Chapter 2:

Our Different Prisons


For the third day in a row Tom Riddle awoke in the Hogwarts hospital wing.

The madam of the wing, Pomfrey they said her name was, left a dinner tray loaded with beefy vegetable soup, a salad and cornbread beside his bed. In any other situation Tom would have glowered at the strange choice of food, but ever since his return to the living his stomach was like a bottomless pit and the soup was plenty tasty.

He fast learned to tune out the madam as he stuffed his face.

Pomfrey seemed endeared by his ability to eat so much food. After his first breakfast with her she started bringing three or four backup trays of various dishes. Wards weren't offered five course meals in the Hogwarts hospital wing when he attended the school, and he was almost positive it wasn't normal for the other students trapped in sterile sheets. Of course, they were petrified and lacked the ability to eat anything at all but that was beside the point.

He suspected the older woman's behavior had something to do with the fact that she had diagnosed him with severe malnutrition and told him to eat all of the food she gave him. The combination of what he recognized as the joy of seeing somebody actually follow her instructions for once and what he thought he recognized as the desire to find something he wouldn't eat sent the woman on a mission to feed him all manner of foods. A fruitless mission, as those who grew up hungry never developed picky eating habits.

During lunch the day before she outright asked him when the last time he ate was. Fortunately, she took his honest answer of 'fifty years' as a joke.

She came to clear the tray and dishes as soon as he finished. It was then that he felt a familiar rumbling in his stomach.

"Excuse me, ma'am." He said to the woman as he squeezed past her and made his way to the lavatory on the other side of the room.

The doors to the stalls had no locks as the need to come in and resuscitate an unconscious child if the situation called for it outweighed the need for privacy. He didn't even bother closing the door as he knelt over the toilet bowl.

Ever since the faculty half-carried him to the infirmary he had difficulty keeping food down. He had no trouble getting it down, but keeping it there proved difficult. When he did manage to keep food down it didn't stay inside of him for very long, but an antidiuretic potion resolved that issue. He didn't have the heart to tell the medi-witch that he had the stomach of a newborn, literally, and couldn't handle food heavier than breastmilk without the normal bacterial flora people develop naturally.

Truth be told, he just didn't fancy Hogwarts hiring a wet nurse or ordering baby formula for him, which would be the medically sound thing to do. Instead of suffering that indignity and slowly working his way up through Gerber peaches, crackers, soups and breads he skipped right to eating an adult diet. And he was paying the price for it.

"Would you like mint or strawberry rinse today?" Pomfrey called into the bathroom as he spat the last chunks of food that caught in his gums on the way back out.

"Spearmint, if you'd be so kind." He grumbled back as he wiped his mouth clean with a piece of tissue.

He flushed the toilet, cleaning a few spots of vomit from the bowl with another loose piece of tissue, and walked over to the sink area. The Muggle brand of mouthwash waited for him like a gift from heaven and he gargled the burning liquid with the appreciation of a drowning man finding land. He had to fight the urge to swallow and remove the taste of bile from his throat. That would not do his stomach any favors.

He walked, not stumbled, back to his bed and felt a smidgeon of pride slowly return at the small success.

He could have laughed at how pathetic and weak he was from three days of quasi-nutrition and the lack of energy that came with it. He couldn't begin to imagine how screwed he would have been if he had to escape that chamber and sneak out of Hogwarts on his own. He would have starved to death after a few days on his own unless he were to break into some woman's house and steal baby food. Would he have resorted to that? He wasn't sure.

Regardless he would have gotten sick and died due to his lack of an immune system. That problem he did see fit to tell the medi-witch about. His bum was all the sorer for it. The cocktail of inoculations he received were decidedly unpleasant, but at least he wasn't going to keel over the first time somebody sneezed on him.

It was already nighttime, and he had already slept the whole day away. Again. Realizing he wasn't going to get any more rest he returned to his newfound hobby of staring at the ceiling.

The clacking of hard-heeled boots coming towards his bed was his first sign of trouble.

"Still moping, are we Tom?" He groaned at the sound of her voice as he wrapped the bleached linen back around himself.

"Hello to you too, Minerva." Tom said to his former upperclassman.

He turned to look at the woman. God she'd gotten old. She went from being two years older than him to over fifty years older than him in the blink of an eye. From his perspective at least. She still had that same bitchy expression permanently affixed to her face. The pursed lips and haughty attitude were kind of hot when she had smooth skin, a figure slimmer than a toothpick and an impressive tan for a bookworm. As she was now, her skin pale and wrinkled with age, her demeanor was simply punchable.

She carried a large stack of books propped underneath her chin. Some things really don't change, do they?

"I figured seventy-six hours crying like a third-year girl after a silly breakup was enough. You're done feeling sorry for yourself." Minerva told him.

It was not a question. It was a demand. A statement of a change in reality she was willing into existence.

She dropped the stack of books onto his bed, and by extension him, sending them into a heap around his legs. He picked up the particularly large tome that landed between his legs and was surprised the thing didn't fall apart in his hands. It was ancient. Its edges were long since worn out and its once perfectly white pages yellowed through. He was almost as shocked to recognize the title of the transfiguration book. And the charms book. And defense books. And his other charms book from year four. And a transfiguration book from year one.

"You kept all of your old schoolbooks?" Tom asked incredulously, glowering at the woman as she brushed herself off.

"Of course!" She said with a shrug as if it were a silly question before folding her arms defensively. "Didn't you?"

Riddle considered the woman for a moment before scrounging around the pile of textbooks. He picked up a fifth- and sixth-year charms book and opened them both to the glossary.

"You see here how in the first chapter of every edition it gives a summary and refresher on EVERY spell in the previous year's edition?" He asked rhetorically handing one of the books to her.

"Well, yes, but..." She sputtered as she gingerly took the book from him.

"AND do you recall how every year Hogwarts gets a whole new batch of students, or returning students, in need of books? Some of whom can't afford their own?" continued Tom, interrupting her earlier retort.

"Yes but, I ... wait." She paused as she seemed to digest what he said. "Are you saying you gave your old books away to younger students?"

"Yup."

"You?"

"Me."

"Every year?"

"Every single one."

"That's very... charitable of you."

"Yes... What of it?"

Her glowering transformed into a deep scowl of skepticism. However did she come to have such deep wrinkles? He wondered.

"I'm sorry but I just can't picture you doing that Tom." Minerva said.

He could only blink at her.

"What?" He demanded more than asked.

"Well, you were always kind of stingy. I would have expected you to throw them away before donating them to anybody." She said.

The last vestiges of his normally cool demeanor vanished, as it always did when they argued.

"I wasn't stingy you trust fund cocotte; I was bloody poor!" Tom yelled.

She sputtered for a moment, trying to decide if she was bothered by his profanity or the insult. She resorted to old faithful.

"Fuck you!" She screamed.

"Fuck YOU!" He screamed back, putting emphasis on the subject of the statement.

"And fuck you right back, you bloody dobber!" She came back at him with her deepened Scottish accent.

It always made a surprise appearance whenever they argued.

She turned heel and stormed away. He couldn't even release the sigh of relief at her departure before she turned back on him, just shy of the hospital wing entrance. She had THAT look on her face. The look girls wear whenever they try to find a plot hole in a man's story. He tried practicing that expression in the bathroom mirror in his fifth year. Men must lack the facial muscles or bone structure.

"Wait just one minute. If you were so poor, why would you give the books away instead of selling them secondhand or pawning them?" She asked.

Awww. How cute. She thought she caught him in a lie! She never learns.

"Because Minerva." He said in his best imitation of her matter-of-fact voice. "I lacked the ability to pay back my upperclassman for giving them to me in the first place, so instead I paid it forward by giving my books away to newer students. Even I don't try to profit off of gifts from others." - Usually.

And there it was. Guilt. Plain as day on her face. People always thought he was a silver-tongued liar, a fact which he would never deny, but in most cases the truth, or a part of it, was a better weapon to stab at a person's heart or tool to convince them of your perspective.

"Oh. Well. Of course... Excuse me." She sputtered before turning to leave again.

"Minerva!" He called before she vanished from sight.

She whipped back around, no doubt expecting another bout of expletives.

"Thank you." He said in his most heartfelt, and well practiced, tone.

Her face softened for a fraction of a second before hardening again. He was sure if anybody else were watching they would have missed it.

"For the books, I mean." He clarified.

She glared.

"Not just these ones." He continued, indicating the pile on his lap. "The ones you gave me in my fourth year. If you'll recall that's how we first met."

Her brow furrowed as she examined him. He watched with amusement as recognition slowly dawned on her face and she dug up those memories that to him were relatively fresh.

Then she really did leave.

The silence that followed brought him a deep sense of nostalgia. It was the same silence that always followed their fights back in the day. For a moment it was as if he never left and he could almost delude himself into thinking he hadn't, and that the former head girl had simply suffered an accident with an aging potion.

"I missed our little chats." He mumbled to himself with a chuckle.


Minerva was right. He was tired of feeling sorry for himself, and tired in general.

Reviewing his old textbooks went a long way towards alleviating his boredom. During his stay there the only interesting thing to happen was when the mediwitch and potions master, who looked an awful lot like that surly Eileen girl in the year above Minerva, came in on the second day to un-petrify the victims of the basilisk.

He made a mental note to meet with the mute potions nerd and see how well she had aged compared to Minerva and considered which other students from his time at Hogwarts would make an interesting case study in aging gracefully. He watched the Hogwarts staff begin the slow process of reviving his fellow guests with equal parts guilt and fascination.

He didn't envy Pomfrey's job. Trying to coax a tube down the throat of a person turned to stone was difficult enough, but they had to do it to four students and a cat! Which was probably easier done petrified than if the feline were awake. Correction, it was definitely easier if Harry's memories of how unpleasant Norris is could be believed.

It was the ghost of Sir Nicholas De Mimsy that fascinated him. The charms professor, a part-goblin called Flitwick who even he found cute and likeable, used a combination of several spells to aerosolize the mandrake draught without heating it, which probably would have ruined the potion. They were effectively giving Nick a cold steam bath. Flitwick did it all wordlessly, much to Tom's chagrin, so he'd have to wait to ask the diminutive man about it some other time. The entire hospital wing stank something fierce for the rest of the day. When he asked her, Pomfrey said it would be a couple more days before everyone woke up.

He doubted something that interesting would happen again during his stay, so he took to reviewing the old texts from his first-year books through fourth. He wasn't allowed a wand to practice the material, but he could walk down memory lane and try to remember his fellow students during his time in Hogwarts and compare his own experiences with Harry's. Thus, he spent the whole evening properly parsing which memories were his and which were Harry's, with mixed success. He hadn't gotten very far in his self-taught occlumency, but he learned enough to organize his memories into a mental castle and created a separate one for Harry's. It was slow work but as the day wore on, he regained some sense of self.

The hospital wing was bathed in golden light from the rising sun when he decided to finish up for the night. That was when one of the other patients decided now was a good time to scare him out of his skin with a sudden high-pitched gasp.

The girl in the bed next to him sat bolt upright in an instant. He dropped the history book he was preparing to bookmark when she did.

The bushy-haired girl had that squinting glare, the one that every decidedly-not-a-morning-person has when they wake up. The slow breath she released as she surveyed her surroundings sounded like a hiss and when roughly translated into parseltongue sounded like a groaned 'fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck'. Which seemed appropriate.

He cowered behind his book as her gaze landed on him. Hoping the girl would go right back to sleep he dared to peek over the top. She was now standing at his bedside, staring down at him with eyes so tightly squinted that for a moment he wondered if she was sleep walking. That was until she broke out in a big, toothy grin. Emphasis on toothy. She really should get those incisors filed down. Maybe Tom could 'borrow' one of those industrial grinders he'd used on his summer job down on the Muggle docks? He knew a guy down by the docks from when he worked under the table who had probably long since died from old age. Hmm.

"Good to finally meetcha." She said, offering a hand, which he took while fighting to keep an expression of deep horror off of his face. "I'm Hermione Granger. You look so much like your cousin!"

He stared back at her, still shaking her hand. She'd been looking forward to meeting him? Did she know he was Voldemort? Who the hell looked forward to meeting such a disgusting creature? Had she mistaken his identity? Did she know who he really was but not that he'd one day become the dark lord? All of these thoughts and more would have been running through his head if the normally analytical voice in the front of his wasn't being overpowered by the panicking voice in the back of his head a voice that was now screaming 'Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!' at a deafening decibel.

"Huh?" He said with utmost eloquence.

He moved his free hand to his ear as if he hadn't quite heard her.

"Hermione. Like from the Odyssey" She unhelpfully explained. "When Harry said you were bigger than him I expected you to be rounder; big boned if you will. Not taller and older. Does scrawniness run in both the Potter and Evans line alike?"

He continued to stare at her awkwardly as her questions got increasingly rude. With that last one Tom realized who this girl thought he was.

"I'm not Dudley!" He half yelled with incredulity. To her credit she didn't even flinch at his venom. Impressive. "That spoiled fatass wouldn't fit through the doors of the great hall!"

Her smile widened as she let go of his hand.

"Erm. And by that I mean 'Who is Dudley? Does he strike an imposing figure?'." He tried to backtrack.

She giggled, still showing off her massive teeth. He wondered if he should try extracting one of those to hit the diary with. Basilisk fangs be damned, those chompers looked like the bane of horcruxes and dark beasts alike.

"Okay. I'm stumped. Who are you really?" Hermione asked.

Oh? Doth his ears deceive him? Had the young lady asked him to lie? His specialty! He recovered his composure and worked to make his face placid, if a little smug. Time for the oldest technique in the book.

Let them come up with your lie for you.

"Well, you've only made one guess. You get two more, little lady." He said as he flashed her the most minute hint of a smile.

This one he saved for younger girls who tried to act older than they were and who were very bad at hiding their crush on him.

Hermione just rolled her eyes and he tried to dig through Harry's memories of her as she spoke. Really, he was just stalling her until he could come up with something believable.

"Let's see. You look like Harry." True enough. "Kind of talk like Harry, at least when he's not being all shy." He had no objective frame of reference for that claim, but he believed it. "You know his cousin. " Shit. "And you're what, sixteen?"

He waved his hand in a 'Meh. Kind of.' motion.

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she combined these disparate facts in her hunt for a conclusion. She also went back to squinting at him like a bug underneath a magnifying glass. Her scrutiny made him feel oddly naked and he pulled his sheets tighter over himself as a result.

"You are, in fact, Harry Potter!" She proclaimed as her grin returned. "You brewed another batch of polyjuice potion without me and tried to infiltrate Slytherin as an older student, but you botched it!"

He stared at her.

She stared back.

He stared at her some more.

She started to look less sure of herself.

"Wow." Said Tom.

It's all he could come up with.

"Yeeeaaaaahhhhhh." She said nervously.

"That is one hell of a guess!" He said. "I take it you have some experience with polyjuice potions going wrong?"

By now he'd already retrieved the more recent memories of the little girl from the back of his mind where he disposed of most of his new, ill gotten, knowledge. He already knew the answer.

"Yeah... a bit. I take it that's a no?" She said, deflating before his eyes.

"Decidedly so. Try again for a sickle?" He offered with a sly grin.

She scrunched up her face and re-adopted that inquisitive glare of hers. She stayed like that for five whole minutes. He counted. If he had that kind of concentration he could have passed all of his newts as a fourth year.

"I give up. Who are you?" She conceded rather quickly.

He shook his head.

"Would you believe me if I said I'm a long-lost cousin on his father's side?" Tom asked.

"Not a chance." She rejected.

'"I'm his dad, but I've been frozen in an iceberg for ten years and decided to get some nip and tuck before coming to see him!" He tried.

"No." She deadpanned.

"I'm the shade of a sixteen-year-old Voldemort brought back to life through horrifically dark magi!?" This one he said with a ghostly 'wooooo' tone.

"Come on! How gullible do I look?" She asked, askance.

"I'm Harry's time traveling grandson from the future who came back in time because I'm in love with you... Nana?"

"Gross! No!"

Whether she was disgusted at the idea that she had married and had children with Harry or that a grandchild born from their union would come back in time to woo her, he couldn't tell. Probably the idea of being with a boy full stop, he decided.

Tom shrugged with a fake sigh.

"Well. I don't know what to tell you, kiddo. The truth is I'm not allowed to share my identity with you. Headmaster's orders." He explained, hoping he could contact Dumbledore and ask him to cover up for his lie before the girl went asking him.

She huffed and puffed her cheeks, now red with frustration. He could not belive Harry had such a hard time dealing with her tantrums. This girl was easier to pick on than Myrtle Warren!

"Well, I think you're a right big jerk. If you don't tell me who you are I'll - " Hermione started.

What she intended to do if he continued to keep his secret the world will never know, because he decided not to let her finish that threat.

"Madam Pomfrey! The vegetables are getting uppity!" He yelled out and the school nurse came running.

"Miss Granger! Get back in bed this minute!" Roared Pomfrey as she stormed through the aisles of hospital beds.

Hermione cowered as the rampaging witch approached, barely managing to fling the sheets back over herself before the terror was upon her. Madam Pomfrey sniffed at the recently revived girl and yanked the covers off of her.

"On second thought, get over to the showers. You've been petrified for twenty-three whole days, and you desperately need one. Your hair looks horrendous!" Pomfrey ordered.

Tom resisted the urge to inform Pomfrey that Hermione's hair always looked horrendous. Partly because he shouldn't know that information and the bushy haired girl was smart enough to recognize that he shouldn't know that information, but also because her hair did look even messier than normal, almost like she'd been electrocuted. Apparently, petrification does not turn a victim's hair to stone.

"I'll send for a change of clothes and a proper meal for you. You focus on getting yourself cleaned up." Pomfrey added as she chased the cowering child to the shower room.

All she was missing was a cattle prod, Tom thought to himself as he rolled over and buried his face into the pillow.

He slept like a baby that night.


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