QLFC Reserve League

S1, R2

Beater 1:

"And so it must be For so it is written

On the doorway to paradise

That those who falter and those who fall

Must pay the price!"

- Stars, Les Misérables

TW: Implied Child Molestation; Implied Child Abuse; Character Death; War Description

"Harry," Tom said softly. "Come with me."

Green eyes stare back at him, angry and confused, and Tom smiles softly at the teenager. "I won't hurt you."

The anger shutters. "Why should I trust you?" Harry asks, trying for rebellion but Tom sees the exhaustion in his stance, sees the yearning for just a small break, and holds his hand out.

"I've been here for 16 years," Tom says with amusement. "If I wanted to hurt you, I would have already, Harry."

That gets through to the 17 year old. Harry comes forward, his shoulders slipping down into a more relaxed position, and a calloused hand slides into Tom's hand. It's warm and alive, unlike Tom's.

Harry shivers and Tom begins walking. "I'm falling," he whispers. "Well— I already fell. I fell a long, long time ago." He can feel Harry's confusion but he does not stop. "The preachers always used to tell me Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall."

Tom holds out his other hand and stares at it: bony, pale, and blue veins starkly visible underneath it. "I did not believe them." His hand falls to his side. "I had good reason not to—they passed around the collection plates until they were filled with every last saving of all the people for their own greed, I was one of the children they took into the back for their pleasure. And when I started to fight back… I was of the Devil."

The warm hand in his own squeezes his cold hand in sympathy and Tom licks his lips. "I told myself that I would never be weak again. I could stand being the Devil because the Devil was feared—they cowered away from it and eventually, they stopped coming for me. I said there was no God and that they were fraudulent men, because, for if there is a God, why would he install men like them to lord over us?" he spits out, old anger and shame swirling inside of himself.

He should never have learned to fight so early.

He should never have learned that sometimes truth never prevailed so early.

He should never have learned that greed showed itself in more ways than one so early.

He should never have learned that money wasn't the only thing that could be so stolen so early.

They come to a stop in front of a bench. Tom gestures for Harry to sit. Harry does so and then Tom sits next to him. "Do you remember the Library?" he asks, drawing from the memories of watching and observing in silence, learning and sympathizing with the young boy he was trapped inside of.

Harry nods, eyes staring out into the vast, endless white. "I do," he whispers. "I used to go there when I was hiding from Dudley or if I finished all my chores early. Books didn't care who read them and… knowing so much made me feel good. Made me feel smart."

Tom nods, placing his elbows on his knees and allowing himself to hunch over. "You are not a freak in the Library; you are not a monster, a boy with a tainted name," he whispers, voice hushed, but Harry nods anyway. "I was a king, a conqueror, a master of secrets, and I… I lost myself. In my search for freedom, I chained myself down because I wanted power to defy fate, to spit in the face of destiny, and to become the one thing that God, or any deity, could ignore. I wanted to challenge them and take their place, and that is when I fell, Harry Potter."

There is something wet on his cheeks when he lifts his head up and Tom wipes away the tears. Harry looks at him, stares at him with a soft face and gentle eyes, and more tears fall down his cheeks.

How dare he hurt this boy? he thinks to himself, ashamed of his actions.

"You know the story of my birth," he rasps, needing to continue, needing to free himself of all the regret and anguish that has been building within him for so long. "You know what she did. The line of monsters I come from."

A calloused hand slides over his cheek. "No. She was desperate, raised in an abusive place, just as you were, and that excuses none of it, but it explains much. You cannot love properly when you do not know how; when you don't know what it looks like," Harry whispers.

Tom says nothing, melting into the hand holding his face, and closes his eyes. His heart throbs in his chest, emotions that he suppressed rising up within him, and he breathes out a shaking breath.

"You will fall, Tom, Dumbledore said," he whispers, eyes still closed. "He said that I would fall because love overpowers all things and that I had forgotten how to love. But how do you forget something you never knew how to do?" More tears slipped down his face.

A thumb wipes them away.

"I told myself that love had brought me nothing but pain, nothing but betrayal. Love had taken my mother, my father, my… friends. Love left me alone against the world, left me to face the mockery with no one by myself. And I said that I would not fall for its seductive lies—I would rise above it, crush it beneath my heel. I would become the only thing love could never conquer."

He opened his eyes then, to look at the young boy in front of him with haunted eyes and sympathetic features. "I told myself so many things," Tom rasps. "So, so many things and I never realized that I was driving myself to destruction."

There is silence, a pause for Tom to gather himself. He closes his eyes again and sighs.

His foolishness as a child led him to this—led him to be this small piece of a shattered soul within Harry and… somehow it is perhaps the best thing in his life. Somehow watching over the small child changed him—it fueled his anger, oh his anger had been stoked every day, but he learned how to care. He learned how to truly care for his self–appointed charge and how to give him nudges so that he could continue to live.

Harry leans against him and Tom wraps his arm around his shoulders. "I am sorry for all the pain I have caused you," he murmurs. "But… Thank you for teaching me to love. I… think this is how your parents feel, to see how strong you are today, though you should not have had to be."

Bright green eyes snap to look up at him and Tom smiles very gently. "You are an amazing, young man," he says, standing up. He looks over to the side and sees the train that appeared.

They were in Harry's head after all. The train meant a certain type of freedom, where you sat with people like you, to go to the same school of magic—where you were not quite as different anymore.

Tom could feel a kinship with the feeling.

"But all those people are dead…?" Harry murmurs. "How is that—?"

Tom holds up a hand to stop Harry's thoughts. "I watched you, Harry. You had the cloak, the stone, and you are the holder of the wand. Their deaths were careless and the myth of the Three Artifacts isn't a myth. The person who holds them is the Master of Death. You can choose to not accept their souls until they die of old age."

Hope brightens Harry's eyes and Tom grunts when a small body crashes into him, arms wrapping around him and Harry clings to him. "So they're not truly dead?"

Tom strokes Harry's hair. "No, they're not. And you can recall souls from the Veil too. They don't truly go anywhere."

Harry trembles and Tom kisses his head. He feels tingles in his body and glances back at the train. "Go back, Harry," he urges the young man. "Go back and finish it all. You aren't done living yet."

Arms unwrap slowly and Harry looks up. "You'd think that the Master of Death would be a skeleton," he joked feebly and Tom laughed softly.

"Go," he says again, staring into bright green eyes and smiling softly at the young man in front of him. "Keep going until you have tales and tales of children and grandchildren and so many amazing adventures in your life that you're retelling them for all of eternity."

Harry nods and rubs his eyes. "Before I go," he blurts out, "I want to know… did you age in my head? You don't look 70 but you also don't look young like your diary…"

Tom considers this. "I do not know," he says eventually. "Perhaps it is your wish that I look like this," he teases, not quite sure if it is a good tease (he's never done such a thing before) but Harry flusters anyway.

His face goes red, stumbling over words, and Tom laughs. "It is a joke," he assured his charge. "I meant nothing by it."

Harry calms, though his face is still red, and nods. "Thank you," he whispers.

"Of course," Tom says.

There is a moment when Harry doesn't move before he takes a deep breath. He takes a few steps back and Tom watches Harry with blurry eyes as his charge slowly walks backwards. Their eyes never waver from each other and then he's gone in a bright white light.

That leaves Tom alone and he turns around, walking to the train. He enters it and walks through it, remembering it when he was just 11 years old and experiencing it for the first time. He enters the compartment he used during his first train ride and walks into London.

Bombed London stretched out before him, a desolate landscape of rubble and ruin. The once–proud spires now lay shattered, the streets choked with the twisted wreckage of cars and buildings. The air reeked of smoke and decay, the acrid smell of burning mingling with the stench of death.

And Tom stands in the middle of it all, taking it in with sadness and sorrow for his teenage self. For having to pull bodies out of the rubble, swearing not to become another statistic in the body count of the war, to become another dead nameless mudblood.

He feels it viscerally, when all of him is taken from the mortal plane, and Death stands in front of him suddenly. Dark wings stretch over all of London, and eyes white as snow takes him in.

Tom stands tall under Its gaze. "I have fallen," he whispers to the deity.

Death loomed over Tom, Its wings enveloping him like a shroud. "And now you must pay the price," It rasped, Its voice like the rustling of dry bones. And in the midst of it all, Tom stood, a lone figure consumed by the darkness that had driven him to this point. His soul was forfeit, his destiny sealed. And as Death's icy fingers closed around his heart, Tom knew that he had lost everything.

But Harry won, Harry could live, and Tom knew love.