Doubt

"Can you speak to snakes too?"

The teddy bear was dangling from the boy's hand, trailing along with them like an omen. London's cold air was thicker than the smoke spat out by factories, and as they wandered the midnight streets Harry tried to ignore the women scrabbling through the mud in the hopes of finding chips of coal. It smelled like ash and death, much like Hogwarts would nearly seventy years later.

Or maybe it wouldn't.

"Yes I can," he said, numb fingers twitching in his pockets. This was not quite like the other questions. "It's not a common gift. But like all magic, it's nothing special."

"But it must be special if it's not common." He stopped walking, and so did Harry.

He wondered if he was only repeating history, just in a different style. He wondered if he would spend the rest of his life wondering. He could kill him now. Save himself the bother. Wash his hands of it.

The boy stomped his foot, his cheeks going as pink as the tips of his nose and ears. Harry stared at him. "No other children can speak to snakes," said Tom. "They can't get pigeons and cats and crows to do what they want. Nobody else can make Salem move without touching her!"

"Salem?" said Harry faintly. Tom held up the teddy. He was sure that they could both appreciate the irony.

The boy wasn't wrong — he was special. He was gifted. By wizarding and Muggle standards. Any adult would fawn over a child like Tom Riddle. Except for Mrs. Cole, the matron at the orphanage, who certainly seemed eager to skip over formalities like paperwork to get rid of him. She had a good gut on her. Like the saying went, 'hindsight is a wonderful thing, but foresight is better'.

"Nothing would be common if it wasn't special first, Tom."

"You're wrong!"

"And what if you are?" he countered. Their eyes clashed, and for seconds, minutes, hours, they glared, until the boy looked away first. Out of context, Harry shouldn't feel so victorious over winning a staring contest with a four year old. In context, he'd won a power game with mini Voldemort.

Don't. Don't think of him like that. He is not going to be Voldemort. It seemed like a fancy, frivolous thought that a starry-eyed child might make. The kind of child that would refuse to use powerful dark curses in the name of good even to protect the people crumpling dead around him.

Harry looked away from Tom.

The fluorescent street lights didn't cast enough shadows. He stared at a frail man wasting away in the gutters. Then he started walking, and Tom's small footsteps followed.

He never did pay much attention in school, both in Hogwarts and before, but he'd picked up enough along the way to know that he was in a time between two wars. England was still picking up the pieces from the last one and unemployment rates were at an all time high. Judging from all the gaunt faces and sickly complexions, food was hard to come by, at least in these parts, which was another problem, because even if there was an abundance of it Harry didn't bring any money, and for all its wonders magic couldn't make that or food appear out of thin air.

He never really had been a man with a plan.

"Mr. Evans?"

Harry blinked and looked down. The pink of his cheeks had faded but he knew better than to think the boy was no longer angry. "Harry's fine."

"Harry," said Tom politely, "How do you know about me?"

Now that was an idea…

A sudden scream across the street made him stop in his tracks. He noticed the boy jump closer to him in the corner of his eye.

A woman was sobbing erratically against a slagheap in front of yet another gray factory. She was clutching a deceiving rock in her fist. Dammit, Harry thought, pulling out his wand surreptitiously, I'm going to regret this. He waved it and muttered a spell to transfigure the rock. The woman gasped and inspected the coal in her fist, her tears turning into laughter, passing it off as a trick of the light or her evident exhaustion.

"Why did you do that?" asked Tom, his eyes fixed on the wand Harry was putting back in his pocket.

"Because I felt bad for her."

"But did it help us?"

"The opposite," said Harry, and his head twitched at the on cue faintest pops. He pulled out his wand again. He'd gotten good at listening for Apparition. The Ministry of the 1930s weren't kidding around. Within seconds over one lump of coal. His fingers brushed the chain of the time-turner on his neck but he had a hunch that would cause even more problems.

"C'mon, Tom. We should get out of here," he muttered, grabbing his tiny hand. Destination. Determination. Deliberation. Don't worry you won't Splinch the boy. Or maybe you should. Harry grimaced. "Hold on tight to me. This isn't going to be fun, and you might vomit."

Just as a couple of dark-robed Aurors swerved onto the streets, Harry and Tom disappeared with a pop.

On a hill overlooking Little Hangleton, Harry stood over Tom as he retched onto the frost-kissed marigolds growing in front of the iron fences of the property. The boy had been going green and it took a whole sixty seconds and Harry pointing it out for him to finally give in to the urge to be sick.

There was no sign of damage on either of them and they had yet to be followed. So far, so good.

When his retching subsided to coughs, then raspy breathing, he straightened up again, holding up Salem. Harry stared at it. Its right arm had been ripped clean off. So he'd Disapparated nearly perfectly.

"Give her here," Harry said, taking the teddy and pointing the wand at its violent amputation. "Conjuro Brachium."

He watched Tom watch the new arm grow. There was that familiar hunger in his eyes. The hunger for answers. The hunger for artifacts. The hunger for Horcruxes.

He handed Salem back.

Tom clutched the teddy to his chest and stared in wonder, around the village below them, then up at the handsome manor looming over them. There was a carriage with two large gray steeds just beyond the large iron gates. "Wizards can appear anywhere they want?"

"No. Not anywhere. You'd be surprised with how much we can't do. C'mon," he added, before the boy had a chance to rebuke that. Harry pushed one of the gates, holding it open. Tom stepped through and followed Harry up the path leading up to the manor. The gate creaked shut behind them. The horses watched them pass in solemn silence. Nothing but the crunch of gravel beneath their shoes and Tom's growing puffs of breath punctuated it.

They were surrounded by the tamed tangle of rose bushes. He idly wondered what colours the roses would be.

Red, probably, if the Riddles were the predictable, snobbish, Malfoy-like family he'd gathered from glimpses through memories.

Then he wondered if this was a bad idea.

The Riddles may choose to take the boy in, feed him, clothe him, raise him, spoil him, and they may create something worse than Voldemort. But, at least, it wouldn't be Harry's fault. He sneered in disgust at himself.

"Is this your house?" said Tom, as they neared the front door. He shook his head as they stepped on the landing.

Before he could think more he knocked on the door sharply. Seven times, because he thought he was funny. A few moments later muffled footsteps sounded on the other side of the door and he started thinking up excuses to be let in for the servant that would greet them.

His excuses died in his throat when the door swung open. The man it revealed was dressed in a pinstriped suit and a top-hat, a cloak in the crook of one arm, and a whip dangling from the hand hanging by his hip. Bored eyes drifted from Harry, then dropped down to the boy. For the first time, they faced each other, father and son, before one was too old and bitter to care and the other was too ambitious and vengeful to understand. Tom Riddle Senior looked like he had seen a ghost, Tom Riddle Junior looked like he was staring into the Mirror of Erised, and Harry was forgotten between them.