The Talk
Just a quick one shot that was a challenge. It's not cannon, so there's that. This time Harry says no.
Hphphp
"You know, it didn't have to end that way," said the voice from off to his right.
Harry Potter didn't know where he was. He had been asleep with his wife of a hundred years. He had been peacefully dreaming of seeing his great grandchildren the next day and suddenly he was here. It looked like King's Cross Station. He had been here once before when he had died in the war. But that can't be right, that would mean he was dead again. He was in fine health though. He had seen the healer just today. They told him he had a few years yet.
He looked down at his body and noted that he was around twenty. He was at the peak of his time. Right after the war, and just after the birth of his second son, Albus Severus. There are times he regretted naming the poor boy that name. At the time he really respected those two men, but now… well, he still did, but not quite as much. Not enough to name a child after them.
"Who's there?" Harry called out, looking around for whomever it was that had spoken. There was a mist that covered the station. It looked eerie and cold, and bit into his skin like little needles. It left goosebumps on his skin, but the cold kind, not the scared kind.
There were benches around the edge of the room. Pillars were in the middle of the area supporting the ceiling and holding the signs, just like it was in real life. Well, like it was over a hundred years before. King's Cross was gone now. There are no more trains nowadays. They had been replaced by flying cars and other such transportation devices. There was also some teleportation, but most did not trust it. It was very new and there were injuries.
Magicals and muggles lived together now, they had coexisted for some time. It had been fifty years after Riddle's war that that had happened. The muggles had found out about them, and the magicals were too powerful for them to try to enslave or slaughter, so they reached a treaty. It had been touch and go at first, but India had worked it out, and they've lived a semi-peaceful existence since.
"I'm over here," the voice said, still coming from his right. It sounded like it was not far away, but who could tell in the fog. Sound carried and it never seemed to be where you thought it was. The voice sounded cultured, like someone from upper-class society. There was a refinement to it. It also sounded vaguely familiar, though only just.
Harry moved cautiously towards the voice, wand in hand. He didn't know how he had his wand. It just appeared there in his hand. He looked closely at it and noted it was the Elder Wand. That was unusual, he thought he had destroyed that wand ages ago. He remembered taking it from the tomb of Dumbledore when it was found out that it had been buried there, years after the man had died. He had destroyed it so that others would not desecrate the grave.
"Yes, keep your wand, you can't be too careful," chuckled the voice, sarcastically. "Seeing as to how we are both dead." There was laughter now, and Harry knew that laugh too.
Harry could tell the voice was mocking him now. Yet he didn't lower the wand. He didn't make it to a hundred and twenty-eight years of age by being careless. How the voice knew he was armed? He didn't know, but he would be keeping his wand. He moved carefully through the mist and came upon a man sitting at a table with a tea service set up on it. There were no cakes or biscuits, just tea. It was an elaborate tea pot, that looked British in make. It was in the colors of Slytherin, of course.
He knew this man.
The man waved his hand and gestured for him to take a seat. "Come, Harry Potter, sit. We can talk like civilized men," he said, keeping his hands in plain sight. He was a handsome man with black hair and sculptured features. His hands were ones a pianist would kill for. He was graceful in all his movements.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle," Harry said, shock evident on his face. His wand arm dropped, and he stood there flabbergasted. "What are you doing here? You died well over a hundred years ago," he said, looking around the station, like this was some type of trap, or joke. "Have you been here this whole time?" he wanted to know. That would have been one hell of a punishment. Then again, better than burning in the pits of hell, he supposed. Or wherever it is bad wizards go.
"Time is perspective," Riddle answered without answering. "Come, sit. We have much to discuss," he said, making that 'sit' gesture over and over again, like he was anxious for Harry to join him.
Harry took the seat, but he didn't relax. He kept his wand in his hand; he didn't trust what was happening. "Why am I talking to you? Why aren't I moving on to my 'next great adventure'?" he asked, some bitterness in his tone. He wanted to finally meet his parents in truth. Not that facsimile that he saw when he died last time. Those couldn't have been his parents. They would have never had told him to go to his death. He would never believe that. It had to have been a trick of the Resurrection Ring. He had been so desperate to believe then that he took what crumbs he could get. Now though, looking back, he refused to think that any parent would send their child on a suicide run.
"There are some things you should know about before you move on," Tom said, pouring some of the tea into the cups. He put one in front of Harry with a soft clinking noise as the cup settled on the saucer. "Things about the man that you praised to your dying day. Things you need to know about the man you named your son after. You are not going to like them, but I speak only the truth," he stated, taking up some honey and adding it to his tea. The golden syrup looked dark here in the station where there was little light and loads of mist. The only light there was a glow that was coming from the mist. It was as if a streetlamp were lit nearby, and it was giving off enough light to see. It filled the whole station. Dimly.
"Why should I trust anything you tell me? You are a Dark Lord," Harry harshly pointed out, not touching his cup. It was petty, to be sure, but he wasn't going to drink something Tom Riddle gave him. The man had killed him once and tried to kill him many times.
Tom sipped his tea and sighed. "Why would I lie to you now? I have nothing to gain. It is my privilege to reveal this to you. My soul was rendered to shreds, now it is whole. If I am to move on, I must atone for my sins. You are one of my greatest sins. I must make it up to you. This is how," he said, looking at Harry like he was being obtuse.
"Alright, say I believe you. How is besmirching Albus's name going to 'atone' for your sins?" was Harry's next question. There had always been some niggling in the back of his mind about the headmaster, but he had always ignored it. It was just easier to let the old man shine and follow the crowd.
Tom gestured to the tea and said, "Drink, it will be a long talk. I didn't poison it, and you are already dead." He smirked at the young-looking man and sipped his own tea.
"I'll drink when I'm ready. Tell me your tale," Harry said, folding his arms like a child. He really should be more mature than this. He was well over a hundred years old.
"Very well. You know that I was raised in an orphanage. You know about the visit and how it ended. Do you realize what an impact that visit had on an impressionable eleven-year-old child? How that old man made me feel? He threatened to burn all my possessions. I was scared, and mentally scarred, from his visit. He set me up for a long trail down the dark path. His constant scrutiny wasn't much of a help either," Tom said, drifting off as if reliving the times of his days in Hogwarts.
Harry remembered seeing all that in the memories that Dumbledore had shared with him. He knew that the headmaster had kept Tom Riddle under constant watch. That he thought of him as a Dark Lord from a very young age. Had he pushed him over the edge? Could a young boy of eleven be evil? At what age does a child start thinking along those lines? When is it the responsibility of the adults? Harry didn't know the answers to the questions.
"When I made my first horcrux, I blame that on Dumbledore as well. He knew there was a basilisk in the school. He knew I was the one responsible. All I wanted was to stay in the school for the summer to wait out the war. He told the headmaster, Dippet, to send me home. I wasn't even going to set the basilisk loose on the school, until then. Myrtle's death was a tragic accident that I took full advantage of," Riddle continued, then he paused and sipped his cooling tea. He grimaced and poured himself some more to heat it up. He could have heated it up magically, but for now this would do. There was plenty in the pot.
"You can't blame everyone for your mistakes. You're the one who framed Hagrid. And you were setting the basilisk free before Myrtle died," Harry said, pointing an accusing finger at him. He remembered that. There were petrification's before she died.
"The basilisk was moving about on her own. I had nothing to do with those petrification's," Tom stated, putting hand to heart. "I tried to keep her in the Chamber, but she had been there so long, and she was so hungry… there was little I could do. I set her free in the forest from time to time to feed her. She was quite large as you know. Anyway, after Myrtle's death, I put her back to sleep. I couldn't risk any more accidents," Tom said, waving a hand like it was only common sense that that was what had to happen.
"You only did that because they threatened to close the school, and they arrested Hagrid," Harry stated, like it was fact.
"No, I tell nothing but facts. I have no reason to lie. Back to my story. I was a good boy for the rest of my years, but Dumbledore wouldn't let me be. He was constantly watching me, accusing me of forming an army, doing dark magic, and other things. I had my diary, true. And it was making me think evil thoughts, also true. I thought if I could live longer with one, I could persevere better with six. I was not in my right mind," Riddle said, putting his hand to the back of his head sheepishly.
"So, you admit you were crazy," Harry said, glaring at him. He knew it. The man had been round the twist.
"Yes, making a horcrux will drive you insane," Tom admitted. "But the constant scrutiny will do that too. It's not paranoia when they are really out to get you," he said, rubbing his chin in thought. "You know, I always found it strange that all the answers to my questions were right within my reach. Every time I looked for something, the book I wanted, the person I needed, the lackey I sought, was always right there. Funny how that worked," he said. His voice dripping with sarcasm. "Because of those answers, my path was set. I was a Dark Lord."
"Are you saying Dumbledore fed you your answers?" Harry asked, not believing that for a second. "That he set you up to be a Dark Lord?"
"Yes. I believe he did. He needed a new foe to fight. When he found that he couldn't defeat me, he set you up to be his protégé," the former Dark Lord stated, lifting an eyebrow as if to have the ex-Boy-Who-Lived refute that claim. "He fed you the answers too. Even beyond the grave."
Harry couldn't deny that. That old man had led him and his friends on a merry chase with that will of his. Then the talk he had with him in this very station… Blast that old man. He knew there was something off, but could it be true, what Tom was saying? Did he set Riddle up to be a Dark Lord?
"Now here's the home truths you're not going to like. Your whole life has been a lie," Tom said, looking at Harry in the face. "Starting with your parents' deaths and finishing with your dying tonight."
"Wait, what?" he asked, his parents he could see, but his dying tonight. That was just old age, right?
"Your parents were set up to die. I should know, I was there. Pettigrew told me the whole thing, albeit unwillingly. He was set up to be the Secret Keeper by Dumbledore, because he is the weakest link in the group," Tom said, crossing his legs and flicking some imaginary dust off his knees.
"That can't be right. Albus would never do that," Harry said, though not strongly. He sat upright in his chair and listened. He still hadn't touched his tea. This was not a social gathering in his eyes, for all Tom was treating it like one.
"I could read it in Peter's mind," Tom reminded him. "Black was supposed to be the Keeper, but Dumbledore talked him out of it."
Harry deflated. He knew that, well half of that. Sirius told him that it had been his idea to change Keepers. That was why he never broke out of prison, because he felt he deserved it. Because he had changed at the last minute to Peter. Now if Tom is telling the truth, then Sirius spent all that time in Azkaban on a lie.
"I went to their house to kill you. They were never meant to die that night. There was a spell on the house that aggravated me. There were many spells woven into the wards that I could not identify at the time, or just didn't want to. Compulsions if you will," the former Dark Lord said, flipping his hands like he was giving a lesson. "There was one to make me aggressive. One to make Black compliant and chase Wormtail. And there was one to make the muggles and the authorities ignore everything that was happening there that night," he said, naming them off.
"How do you know this if you couldn't identify them?"
"In death you can see many things. I know them now," Tom explained, then seeing that Harry wasn't buying his reasoning he said, "Ask yourself this, Why was the half-giant at your house that night to collect you? How did he know your parents were dead? How did he even get there? Why didn't Dumbledore come? Why would your oathbound godfather give you up? Why did it take a day and a half for that same half-giant to get you to your aunt's house? Why was Minerva McGonagall sitting in front of your aunt's house that day?" Tom asked as he fired off question after question.
"What?" Harry asked, shooting up from his chair, making it clatter behind him. He never knew that. She had never said a word of her hand in this. That bitch. She had put all the blame on Dumbledore all these years, to her dying day. All these questions pissed him off, and that one broke his back, so to speak. He didn't know the answers to them, but by all the gods when he got to the afterlife, he was going to get those answers. Not that they'd do him any good, but it would satisfy his curiosity.
"That's right, she was sitting in front of your aunt's house the day after your parents died. She sat there all day long as a cat. She told the headmaster that they were vile muggles. He left you there anyway," Tom said, taking a sip from his tea, waving his hand and warming it up. He watched as Harry righted his chair and sat in it.
"So, he knew they were bastards, and he still left me there?" Harry asked, sitting back down and folding his arms angerly. "Well, he did say he knew he was leaving me to some dark and lonely years," he grumbled.
"He knew more than that, he made sure of it," Riddle stated, putting his cup down. "Those blood wards are designed to make sure they drain the bearer of their magic. That way you didn't do too much accidental magic. It backfired, of course, because you are a prophecy child. Which, by the way, is a lie too. The prophecy is a self-fulfilling one. If Dumbledore hadn't had Trelawney create one, then you would have never been a prophecy child," Tom said, a smirk playing on his lips.
"How do you get a seer to create a prophecy?" Harry wanted to know.
"You drug them, of course," was the answer.
"Of course," came the gloomy reply. That made sense. He'd heard of tribes in Africa and the Americas doing that too. That's probably why the good professor took up drinking.
"So, there you were drained of magic, but getting magically stronger, in a magic hating household. Of course, things would go wrong," Tom stated, brushing off his knee of imaginary dust. "Then came your letter, and all went according to Albus's plans. Sort of." He shrugged his shoulder a bit.
"What do you mean 'sort of'?"
"You were much too distrusting of adults for his liking. Well, much too distrusting of him. He wanted you to come to him for everything, and you did, to a point. But you relied on your friends more than you did him, and he hated that," Tom said, laughing out loud with his head thrown back like he had not had a good laugh in a very long time. And if he had been sitting here for over a hundred years, he probably hadn't.
"I had my reasons for not trusting adults," Harry said mulishly. Being in an abusive household tended to do that.
"We all did, and they all start with Dumbledore. That man was not to be trusted from the get-go. You know your first year was a test, don't you?" the older man asked, quirking an eyebrow. Then his brow furrowed, and he frowned. "I didn't see it. I was a fool not to. I was older and wiser, and I didn't see it for what it was. I let that old man lead me around like a bull to the slaughter," he said, spitting the words out through gritted teeth.
"I never did understand why you fell for that," Harry said, trying to remain calm finally coming to understand that he had fallen for the trap that was his first year. He had been a kid though, that was understandable, but Tom had been in his fifties. He wasn't supposed to fall for shite like that.
"I was mad with rage and a wraith at the time. I was not in my right mind. All I could think about was immortality. The stone was all that was on my mind. That fool, Quirrell, was so incompetent that it took half a year just to get past the dog. The rest of the traps were relatively easy, it was just a matter of the right time. That and the mirror was the hold up," Riddle stated, waving his hand around like it was all so simple that if he had been in his right mind he would have done it in a week and not the whole year.
"It took Hermione less than a day to get us through," Harry said with a smirk. "Well, Ron's the one who got us through the chess game, but she's the one who figured out the rest," he said, leaving out his part in the keys. Or the fact that the troll was already dead.
"She was a clever girl," Tom said, nodding his head.
"I thought you didn't like muggleborn," Harry said, tilting his head in inquiry. He'd been told that his entire life. Voldemort hated all things not pureblood. Which never made sense to him, because a good part of his Death Eaters were half-bloods, not to mention himself.
"That was my Death Eaters. I could careless one way or the other," the other man stated. "I had to get behind their rallying cry to get their backing." He said it in such a way that Harry was inclined to believe him.
"So, you lied to them?"
"I lied to them."
"Then why did your diary set the basilisk on the muggleborn in my second year?" Potter asked, finally taking up his tea. It was warm. He heated it up with the Elder Wand and took another sip. It was good tea. Fruity.
"To scare Dumbledore, of course," Tom said, sipping his own tea. "I don't know what went on in the mind of my horcrux, but I do know that it was to scare the headmaster. You see, the old man had no control over what was going on. That always scares the hell out of him." There was a vicious smile on his face. Like he liked the way his younger soul piece thought.
"It scared the hell out of a lot of people," Harry pointed out. He remembered being terrified that year. For himself and everyone else.
"You'll note that no one died," Tom said, then he grimaced, knowing what was coming next.
"Ginny almost did."
"And she's a pureblood," Tom pointed out. "My horcrux needed a soul to reform, your little girlfriend had already poured half of her soul into it. It was the logical conclusion to take the rest. I am not condoning it, just pointing out the reasoning," he said, holding up his hands in a protesting gesture. "I am glad that you stopped it in the end."
"Yeah, right. Only because you didn't want the competition," Harry grumbled.
"That's one reason, true, but there didn't need to be two Dark Lords running around."
"You state that my whole life has been a lie," Harry said, tilting his head. "How do you know all that?"
"It's like I told you, you see more in death. I know your whole life, because it was attached to mine," Tom told him. "Well, not exactly, what I mean is, I know how your life was when it effected mine. I know a bit more because Death told me," he added, looking around as if the entity was going to show up and confirm that fact. It's been known to do that from time to time. Never a fun time, but it breaks up the monotony.
"Why did Death tell you anything?" Harry wanted to know. That didn't make any sense. What stake did Death have in his life?
"So that we can have this talk," was the answer accompanied with a shrug.
"So the whole Sirius thing?" Harry asked, changing the subject. He didn't want to know. He felt a weight upon his shoulders and knew the Invisibility Cloak had just adorned his body.
"From start to finish was set up by Dumbledore. He was sent to Azkaban to keep him out of the way and kept on the run for the same reason. He didn't have to die, but it was an added bonus," Tom answered him, making Harry glare at his teacup like it had done him wrong.
Harry knew that deep down in his heart. He knew that the old man had kept Sirius from getting free. He had just been so blindly loyal back then that he never wanted to see it. Poor Sirius had paid for his stupidity. He only hoped the man forgives him in the afterlife.
"I suppose you're going to say the Triwizard Tournament was a setup by Dumbledore as well," the ex-Boy-Who-Lived asked, shaking his head. That had been a governmentally funded function. There was no way the headmaster had a say in that.
"Yup, who do you think put the bug in Fudge's ear. Well, it was in Bagman's ear, then it went off from there," Tom said, sipping his tea. "He wanted to get it on the Hogwarts's grounds to see if you could compete. He was going to have Snape put your name in. However, I used it to my advantage. I admit, the year long plan was just plain stupid in retrospect, but I needed the ritual to be preformed on a certain day," he stated, pouring himself some more tea and offering some to Harry.
Harry nodded that he could use a top-up and then thought about what Tom had said. "And Umbridge?" He refused to believe that he flat out. There was no way that Dumbledore arranged for her to come to Hogwarts.
"Now that one, I cannot blame Dumbledore on. That woman was a class on her own. However, he did know the school was being tortured, and he did nothing about it," was the reply.
"That bastard," hissed Harry, looking at the hated scars on his hand. She had gotten hers in the end though. About five years after the war ended a bunch of muggleborn from the camps had gone to Azkaban and strung her up in her cell. They never found out who did it, officially. There were rumors that the Aurors that did catch them… looked the other way. Harry wasn't sure he believed that, that would be illegal, but…
"That's right, he knew, he also knew when Draco was going to let the Death Eaters in the school. He was supposed to call the Aurors, but he was too busy planning his own death. Like a martyr. He thought that if he sacrificed himself, then the world would remember him as a hero and no one would look too closely at his crimes," Tom stated with a slow sagely nod of his head. "And it worked too. Rita printed her book, and while it sold well, no one really cared. They still vault him for his heroics. Hell, he practically took over the world and you all praised him for it."
"You do have a point," Harry said, remembering that book and how everyone just kind of brushed off all Albus's failings. Even he did, because he wanted to remember his headmaster as the kind grandfatherly man that he thought he was.
"Your marriage was all arranged," Tom dropped his next bombshell, watching Harry's face to see how he took that news.
Harry nodded. He always thought as much. Ginny went from fangirl to love interest in little over a month. It had always struck him as weird. He had been a teenager at the time and only thought with his dick, so it hadn't matter. He had grown to love her, so she got what she wanted in the end. "I thought as much," he said with a shrug.
Tom was shocked. If someone had told him that his wife had tricked him into marriage, he'd be pissed. Yet Harry was just letting it slide. He shook his head, and said, "You always did surprise me, Harry Potter."
"Yeah, I tend to do that," he said, giving the other man a smirk. "Ginny was a good wife, so why does it matter?" he asked with a casual shrug.
"Mostly because she's the one who killed you tonight. She finally got tired of you not dying at work, so she took it into her own hands," Tom stated, lifting an eyebrow in a 'don't you believe me' manner.
"Why wait until we were in our hundreds?" Harry asked, looking at him like he was crazy. That didn't make any sense. If she was going to kill him for his money it should have been years ago. Of course he was richer now, but now she'd have to split it with the kids.
"She found an alchemist," Tom said, looking at him for this bit of news. This time he got the reaction he had been waiting for.
"So, she's going to live for a long time? The man she's found is going to make her young again and has the Philosopher's Stone?" he asked, his face falling. There was pain there that hadn't been there previous. "Well, she doesn't need my riches. The stone will give them all the gold they will ever need," he said, wondering if she was going to share it with the kids.
"So, now you know, what will you do?" Tom asked, picking up his cup and hiding his face.
"What do you mean? I will go and spend eternity with my family," Harry said, looking at him with confusion. What else was there?
"You can go back and do it all over again," the ex-Dark Lord stated, pointing to the train that just pulled into the station.
"No, I don't think I will," the younger man stated, staring at the train. It was an old train, not quite the Hogwarts Express, but around that age. It was black with green highlights that were almost black in this light. "I think, I'll go and meet my parents and see my godfather, thank you very much. I trust Death will take care of Ginny in time and I'll meet her again," he said, taking up his cup and draining the rest of his tea. "Good tea," he said, politely.
"What of me?" Tom asked, getting worried.
"What about you?"
"I need you to go back so that I may leave," the man said, a sweat breaking out on his brow. He'd been here for over a hundred years. While some days it felt like minutes, other days, it felt like eternity. He was going mad. There was nothing to do here but drink tea and look at the mist. Occasionally, Death would come and talk to him, but that was rare.
"Oh, so all that talk of redemption was bullshit," Harry asked, standing up, but just standing and looking down at the very pathetic man sitting there. He had once been a huge factor in his life, but now he was just a blink in his reality.
"No, it was the truth, but to move on, I need you to go back. You can have the Resurrection Ring and complete the set. You would be the Master of Death. Think of all that power," Tom enticed him.
"As much as I'd love to help you out, I don't feel the need to be anyone's hero anymore. As for the Master of Death, no thanks. Only a fool would want that type of power," Harry said, moving into the mist and walking to where he could feel the light.
"Well, bugger," Tom said, drinking his tea. He was that type of a fool. Perhaps one of Potter's descendants would take up the job. Hmmmm.