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Professor Dumbledore had just left, and Tom had some serious thinking to do. How had the old man known about all those stolen things in his wardrobe? In fact, why was he thinking about that? Shouldn’t he be thinking about how the wardrobe in front of him had just burst into flames and wasn’t singed?
Tom Riddle sighed, and ran his thin, pale fingers down the wardrobes hard wood, his fingers catching on various splinters, but he hardly noticed, even when blood pricks ran down his arm all the way to his elbow. If there was a whole other world, the wizarding world, why hadn’t they come and taken him away from St Mary’s Orphanage long ago? In fact, Tom knew the answer to that. Nobody cared.
“Why don’t they care?” he said in an angry whisper as he sat down on his bed hard and put his head in his hands. Usually, Tom hated showing emotion, but right now was an exception. He was alone, there was nobody to mock him or chase him or hate him for existing.
“They do.”
Which was where the boy was standing (not so alone after all).
The kid was eleven or twelve, about Tom’s age and had shaggy black hair just past his ears. He had olive skin and black eyes that seemed as hard as coal.
He was wearing a black T-shirt with white letters on it spelling something Tom couldn’t read, as it was covered by the aviator jacket that was done up. The black trousers he wore seemed to stick to his skinny legs. One of his fingers sported a silver skull ring with what looked like rubies for eyes (he wonders what it would sell for, if it was a copy not a lot, but it didn’t look like a copy). Despite it all, including the blank expression on his sickly pale face, he still gave off a slight happy-go-lucky kid vibe.
“How did you get in?” Tom sneered in the most intimidating voice he could manage, but he was actually quite scared. It was like the kid had appeared out of thin air. He hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. Maybe he was another one of those wizards.
“I’m not actually here, you know.” Tom raised an eyebrow. The kid was right in front of him, so close he could reach out a punch him if he wanted and make a grab for that ring. He didn’t.
“Well, in a way.” Tom just looked at him.
The boy ran a hand through his already birds nest like hair (he could hear Miss Cole tutting in his head, fussing over the state of it if he were ever to show up like that, not that he ever would, about how he’d be letting down the orphanage and the sponsors and her claws raking over his skull as she harshly brushed it. She’d done it to a younger boy once so hard his scalp had bled) and continued, sounding frustrated like Tom was missing something obvious, which he wasn’t, because Tom never missed anything, especially obvious things “I’ll show up at important moments in your life, always there, trying to give you a bit of advice. It was my Dad’s idea.” Tom barely concealed his shudder. Something about the way he said Dad, like it was a curse and his father was the worst thing he would have to face made his blood run cold.
With this boy, unlike every other child he had ever met who had parents, he hadn’t felt like bitterly saying “at least you have a father”. Perhaps the other boy would be better off without his.
Instead he kept up the cool facade as well as he could, countless years of experience facing bullies winning out over his discomfort.
“What’s your name.” he demanded, lip curling but a tremor - a tremor! He wasn’t afraid, only babies were afraid - still rung through his voice, making his fists curl in anger at himself.
“Nico.” The boy - Nico - let the first emotion cross his face, a smile, like again, Tom was missing everything and it was really very funny. Tom wasn’t Nico’s amusement and he imagined setting his snakes on him. That got his confidence back quick, always.
“Full name.” contempt snaking its way back into his voice, recovering quickly, as he always did and as he had always done.
“Nico di Angelo.” Nico said before laughing bitterly, a cold, dark sound that made Tom reconsider what kind of person Nico was, maybe more like him than he had originally thought.
There was nothing else to ask, he had a name. So he continued on to what Nico had been so desperate to tell him that it appeared he had climbed two stories to clamber in his window.
“You were saying? About them-” Tom was about to force himself to say the cursed word but he didn’t have to as Nico cut in.
“Caring? They do care Tom, but they didn’t know you were here. And even if they did, there’s nobody to take you in. But they do care. Everybody cares about somebody. Maybe even you.” and just like that, Nico di Angelo disappeared into the shadows, leaving Tom wondering if he was going mad.
(Later, he went to the local library and found a book of Italian words - di Angelo translated to Angel. Tom bit his lip and wondered)
...
The next time Tom saw Nico di Angelo he was in his fifth year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. He had written Nico off as his mind playing tricks on him after he had gone through many books looking for a kind of magic that would allow a twelve year old to sneak into a room through shadows and then leave the same way.
He was at one of Slughorn’s many I have gifted student’s parties, or Slug Clubs. They were becoming increasingly tedious and annoying, but to get the information he needed he had to keep up the goody two shoes image for the teachers so they didn’t twig he was studying the Dark Arts late at night in the Slytherin Common Room whilst lounging in his throne.
“Tom, m’boy, how are you?” Slughorn had bustled up to him, huge idiotic smile and all. Tom forced himself to smile back and answered in he hoped what sounded like an interested tone “I’m fine Professor, and you?” by the time he had shaken him off all he wanted to do was to go to the door and run. Self control Tom, self control... He exhaled and opened his eyes to a truly horrific sight.
His imaginary twelve year old from hell was back.
It took all Tom’s will power not to exclaim out loud (he feared few and none but his own demise, or so he had thought, Nico’s twin rubies in his ring glinting in Slughorn’s ‘atmospheric’ lighting making his stomach lurch). Nico hadn’t changed a bit, as if he had just walked from four years before like most would saunter through a doorway.
Tom turned round and started walking briskly towards the door, praying that nobody stopped him. But of course, God doesn’t listen to sinners, and he was working his way up the list of the damned. Or, as they say, down the list. Way, way down (the Basilisk hisses where are the mudbloods, who do I murder master, masssster).
“Stop, Tom.” Nico’s voice sent a chill through him. Exactly as it had been, harsher, harder. Nico obviously knew of whatever Tom was to do. Tom wondered whether Nico would be a Slytherin or a Gryffindor, which would be worse. Tom stopped under the guise of getting a drink from one of the pathetic servers and walked over to a dark corner, where nobody would look for him and see him talking either to thin air (I’m not really here, you know) or a twelve year old nobody had ever seen before. Again, he wasn’t sure which was worse.
The footsteps behind him (Nico wore large, clunky boots that made the ground vibrate, and nobody else felt it, how did nobody else feel it, Tom’s heart too loud in his chest) followed.
“The horcruxes-” he knew then, did he, about those? “The horcruxes will destroy everything. They aren’t the answer, they’ll just make you into this less than human thing-"
“I don’t care.” Tom hissed, baring his teeth, desperately hoping Nico would disappear. Please, please let him disappear.
“You should, it hurts. So much that people have died from the pain and the impure act they are committing. You should know that, Tom.”
“I’m not most people.” Tom growled, still facing the wall and downed his drink in one.
“I suppose.” Nico replied, light, like he didn’t care what Tom was or wasn’t.
But by the time Tom had found the nerve to turn and face Nico, he was gone, without a sound from his large, heavy boots. It was only them that Tom realised he was surrounded by shadows.
He next saw him as he ordered the Basilisk to kill all the mudbloods in the school. In the end, it only managed one, but that was enough. Nico looked right into the eyes of the beast and didn't drop dead. The huge snake didn't smell him. He didn't say anything, but he looked at Tom and lifted his chin, like he had proved something. And he had.
(Later, he reads about reverse psychology, and it doesn’t even cross his mind. It probably didn’t occur to Nico either, or maybe he would have encouraged Tom. But everyone in his house was doing that already, so nothing would’ve helped, really, would it?)
...
It had been many years since he had last seen Nico di Angelo.
Many, many years.
He had hundreds of Death Eaters, and an inner circle that would do his bidding at will, at the snap of his fingers, at a mere look, a country cowering beneath him, soon to be followed by the rest of the world.
He was at the height of his reign of terror, people dared not speak his name. It satisfied him greatly. He had a familiar in Nagini, and life was good. Spilled blood was good, especially mudblood.
But then he had heard the prophecy.
...Born as the seventh month dies... One born to those who have thrice defied him... The Dark Lord shall Mark him as his equal... He has power the Dark Lord Knows Not... Born as the seventh month dies...
There were two possible candidates, of the Chosen One.
Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom.
Both born on July 31st, both their parents had both got away from him three times, it was obvious that the prophecy meant one of them, one of them would be his doom.
So, it made sense to kill them while they were in their infancy.
To choose was easy.
Voldemort immediately felt drawn to kill Harry Potter, a half blood like himself. (Also, his name was less ridiculous.) So he sent Bella and Barty to torture the Longbottoms, and he went to take care of the Potters himself.
It was a cold evening, All Hallows Eve, in fact.
Voldemort, because that was who he was now, Tom Riddle was a blasphemy who only Dumbledore still thought to be alive, walked to the door of their quaint little cottage in Godric’s Hollow and raised his wand. The door blasted off its hinges and he stepped inside to hear James Potter’s shout of: “Lily! It’s him! He’s here! Take Harry and run! I’ll hold him off!”
Foolish Gryffindor, as Severus had said on many occasions, he knew the hatred of the man ran deep in his servant, even if the woman meant something to him, he could move on. There were other women of better birth, more suited and deserving of Severus’ affections. But it appeared Potter really wanted death in that moment.
The younger wizard was unarmed, that much was obvious as he spread his arms wide, neither of his hands holding a wand and his eyes behind the thick lenses of his glasses were wide, desperately trying to block entrance to the upper story, as if his force of will could spare his doomed family.
He was dead before he hit the floor.
Voldemort mounted the stairs walking at a leisurely pace, his serpentine red eyes darting back and forth taking in the interior.
And the twelve year old clad in black in front of the nursery door.
I don’t have time for this.
“Don’t.” Nico’s face was pale, pleading, the most expressive it had ever been in any of his visits, and he really was a child, wasn’t he. And Voldemort did what most did with children, but he had never himself done before - he humoured him.
“Why not?” He tilted his head to the side, examining the boy. As he thought - just as before.
“Have you ever heard of the Fields of Punishment?” His voice was high, reedy, desperate, young, young, painfully young and scared. Of Voldemort or how he was about to kill the baby and mother in the room behind him if she didn’t step aside, and what Voldemort knew of mothers was that she wouldn’t.
“No. I don’t intend to either.” He had better things to do than search up fictional places. Humouring children, he was quickly finding, was useless, thankless and tiring.
“You’ll go there if you do this, definitely. Before- before this you had a sliver of redemption, maybe to end up in Asdophel, if you gave the rest of your life to good.”
“I”ll take Punishment.” He smiled, and Nico grew all the paler, if that were possible. He wondered how out of place the expression looked on his new face.
He made a motion to shove Nico aside, he had better things to do than listen to gibberish, but before he could do so, the boy turned into shadows, as before.
Two minutes later, as his soul was escaping his body, he heard a child crying in the distance, the words “I told you so” whispering along with the breeze.
...
He had seen Nico more frequently over the past four years.
The first year, he had been silent, making cutting motions over his neck, eyes huge and sad and shattered, as they hadn’t been before. Stuck on the back of Quirrell”s head, getting the servant to drink unicorn blood so he was sustained, was not the best way of life.
Not for the first time, he wondered whether Nico was just a figament of his mind, his conscience, but he didn’t have one of those.
But a terrible life was better than no life, as once that happened he was going to the Fields of Punishment.
He still hadn’t looked them up, but didn’t dismiss them as he had before.
Nico had made his cutting motions more frantic when he ordered Quirrell to kill the boy.
He had ignored him.
As he had been turning into vapour once more, he had seen Nico smiling sadly, a twinkle in his black eyes, reflecting Tom's shadowy face, curled back in a quickly dissipating snarl.
(Oh Tom Riddle, what has the world done to you)
...
The second year, he had been hiding, constantly having visits from the pre-teen, who was preaching him that he should try and put his soul, or what was left of it back together. Apparently that might get him a less severe punishment.
He ignored him.
If Punishment was inevitable, perhaps it was better to pretend it was never coming.
...
In the third year, Nico had preached yet again, more hurriedly, telling him that the dark could be used for good, but he only used it for bad.
Tom had said he knew that, he knows all there is to know about the darkness, he was a dark lord, as much as people seem to be forgetting, he is the very embodiment of the darkness.
(At least, he was)
Nico said he would get an opportunity to do great evil soon, and not to take it.
He was already damned for eternity if he died, apparently, so what difference would it make what a child preached? The path was clear before him, he looked right through Nico’s shadowy existence until the boy dissipated without a word.
He was more determined than ever not to die.
...
Then, the fourth year since Harry Potter had returned to the magical world came.
Barty Crouch Jr returned to him, as did Wormtail,the Triwizard Tournament came into play and now that boy was one of the people who helped him raise again (bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy).
(When Wormtail said enemy when the ritual was first discovered, Nico appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye, and Voldemort had known this was the correct course of action)
And all through the cursed ceremony, Nico had been there in the cemetery, trying to block Wormtail blade, and yet it went straight through him. It seemed Nico really wasn’t there at all.
(Voldemort wonders whether he could trap him in a glass ball and get him to tell the future more reliably than a thousand prophecies that had been made over the ages, as he appeared to know all)
He had tried to knock to vial out of Wormtail’s hands, but his fingers turned to vapour, his screams made no steam in the cold, he flickered in and out of focus, like a bad dream.
And of course, all the way through the ritual he had been shouting, begging, pleading: DON'T, YOU”LL REGRET IT, FOR THE LOVE OF-
Tom had just blocked him out, continuing like Nico Angel wasn’t there, which he wasn’t, just a blip.
Not there at all.
Nico had taken to punching the gravestone tears of anger and frustration rolling down his youthful face, it was his muggle father’s gravestone, and unnoticed by everyone else, his rotting bones were shaking, turning over in their grave.
He liked to think that his father was in some kind of pain in the afterlife.
The filthy muggle had better be in the Fields of Punishment.
Finally, when Harry Potter had run, he had Avada’d him from behind.
He wouldn’t have made it.
Not alive, anyway.
But Nico, Nico who wasn’t solid or whole or even there at all, who didn’t exist in this mortal plain except inside of Tom’s head, had pushed him, and another worldly wind had gusted through the trees, pushing Harry Potter faster, and he grabbed the Portkey, whisking him and the corpse decked in yellow and black back to Hogwarts.
Tom - no, Voldemort, he was Voldemort - had screamed with rage, and sent red and sickly green coloured spells at his followers, only a few hitting the men with white masks covering their faces. But none hit Nico Angelo, who was already gone with the wind.
...
He hadn’t seen Nico for three years, except for when he caught a reflection in a mirror of a boy wearing a skull ring with rubies for eyes, shaking his dark head sadly, just behind him. Sometimes he was him. Another theory.
As soon as he turned, the boy was gone.
The Department of Mysteries had far too many mirrors, too many reflections.
Mirrors wherever he turned.
That was one of the multiple reasons he had chosen the forest in which to call Harry Potter, with all his surviving followers behind him.
No mirrors, not even a puddle.
But... he forgot about the Potter boy’s bad eyesight (thick lenses like his father, but eyes resigned and steadfast and brave), and his need for glasses.
So when Potter came, instead of his haunting green eyes through thick lenses (like his mother, the girl Severus was so in love with, maybe he should have spared her after all regardless, then Severus would never have abandoned, but he had more servants more desperate, like Bella), he saw the face of Nico di Angelo, silently screaming at him, mouthing words that looked like: The Fields, Tom. The Fields of Punishment, Tom. You’ll go to the Fields.
So he did the only thing he could.
He raised his wand, and spoke Avada Kedavra and watched as Harry Potter, fell. As did his glasses. And the image of Nico di Angelo.
And then Voldemort himself fell, immersed in a world of white.
...
It looked like St Mary’s from so many years before, the place he had sworn to never return to, the grime gone, his bed made. Everything was exactly as it was before, like he had gone full circle, but in white.
He had two surprises when he looked around. Well, three.
He was in his sixteen year old body once more.
He was naked.
And Nico di Angelo was in the centre of the room, sitting on the main table, swinging his legs back and forth childishly.
He immediately wished he was robed, as he couldn’t face Nico when he... wasn’t. Younger, closer to Nico’s age, he was weaker.
Immediately he was wearing his Slytherin robes from more than fifty years ago, complete with his Prefect badge that was pinned to his chest.
Nico chose that moment to look up, and smiled a wry smile at his attire.
“Where am I?” Nico merely smiled again, and it made his whole face look sweeter, the kind of boy the motherly nurses would’ve eaten up. He hadn’t been one of those boys, too strange and different and cursed, as Tom recalled. Nico turned his head towards one of the windows.
“Beautiful view.”
Tom was about to open his mouth and demand to know where he was when it dropped open of its own accord.
The windows were covered in images, of tortures and deaths and murders and a field surrounded in barbed wire that seemed to go on forever that was covered in screaming souls, a man trying to douse a girl frozen in gold with water using only a bucket with no bottom, a screaming soul being stabbed with white hot pieces of metal by hags, in the distance an impossibly steep hill with a rock being slowly rolled up it.
This was the first time Tom realised what something was before Nico explained it to him.
“Is that the-”
“Fields of Punishment? Yep.” He hadn’t realised that Nico had in fact aged with him, because now his eyes were young again, his throat not raw with begging and screaming at Tom to reconsider, language freer. Nico was probably beyond relieved to be rid of him.
“I’m going there, aren’t I?” The words almost get stuck in his throat. This is fear.
“Without a doubt.” A fresh scream ripped through the image, making Tom’s ears burn with the intensity.
He found himself turning to Nico, and expression of horror plastered on his face as it hadn’t been since the orphanage when the older boys killed his pet snake. “Please. I-I”ll do anyth-”
“No, you won’t.” Nico snapped and Tom’s eyes widened as he looked at the boy “You’ve had so many chances, so many choices. I gave you every choice that would save you from going there, and still you end up here. With me.”
He sighed, and Tom really was just an inconvenience, wasn’t he?
“I can’t save you Tom. You made it quite clear you didn’t want to be saved. My father was right. Once a soul is set on its destined path, it can’t be altered.”
Tom was struck silent. He was always meant to end up there. Somebody cared, none of the wizards or witches, but the boy in front of him, who didn’t even exist, at least not in his world.
The same boy he had looked straight through.
Nico was looking at him, with a soft expression. It was pity, but Tom couldn’t see that.
“I think you’ve seen enough.”
And Tom wakes, to calls of “My Lord! My Lord!” and thinks, dizzily, it has been years since somebody truly said his name.
...
As the green light came closer and closer, Tom felt he should’ve known.
And he should have.
Guardian angels or devils or perhaps even fairy godmothers - the kind in the fairy tales that he hadn’t heard in decades - were always there for a reason.
He’s the villain of this story, and until a few moments before he had always been alright with that.
But now, he was about to be killed by his own spell, Potter not even using halfway complicated magic, something an eleven year old could do-
Expelliarmus.
He hasn’t seen Nico in the glasses or the unshattered windows of the school, but he can still hear him.
Tom wants to be saved now, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. Every bad decision has been made. He wonders what he could’ve been, had he listened.
I can’t save you Tom. You made it quite clear you didn’t want to be saved.