn't have been having considering.
What would Tom look like this time? In an awful way, it was so very interesting comparing the different Riddle's, the path from Tom to Voldemort.
The elf returned to the cluttered room in minutes, and Harry's breath caught, much to his embarrassment, at the figure that followed.
Tom…Voldemort really, he supposed, was plainly dressed in a black suit, his hair a little longer than Harry was used to, and his cheeks hollowed.
It suited him though, he looked more…handsome than ever.
Because Tom was handsome, he did know that, he just didn't like admitting it even in the relative safety of his own head because it felt like everyone who thought they were a couple or fancied each other would swoop down and take the admittance as proof.
He could understand that Tom was more handsome than most people, without fancying the guy, right?
Harry couldn't help but wonder if the hollowed cheeks was a product of growing up, or of Horcruxes.
Tom picked his way through the cramped room with the grace of someone who'd visited many times before. He bowed (!) low over the woman's fat hand, brushing it with his lips. Harry's nose wrinkled.
"I brought you flowers," Tom said quietly, producing a bunch of roses from nowhere. Conjured, probably. Smooth. Very smooth. Ugh,
"You naughty boy, you shouldn't have!" the old lady squealed, though Harry noticed she had an empty vase conveniently on the nearest table. "You do spoil this old lady, Tom…sit down, sit down…where's Hokey…ah"
The scene continued in a similar fashion, Tom asking about some Goblin-made armour.
It was when the woman started talking about secrets that Harry suddenly started worrying about her fate.
Sure, she was a little…slavish, but Harry didn't want her to come into harm because she was stupid enough to trust the other.
"I'd be glad to see anything Miss Hepzibah shows me," Tom…Voldemort, Voldemort, said in that same quiet voice.
He had to stop thinking of any of these versions as Tom, it was a slippery slope and once he had no eagerness to fall down.
At least he had a name for the women. Hepzibah.
The House elf returned promptly with two boxes, and somehow, instinctively, Harry knew they'd become Horcruxes.
But which ones?
Judging by Tom's age, one of them would be Marvolo…the locket, at least from what Marvolo had told him.
Harry edged forwards, standing next to Tom, and noticing distantly how old it felt that Tom didn't automatically…shift.
He hadn't noticed before it stopped happening because he was in a memory, or even before everyone pointed out…but they both did kind of shift and orbit or whatever when the other approached. He tried not to feel disconcerted, with the knowledge that he was invisible, not really there.
"I wonder if you know what it is, Tom? Pick it up, have a good look!" Hepzibah whispered.
Tom…and he was doing it again! Voldemort lifted the cup by one handle out of its silken wrappings, and watching carefully, Harry thought he saw a red gleam upon T-Voldemort's features.
"A badger," Voldemort murmured, studying the engraving with the same hungry expression that Harry had seen in his eyes so many times before "Then this was…"
"Helga Hufflepuff's, as you very well know, you clever boy!" Hepzibah leaned forward, pinching Tom on the cheek. Harry wondered that there was even any skin to pinch!
Rambling on about her family descent, after a moment, she hooked the cup back off from Volemort's finger and restored it to its bock, too intent upon settling it to notice the shadow that crossed T-Voldemort's face as the cup was taken away.
It was definitely Voldemort…and a few horcruxes in, perhaps?
While Tom had his bursts of emotions and mood swings, Harry knew he was fully capable of hiding them if he wanted to, and in this situation Tom would want to play his role perfectly with no slip ups. Therefore, his emotions had to be somewhat unstable by now.
He'd already killed his family, so…this was, two horcruxes in, maybe?
Ring and Diary.
Then Locket, and then…Cup? Presuming Harry himself was the seventh, and he shuddered at that, there was two more that he needed to discover.
Harry's eyes were drawn back to the scene by a flash of gold.
The locket. Marvolo…except it wasn't Marvolo yet…and since when had he started automatically calling that Horcrux Marvolo?
Voldemort reached his hand out without invitation this time, and held the locket up to the light, staring at it.
"Slytherin's mark," he stated, and Harry wondered how different his reaction would be if Voldemort remembered Tom's dealings with this Horcrux, and Harry's.
"That's right!" Hepzibah squealed. "I had to pay an arm and a leg for it, but I couldn't let it pass, not a real treasure like that, had to have it for my collection. Burke, bought it, apparently, from a ragged-looking woman who seemed to have stolen it, and had no idea of its true value-"
Voldemort's eyes flashed scarlet at her words, and Harry saw his knuckles whiten on the Locket's chain.
Oddly, though this should have driven the man in front of him as the Dark Lord, it only reminded him more of Tom because he was reacting to Merope.
The ragged-looking woman was his mother.
He winced, suddenly not sure if he wished he wasn't witnessing this or that he was corporeal enough, real enough, to say something to this half Voldemort-half Tom…because that was what he'd been juggling with since he entered, wasn't it?
This wasn't fully Voldemort, not the Voldemort he knew, but it wasn't Tom either. It was somewhere in the middle.
In the meanwhile Hepzibah blathered obliviously, and Harry could already guess that her fate wouldn't be so kind as simple robbery.
"-I thought - but a trick of the light, I suppose-" Hepzibah said, unnerved.
Harry guessed that she had, for the first and probably last time, seen the momentary red gleam in those familiar-unfamiliar eyes.
The next second he was back in the office.
As Harry disappeared into the Pensieve, Tom watched the old man warily. He had no fondness for the Headmaster/Transfiguration Professor, and they were both all too aware of that. He knew Dumbledore held no love lost for him either.
"Interesting ring, you've got," Dumbledore said lightly. He smirked in response, his eyes flicking to the wand.
"Loving the wand…it's changed since I last saw it, hasn't it? Elder now, is it not?"
"I don't know what you're up to," the man's face was lined with ice and rage, "but you should leave Harry out of it, he's-"
"-just a boy? Of no consequence to me? Incorrect on both counts, Headmaster."
The Light Lord looked very much like he was resisting the urge to use that Elder Wand of his, but Tom knew, ultimately, he wouldn't. Dumbledore meddled with many things, but time wasn't one of them.
"What do you want from him?" the old man demanded.
Tom laughed, no warmth to the sound, not like with Harry only a few days ago, but gave no reply, knowing that would only serve to infuriate and concern the Headmaster more.
Dumbledore seemed to switch tack.
"If you care about him, as you've claimed to, you would leave him be. You always break your toys eventually, Tom, you know you do."
Anger burned white hot in his stomach, but he showed none of it on his face, merely appearing thoughtful.
"Care about him? I've heard there's some debate about that…is it love? Mere obsession? A little bit of both? An opportunity to steal your Pawn and make him into a Queen for my side? Or a Prince, rather, as to my knowledge he is most definitely male…" Tom shrugged casually. "Guess you'll just have to keep guessing."
"Clearly, you do not care about him at all," Dumbledore said, voice restrained.
He couldn't help himself, winking.
"Oh, I don't know," he drawled. "Harry's a great kisser. Might have to keep him."
Dumbledore's lips thinned, his gaze devoid of any twinkle or kindness.
"He's not a possession, you can't just keep him."
"He's not your lamb, you can't just slaughter him," he returned, not missing a beat.
"He's not yours, either," Dumbledore said. Tom laughed again.
"Of course he is, and jokes of possession and objectification aside, you can't have him back."
There was a tense silence, where they both surveyed each other.
"Do you know what he's planning to do?" the Headmaster asked, unreadable.
"Yes," Tom replied.
"You disapprove?" the man questioned, shrewdly.
He didn't comment.
Dumbledore ran a hand over the edges of the pensieve, staring into the liquid past.
"You've always been intelligent, Tom, surely you've worked out by now that there's no way you can keep him - the past must always happen, or the present, and Harry, would be obliterated…and be it love or obsession, I don't think you want that. What you seek is impossible; let him go."
Tom rubbed a thumb across the ring, deliberately, tauntingly.
"I've always found 'impossible' to be the domain of people with no talent and no imagination. I have both. I always get what I want, old man, you should know that by now. What do I want from him? I want him, that is all you need to know."
He studied the other, fully aware of the double meanings the Headmaster could have drawn, and indeed must have drawn by the peculiar colour he had turned, from his statement.
The stood on opposite ends of the room in silence, tense, now largely ignoring other once more.
Shortly, Harry returned from the Pensieve again. He was quiet for a moment, noticeably and curiously gaining his composure, looking around him, before sighing.
"Do I want to know what the two of you have been talking about?"
"I'm sure you want to know, you have an insatiable curiosity," Tom replied promptly, favouring him with an amused expression, and a tinge of the hunger he had just seen in his older variant. "But that doesn't mean you will."
Harry noticed Dumbledore's jaw tighten, revulsion in his gaze, a mental shudder, and frowned.
"Then I'll presume myself to be the topic," he said, turning to Dumbledore. "I take it she was robbed and killed shortly after?" She, meaning Hepzibah.
Dumbledore nodded, looking tired.
"The elf was convicted by the ministry of poisoning her mistress' evening cocoa by accident."
"Memory modification, again," Harry murmured. "And the Ministry wouldn't question it, so there would be no large amount of deep investigation, only enough scandal that it took her family enough time to realise that something, the next two Horcruxes, was missing."
With a sharp glance at Tom, he didn't elaborate. The locket felt hot and guilty around his neck.
"Yes," Dumbledore said, regarding him with that same surprise.
"He's not stupid," Tom remarked, in a reminding, slightly sing song voice.
"I never said he was," Dumbledore snapped back, causing Tom's smirk to broaden. Harry rolled his eyes, it was becoming a regular occurrence.
"By all means, feel free to detach yourself from each other's throats any time you please," he said dryly.
There was a moment of quiet, and then Dumbledore moved to scoop the last memory out, and pour another memory in its place.
"After that memory, Mr Riddle resigned his post and vanished, it took another ten years before he resurfaced - with the next memory, if you will."
"Whose memory is it?" Harry asked, walking over.
"Mine," Dumbledore said.
The next second, he landed in the office he had just vacated.
Fawkes was slumbering happily on his perch, and a very familiar looking Headmaster.
The younger Dumbledore seemed to be waiting for something, and sure enough, moments after his arrival, there was a knock on the door and a command to 'Enter.'
Harry couldn't stifle his gasp.
This was definitely not Tom any longer.
Ring.
Diary.
Locket.
Cup.
The other Horcrux.
Perhaps even in the sixth, the last before Harry himself?
But probably five, at this point.
Voldemort's features were not those of the snake-faced man who had risen from the cauldron; the eyes were not yet scarlet, though the whites were had a permanently blood shot appearance, and the pupils were not yet slits either.
However, it was as though his face had been burned and blurred; oddly waxy and distorted, not quite mask like yet, but getting there.
He was wearing a long black cloak and his skin, always pale but more in a healthy ivory/creamy tone, was now as pale as the snow that glistened on his shoulders.
Harry swallowed, feeling sick.
No, this was closer to Voldemort than his Tom, whereas the last had been more Tom than Voldemort. This was obviously an appointment.
"Good evening, Tom," Dumbledore said calmly. "Won't you sit down?"
"Thank you," Voldemort said, taking the seat. His voice was higher and colder than before, losing the easy, smooth baritone that Harry knew so well.
In a way, more than the face (which was an appalling difference) it was the change in voice that jarred him.
"I heard that you had become Headmaster…a worthy choice."
"I am glad you approve," Dumbledore smiled. "May I offer you a drink?"
"That would be welcome, I have come a long way."
Dumbledore stood and swept over to the cabinet that now kept the Pensieve, but was then full of bottles. He handed Voldemort a goblet of wine and poured one for himself, returning to his own seat behind the desk.
"So, Tom…to what do I owe the pleasure?"
Voldemort didn't answer immediately, merely sipping his wine.
It was Chardonnay, though Harry knew that Tom, at least, favoured red over white.
"They do not call me "Tom" any more," he said, and Harry cringed violently, "these days I am known as-"
"I know what you are known as," Dumbledore smiled pleasantly. "But to me, I'm afraid, you will always be Tom Riddle. It is one of the irritating things about old teachers, I am afraid, that they never quite forget their charges' youthful beginnings."
He raised his glass as if in toast, but Harry knew it was a jab, a mock, and felt the atmosphere in the room change in a way very familiar to the shifts of the Slytherin Common Room.
Dumbledore's refusal to use Voldemort's chosen name was a refusal to allow Voldemort to dictate the terms of the meeting, and anyone with any political or Slytherin awareness would view it as such.
"I am surprised you have remained here so long," Voldemort said after a pause. "I always wondered why a wizard such as yourself never wished to leave school."
"Well," Dumbledore was still smiling, "to a wizard such as myself, there can be nothing more important than passing on ancient skills, helping hone young minds. If I remember correctly, you once saw the attraction of teaching too."
Passing on ancient skills? So long as they were light of course, Harry thought, before being surprised by his own scathing.
The conversation continued, following how Dumbledore had been requested to be minister numerous occasions, and refused each time.
Then Voldemort asked to teach.
Harry felt an odd pang of sadness…Tom, Tom not this creature, would have, not that Harry would tell him, made a brilliant teacher. Harry knew well enough by now that he knew how to cater his methods to his individual student, even if he wasn't perhaps the most patient of kindly of professors. It was a waste.
Dumbledore considered Voldemort over the top of his goblet.
"Yes, I certainly do know that you have seen and done much since leaving us," he said quietly. "Rumours of your doings have reached your old school, Tom. I should be sorry to believe half of them."
Voldemort's expression remained impassive.
"Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies. You must know this, Dumbledore."
They continued tossing jabs for a while, remarks on greatness and knowledge.
"-I play myself and my talents at your disposal. I am yours to command."
Dumbledore raised his eyebrows.
"And what will become of those whom you command? What will happen to those who call themselves - or so rumour has it - the Death Eaters?"
He could tell Voldemort didn't expect Dumbledore to know the name, and he knew that Tom wouldn't have.
And he really needed to stop comparing them...counting the similarities and the differences in twisted tally.
"My friends," Voldemort said, after a moment's pause, "will carry on without me, I am sure."
"I am glad to hear you consider them friends," Dumbledore said. "I was under the impression that they are more in the order of servants."
"You are mistaken." There was a smirk in Voldemort's gaze though.
"Then if I were to go to the Hog's Head tonight, I would not find a group of them - Nott, Rosier, Mulciber, Dolohov - awaiting your return?"
Harry blanked at the uncomfortable reminder of what happened to his Slytherins, to Zevi, and Alphard, Abraxas and even Lestrange.
Lestrange would have been there, at the Hog's Head, so what had Tom ordered him to do instead?
In the end Dumbledore refused the job offer, questioning why 'Tom' would seek a job he didn't want.
Harry knew it wasn't so simple.
Tom, and even Voldemort, had wanted that job, it was the old argument of the Dark lord, young or old, always having more than one motive.
Just because he had other reasons to be there…like to hide a Horcrux, maybe? That didn't mean he didn't want the job.
He appeared back in the office, feeling solemn.
"Then we have nothing more to say to each other…"
The more he found out, the less he wanted to know.
But he needed to track down that cup.
A/N: Wow, that chapter was long. The longest chapter I will ever write, probably. If you recognise it, I'm quoting HBP, I do that a lot this time around. I thought this chapter was long enough with adding stuff. Whew. I hope you liked it, sorry if it was more of a plot chapter than a character chapter so much, but you need both don't you?
Thank you for all the amazing reviews, they are much appreciated. I will not comment on the subject of Tom's plan anymore, in fear I will reveal more than I mean to, as, obviously, I know how the story ends ;)