(A/N) In this chapter, for a few hundred words, canon events will happen starting from the Goblet of Fire. Tom comes to 1994 as snake man, sans nose and sans most of his soul and proceeds to decimate the wizarding world of Britain, as happened in the original timeline. Don't despair. Snake man lasts for less than a chapter. He will be defeated, die and subsequently be brought to his senses. The powers and fate that brought Hermione to him in the first place will set stage to transport him to Hermione this time, to atone for his sins of the original timeline and set things straight after he bungled events by time traveling through horcruxes.
The Graveyard scene is a little different from the original to take into account that the Voldemort who steps out from the cauldron is the time traveling Tom Riddle and not the little piece of flesh that Wormtail was keeping safe in Riddle Manor.
Alright then, happy reading. Do share thoughts, suggestions, critique on the work.
In the two months it took for Riddle and his followers to finesse their dark ritual and practice handling the repercussions, the heir of Slytherin doggedly refused to think about Hermione. Thoughts of her demanded emotion he didn't want to face. Tom avoided it out of sheer self preservation. Everything in his life was strictly compartmentalized. It was just the matter of deciding that until he found the missing piece of his soul and restored his horcrux, if that were still possible, he couldn't think to get the witch who had slipped out of his fingers. Or seek answers pertaining to her appearing before him at all.
The final location to perform the tracking spell was decided to be the grounds of the Riddle Manor in Little Hangleton. Save for a heavily imperiused muggle groundskeeper, the manor was conveniently empty and away from prying eyes. Tom had killed the last living Riddles and put a curse on it to avoid the property getting sold off or used by any person who didn't have his blood. The manor was symbolic, the murders and the sight being the one where he'd created his ring horcrux. For dark magic, such symbols always added to the potency of the spell and Tom wanted all the help he could get.
On the cold foggy night he chose, the derelict Riddle Manor looked sinister and foreboding, Tom's wards and curses on it making it reek of dark magic. The gates and the grounds were in good repair, alluding to wealth. The other boys wouldn't be getting anywhere near the house to realize it was a muggle dwelling but would see clearly that Tom didn't come from nothing.
Noting the others' curious and slightly surprised glances at the house, the heir of Slytherin felt a sliver of satisfaction at the perfect choice of venue.
On silent feet, all of them well prepared on their parts of the complete rite, the Slytherins proceeded to the family graveyard and started pulling out things needed for the ritual right in front of Tom Riddle Senior's crypt. Tom felt powerful standing there, in control of his life. No matter what cards he was dealt, he could always work his magic, kill, maim or torture a few hapless souls and his problems sorted themselves. There was just one frustrating question of Hermione though…
And that way lay a migraine.
Tom Riddle firmly put everything but the locator ritual away in boxes inside his head and pulled out his wand. This would be a long night. They'd better get started. Abraxas produced the cauldron and filled it with water. Tom conjured fire under the cauldron to set the water boiling. Nott and Lestrange had already started on the runic circle around the cauldron and Avery went about placing black and red candles at their required places. The candles had their blood infused in the wax. In a corner lay a small wiggling sack, with a Nott elf in it. The poor elf was going to be their sacrifice, along with their blood.
As expected, the ritual was excruciating. An elf dying from blood loss took less time than the thestral or the acromantula, but they felt such agony from it that towards the end, they were all barely coherent and ready to crumble like dried leaves.
At the conclusive step, when Tom cut off the others' magic and spoke the final tweaked incantation to get to his soul piece, he hadn't expected to be pulled through a vacuum of nothing. It felt a little like apparition. The vacuum lasted a long time. The nausea from the ritual and from apparating without any anchor was overwhelming.
When it suddenly ended and his feet hit the ground, for a few minutes Tom Marvolo Riddle didn't know up from down or life from death. Thought, memories and all awareness focused on an empty cauldron in front of a statue of an avenging angel. There was a pathetic man-like thing standing on the side of the cauldron, looking at him in wonder, bowing and sniveling and calling him his Lord and Master. Tom turned around. There was a boy stuck under the mace of the stone angel, glasses askew, eyes frozen in shock and fear.
What the hell had happened? Who was the sniveling idiot and what was a strange boy doing on his father's crypt?
Riddle's mind lurched in dizziness. He tried to settle his thoughts and get some bearing on why the graveyard looked different from before the ritual. Nothing came to mind save more dizziness and red spots in front of his eyes.
"Master?" the little rat of a man called on his attention.
Tom turned to him and saw the man cringe and lower his eyes.
"Your wand Master."
The man knelt and produced Tom's yew wand. A visceral rush of feeling took hold of him and he snatched the wand from the other man, feeling instantly better with his wand in his hand.
"My hand master." He put up a stump of his arm where a hand should have been, "You promised you'd give me my hand back."
What had he promised? When? Why?
Tom cast a spell to transfigure the metal of the man's coat button into a prosthetic hand. It wasn't a real hand and wouldn't be very useful if he tried to grasp things with it. The little man thought otherwise and dropped to his knees in gratitude.
Not very smart then, he thought with disgust. Where were his knights?
Tom turned to the boy trapped on the statue.
As he turned, another spell of dizziness had Tom close his eyes and brace his knees against buckling. This was annoying. Why was he dizzy? Why had he promised a hand to an unknown man?
Tom blinked and tried to recall why he was in that God's damned graveyard in the first place. Vague pictures of a circle and some boys standing around him came to mind and started dissolving as soon as they settled.
He looked again at the bespectacled boy. The boy seemed significant, though Tom couldn't recall why. If only his head stopped pounding and his stomach stopped trying to jump out of his throat.
"What's your name?"
The boy scoffed at the question, some fear making way for disbelief on his very expressive face.
"He is Harry Potter, Master. Your worst enemy." Squeaked the other one from behind, "And I am Wormtail. Your most loyal servant."
Tom Riddle spared his worst enemy Potter another glance and found him severely lacking. He looked around and spotted another boy in a yellow jersey sprawled on the dirt of the graveyard. It looked like a Hufflepuff jersey. Tom glanced at the statue boy and his shirt looked like a Gryffindor jersey. Hogwarts students then. Wizards. Just like the one handed stupid rat behind him.
"My servant, you say? Do I live here?"
"In a manner Master. I took care of you before we could complete the ritual and give you a body again." Wormtail prostrated himself to the ground before Tom Riddle's feet. "And you've come back now. Master, master, you've come back now. All the others will bow to you. All the ones who deserted you would suffer."
Wormtail sounded like a sycophant. Sycophants were important in the grand scheme of things. He also seemed to be full of information.
"I'd like you to tell me who deserted me and what made me live here Wormtail. But for now, it seems we need to eliminate a few witnesses."
Tom raised his wand to the sprawled boy first. Later he could have sworn that he meant to rennervate and obliviate the man. But what came out of his mouth was the killing curse. The stream of deadly green flowed out from his wand, hit the boy on the ground and that was that. The Potter boy screamed, and Tom raised the white yew wand to point at him. Potter kept screaming.
"Shut up." He hissed.
"You killed him. You killed Cedric. You murderer. You killed my parents, you tried to kill me, and now you have killed Cedric. You fucking murderer."
Tom tuned off Potter. It seemed the young wizard was working through his shock by speaking out loud at him, not really expecting conversation in return.
Another wave of dizziness hit him. His thoughts churned. His magic pulsed erratically. Tom suspected his spells would go awry if he tried casting at the moment. He looked at his wand and his attention went to his fingers instead. They were skeletal, colorless like a ghost, his nails were long, hooked and caked with dirt. He looked at his feet and saw pale bony bare feet. The robes he was wearing were wispy, almost astral, flowing and rippling around him in nonexistent wind. He didn't remember ever being out without shoes. It was almost a pet peeve to dress as neatly and as properly as possible before anyone saw him. The lack of shoes, the dirt beneath his nails, the strange robes made him nauseous for a moment.
The question of what he was doing in that graveyard with Potter and Wormtail arose again, bringing with it a debilitating pain in his temples. Tom Riddle tried recalling the day before. Nothing came to mind but more pain. Suddenly he turned to Wormtail.
"What is today's date?"
"24th June 1995, Master." Wormtail replied.
More nausea assaulted Tom Riddle with a force that sent him to his knees. Wormtail rushed to his master's side and grabbed his arm in support. He got a crucio in thanks. Wormtail screamed in agony. He dropped to the dirt, trying to burrow his way away from the agony and wet his pants. Tom sighed at the utter lack of power and spirit. It was no fun torturing such a willing worm. He twirled his wand to stop the spell. Wormtail kept shivering and choking on his own spit, gasping for breath.
"Wormtail, it's time you told me what is going on."
The squeaky little mouse squeaked all about the Dark Lord Voldemort, about his death eaters, about the prophecy concerning Harry Potter. About how, to stop Voldemort, Albus Dumbledore formed the order of the Phoenix. About the prophecy concerning one Mr. Harry Potter and how killing him had killed the dark Lord instead. Almost killed. Never in a hundred years could Tom Riddle have imagined that this lay in his expectedly illustrious future. For all his vast ability, superior lineage and clever maneuvering to lead to bare feet on a dirty graveyard, lording over a spineless insect of a man. This future looked shite and he needed to do something about it, pronto.
Wormtail showed Voldemort the dark mark, the ouroboros circling the skull and pulsing with dark magic, and explained that all his followers had one. He grabbed Wormtail's arm and dug his wand onto the mark, sending a summons that couldn't be ignored.
A pulse of magic burst from the mark and Wormtail collapsed in pain. Black smoke started swirling around them, separating into shapes and separate black clouds. Dark clad figures emerged from the smoke, all wearing golden masks, all radiating fear just like Wormtail. The ring of wizards grew to around twenty, twenty five maybe. They bowed. None met his eyes. The obscured faces pissed Voldemort off. As did the lack of proper greeting. Or any spine. If these were his knights in this hellish world and time, they were severely lacking.
Voldemort ground his teeth and looked at his skeletal hands. The Gaunt ring hadn't made the jump with him. It wasn't on his hand anymore. He had thought the magic of the horcrux would be enough to keep the ring. No dice though. Just like always. Another wave of thunderous anger swept his insides. His yew wand raised and swept in an arc. A rain of the cruciatus hit his followers
Potter escaped in the ensuing chaos, the corpse of his friend clutched to his chest.
Voldemort shrieked in rage as the boy disappeared in front of his eyes, missing the green streak of the avada sent his way. Wormtail, the rat, was supposed to have been watching the teen. Voldemort pointed his yew wand at Wormtail and let loose a string of curses at the incompetent little rodent. The screams, instead of abating his anger, made Voldemort want to kill the rat outright.
"My Lord." A masked man cut in, voice shaking, "Pettigrew has been useful. And he knows about the boy, his friends and other side, more than any of us. He spent years as their pet rat."
Voldemort dropped the curse and turned to the man who had spoken. A muscle worked at Voldemort's jaw and he pointed his wand at the man. The mask dissolved to nothing. Long golden hair spilled down his stiff shoulders as his gray eyes peered at the master. The gaze lasted half a second and dropped down in fright.
The man kneeled and bowed his head.
"Lucius Malfoy, son and heir of Abraxas Malfoy, at your service My Lord."
Voldemort lowered his wand. So, this was Abraxas's son and heir. If he was anything like his father, he could be very useful. It wouldn't do to torture or scare the scion of house Malfoy. At least not yet.
"How would you serve me?" Voldemort hissed.
"I have information for you. About a journal."
The journal. His missing horcrux.
"Walk with me Lucius."
Voldemort glided on silent feet, accompanied by a shaking Lucius.
"My father gave me Tom Riddle's journal to keep safe, with a message to send it to Hogwarts in hands that wouldn't recognize the name or the dark magic coming off it. I chose a Weasley girl starting school to get it to Hogwarts. Things were going well. The Chamber of Secrets was opened. Mudbloods started getting attacked."
"Anyone died?"
"A few were petrified, including the Granger girl, Potter's mudblood. She was petrified for a couple months. With her down, we had thought there was no one to guide Potter. But a rogue elf betrayed us. And there was of course Dumbledore, meddlesome as ever."
Bile hit Voldemort's throat. His mind went blank for a few moments it took for him to recover composure.
"Granger?" Voldemort hissed.
"Hermione Granger, My Lord. She is in Potter's year and a Gryffindor. A right swot. Peter told us that she is the brains behind Potter's misadventures. With her petrified, we were hoping she couldn't help the boy anymore. She literally did it from the hospital bed though."
"How?"
Lucius started talking about the events with the journal horcrux. How Granger told the boys what was in the chamber. How Potter rescued the Weasley girl. How the journal got destroyed, along with his basilisk.
Fuck!
Fucking Potter.
Voldemort stopped walking. He wanted to hurt someone. Lucius had gone quite beside him, as if recognizing his precarious position of available prey.
Hermione Granger. The mudblood. Her name ignited a visceral reaction in him. Betrayal and frustration and need all rolled up in an impossible knot of bitter disappointment. She was important, he knew that. Why was she important? Was it because as Lucius expounded, she was the reason his nemesis Harry Potter kept getting away and thwarting Voldemort's plans? The reason looked weak in the face of the overwhelming pressure of her name.
"If you don't want to be in excruciating pain Lucius, keep talking. What other adventures has the boy been having? And don't skip anything, least of all about the mudblood who keeps saving Potter."
So Lucius told Voldemort about Sirius Black escaping prison and the whole disaster of Peter Pettigrew getting busted.
The more Lucious Malfoy talked, the redder Voldemort's gaze went. It was galling to have fallen to a baby protected by a sacrificial enchantment. But getting defeated by the same mere boy again and again was maddening. It wasn't even that the boy was something special like himself. It just seemed that the boy who lived was literally conceived off Felix Felicis. Things came together for him. People helped him. Events lined up for him. Comparing Harry Potter's streak with Voldemort's own career at the school, the Slytherin might have had overwhelming power and smarts, but he always had had to wrench things from life to get something of his own.
"Potter needs to die." The Dark Lord hissed into the night.
"Yes My lord." bowed Lucius, "The moral of our whole movement depends on the boy dying."
"Our movement, yes" Voldemort nodded decisively. "Tell me what has been happening with that. And I need to meet my men."
The Dark Lord turned towards the run down Riddle Manor and gazed at it in frank distaste.
"Arrange the meeting at Malfoy Manor."
Lucius gulped, face draining of what color it had. But he shored up his courage and bowed deeply.
"We are honored to serve you, My Lord."
Voldemort got swept up in the war of the times. Tom's lifelong bitterness and anger at the world found a place of honor within Voldemort's being. His ambitions of greatness, his brilliance and his potential couldn't fit into the limited magical serpent being Riddle had become. The name Voldemort and all the evil it incited suited. The name Tom Riddle with his connection to muggles, his depth and life of complexity got forgotten.
Death Eaters willingly prostrated themselves for their Lord to walk on. Their families, purebloods of prominence, cheered the Dark Lord Voldemort's return. They took strength from the fact that a baby hadn't vanquished their Lord after all. They touted and exulted in that fact whenever they could and joined the rat race to get their sons and heirs to join the Lord's ranks.
At first, the Ministry turned their backs to the facts, totally refusing to believe that Voldemort could and had come back. This unwillingness to believe in Voldemort's return was propagated by the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge. The Ministry kept repeating the lines that Dumbledore was fear mongering and power hungry, Harry Potter was a liar and that Voldemort was dead, hence could never come back. They were the ones who had the power to fight Voldemort while he was still weak and rallying support and they were the ones who did nothing about it, because they were afraid.
Quite a few aristocats held in contempt a Minister of Magic who could not even face facts, let alone do something about the Dark Wizard who came back from the dead. Not everyone wanted to follow Dumbledore. In the absence of any real leader, they started deciding that the health and wealth of their families lay with Voldemort. Even those who had kept their distance from the Death Eaters in Voldemort's past incarnation lost their doubt and got behind him. After all, who didn't want to bask in the presence of a dark wizard who literally embodied eternalism? It didn't matter what he looked like. It mattered the power being on his side could get them.
Replacing the Minister with Voldemort's puppet put the wheels of a political coup in motion. The machinations of the elite became a runaway train powering over everything in its path.
In the course of their war, Voldemort got intimately acquainted with Dumbledore's Order of Phoenix. Infernal do gooders all of them, each and every one with a personal bone to pick with the Dark Lord. Voldemort pushed and the witches and wizards of the Order fought back righteously. Against his terrible death eaters stood a rag tag army, children rallied together by Dumbledore into war, the children's parents desperate to protect them, and a few aurors loyal to Dumbledore or with their own vendettas against the death eaters.
He kept pushing, Lord Voldemort, because that is what he'd always done. The question of one Order of Phoenix soldier who went by the name of Hermione Granger, the mudblood, a slip of a witch who incited big emotions in Voldemort's busy mind, got thoroughly crushed along the way.
Didn't mean the witch named Hermione Granger stayed the fuck out of the way.
The second time Lord Voldemort saw Hermione Granger in the flesh, he'd laid out a trap for Potter. Such an obvious trap it was. He primed Potter for weeks, invading his mind, filling it with anger and frustration and fear, before striking at Potter's weakness for Sirius Black. A group of teen warriors led by Potter infiltrated the Ministry of Magic, and found their way to the Department of Mysteries, right into a waiting ambush. The children proved annoyingly adept at defensive spells. They nearly thwarted some of Voldemort's best death eaters. Everything went wrong that evening. By the time Voldemort joined the fight, Lucius had lost the bloody prophecy, the department of Mysteries was trashed and Dumbledore arrived at the scene to save the day.
Lord Voldemort saw the witch, Hermione Granger. She looked just as he had expected, innocent, determined, the torch carrying type. Another wisp of memory hit. A girl who wore Granger's face, but soft, feminine. Playful. Smiling at him. Him. Voldemort. The memories took the shape of an impossible encounter in the Hogwarts library. That outrageous image cost him the fight with Dumbledore that night.
That loss, the loss of face, the loss of prophecy, the loss of more men and finally the full import of the significance of Hermione Granger to his fate, pushed Voldemort in a spiral Potter and Dumbledore hadn't been able to. Lord Voldemort took extreme offense to the fact that he had lost a precious part of his soul to meet a two-faced girl who didn't even remember him, didn't make an effort to find out what happened to him, and was a loyal soldier to his mortal enemy.
Later, when the Dark Lord's soldiers arrived back at Malfoy Manor, he took out the failings of his followers from their hides. Their screams could be heard for miles. While torturing his closest men, Voldemort realized what was wrong with the group. He had not personally recruited most of his new followers, the original ones being dead or half mad because of being in Azkaban for years. His army, old and new alike, was less than disciplined, were poor at dueling and weren't adept or fast enough at throwing curses at opponents in a fight. In order to get the group in shape, he encouraged dueling within ranks and punished the losers. He tortured his own followers for their mistakes, practiced dark arts and revels with the others and killed muggles when convenient to rally more pureblood fanatics to his side. He enjoyed the punishments the most.
More threads of rationality unraveled. More spells of absolute insanity and revels followed. The heir of Slytherin, the most talented wizard of his time, the Tom Riddle of the past, descended into darkness, fully embraced the monster he saw in the mirror as his reality and set his evil free on the world.
The council spoken to Voldemort's ears was treacherous, for the original knights of Walpurgis might have come to the group with smarts, talent and pedigree to offer, but what remained after the Dark Lord had been thwarted multiple times were the sycophants and the crazies. If Voldemort had been the man he was at eighteen, things might have been different. But the Voldemort who emerged from Peter Pettigrew's cauldron was more creature than man, less soul and more hatred. Large chunks of time were missing from his memories. He took that out on his followers. The sycophants still followed.
Months passed. With it the war progressed onto the blood traitors, the people who harbored Harry Potter and the order of Phoenix. Voldemort consciously chose to not take Hermione Granger's name even in his thoughts. She was gone. Lost in the ether for him. Hogwarts went under the thumb of the Dark Lord and his servants, Severus Snape and the Carrows. But she didn't come to the school, not her, not Potter, not their other friend the Weasley boy. All the other students became fair game. In his insanity, Voldemort didn't care that his once beloved school was turned into a death eater camp for torturing muggle born and blood traitor children. He snatched the elder wand from Dumbledore's grave and felt powerful. This was what was left of his once most powerful enemy, a rotting husk of dead skin and bones, not able to hold on to the greatest achievement of the old fool's life, the elder wand.
It was all a big power trip by then. If Voldemort liked something, it got to live. If not, then it had to die the most horrible, ignominious death.
The next time Voldemort found Potter and Granger again, well technically it was the Malfoys who did, the Gryfindor trio was detained at the Malfoy Manor for two seconds before they escaped. Voldemort almost killed Lucius that day. The news that the sword of Gryffindor was out of Hogwarts and in the hands of the troublemaking trio followed on the wings and Bellatrix and Rudolphus bore the brunt of that setback.
Even a half crazy Voldemort realized what was happening then. Potter, Weasley and Granger were on a rampage for his horcruxes. His journal and his ring were gone. Hufflepuff's cup was safe in Gringotts but the Diadem was in Hogwarts and could be found by anyone stumbling around in the Come and Go Room.
He resolved to take over Hogwarts completely, without proxies or stooges to waste time with and ensure his secrets remained buried there. Except, Gringotts was broken into. The cup was stolen and all the crucio's on Bellatrix and Rodolphus didn't bring it back. This time when it was destroyed, Voldemort felt the shattering of his soul piece. And he wanted to burn the world for it.
The world burned. Even the muggles of England felt the heat. Voldemort took his army to Hogwarts. And so started the siege of Hogwarts.
The Dumbledore loyalists tried to keep him away. They strengthened the wards. They animated the stone knights. They lay poisons and murderous plants in his path. They threw children at him. Voldemort broke through the wards. Hogwarts had always been his. They couldn't keep him out for long. His death eaters, werewolves and giants laid waste to the animated soldiers. The poisons and plants were no match for Voldemort. The children and rogue aurors were all fodder anyways. Hogwarts broke and suffered, the soul of the castle crying out for a savior.
Sick of the impasse, Voldemort played a gamble. He knew Potter had a huge hero complex. Dumbledore had groomed him that way after all. He threw the gauntlet, guilt-tripped Harry Potter to stop sacrificing his friends and elders and come out to the Forbidden Forest. Harry came. The boy looked resigned to his fate, feet steady, wand in hand. No way was he a match for the Dark Lord. Or so Voldemort and the Death Eaters thought.
Harry Potter stepped bravely into the Forbidden Forest. He faced the Dark Lord. Voldemort cast the avada, killing the boy. And then Potter, the infernal cockroach who refused to die, woke up again. The other child of the prophecy, Longbottom, beheaded the last horcrux Nagini. Potter cast an expelliarmus. The elder wand showed its true allegiance to Harry Potter, and just like that, the Dark Lord lost the duel and his ill begotten life.
The second reign of the Dark Lord was over for good. Tom Marvolo Riddle, the illustrious last heir of Salazar Slytherin, dissolved into dust. And quietly reformed in limbo at the King's Cross Station.