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I stand at the window of this great house, overlooking the city I once dreamt of conquering, a city I do not care about anymore. Tomorrow, I will leave it, by way of train or boat, I do not know. It does not matter. You have already left, and where you are now, I cannot follow.
I have tried to forget you, and sometimes even made myself believe I had. Yet tonight, as the wind turns dark above the black river, and I shrink away from my own reflection, I must admit, to myself and to the world, that I am a liar. And out of all the lies I’ve told, there’s one that seems worse than all the others.
We were naked under the white sheets. The morning had come too soon, casting long shadows on the ceiling, the morning which would take you away from me forever. You were curled up in my arms. You asked,
“Were you in love with me, Tom?”
And I shuddered. In the months we hadn’t seen each other, I had forgotten the power you yielded. I had forgotten you didn’t need a wand, or your fists, to draw blood.
“What does that even mean, being in love?” I asked, my heart pounding in my ribcage.
You didn’t answer me, and the shadows on the ceiling grew redder, more terrifying. After a while, you removed yourself from my arms, left me prey to the January cold.
“I see,” you said, and dared to smile. “I was. Just so you know.”
It wasn’t fair, I thought, that you should be so cruel. That you should, after all this time, still claim the moral high ground. You had come from far away, and you had come to kill me. Yet, between the two of us, I had always been the villain. The murderer. You called me that the first time you saw me, remember?
“YOU!” you screamed across the Great Hall, bloodied face partially obstructed by floating candles, picking me out in a sea of hundreds, pointing your righteous finger at me like a loaded rifle, “You’re a MURDERER.”
I had killed my father, it was true, and worn the price I had paid for it around my finger.
Somebody screamed. You were hidden by a sea of people, gathered around the strange apparition, around the strange young man wearing strange clothes that had materialised out of thin air. They dragged you away by your arms.
“MURDERER,” the stone corridors carried your voice, all the way to the Hospital Wing. Eleven days later, you were assigned the bed next to mine.
“Murderer,” Malfoy and the boys mocked as you walked in. “Go back to the loony bin, murderer. We don’t want you here, murderer.”
You ignored them, staring me down as if only you and I were in that room, while outside the rain fell in torrents, streaming down the tall windows like ocean waves on dark, black cliffs.
“Do you deny it?”
“I do,” I lied. You laughed. “You really are crazy,” I pressed, closing the book I had been pretending to read when you walked in.
“Time travel will do that to you.”
“And from what future are you coming, then?” I asked, enthralled. There was something electric about you, as if you could explode at any time, and I wanted to indulge you before I trapped you. And crushed you.
“A sad one,” you said, turning your back to me.
“Is it sad because of all the people I murdered?” I flirted, unabashed.
The others went quiet. They heard the edge in my voice, and they knew what it meant. You didn’t turn around for a long time, but when you did, I knew you were telling the truth. A terrible current travelled through me.
“Yes.”
Black was the first to laugh. Malfoy and Lestrange followed, like always, but you and I, we just stared at each other.
“I didn’t murder anybody,” I lied again. “The next time you call me a murderer, I’ll hex you.”
“You can certainly try,” you said, and laughed.
Your defiance roused me. I considered asking the rest to leave us, but it seemed too much, too soon.
That night, I woke up with your wand between my eyes. I could sense the Silencing charm buzzing around us, your conjured shield pressing down on us, separating us from the rest.
“What are you doing?” I managed.
“Killing you.”
“You’re certainly taking your time with it,” I jeered, pushing your wand away from my face. You were sitting on top of me, your body heavy on my thighs. I saw it then, the ring. You had sliced it—my soul—in half.
I was shocked, I couldn’t speak. Cold sweat rolled down my forehead.
“Who are you?” I whispered, burning.
“I’m the person who’s going to kill you.”
“And why the fuck would you do that?” I said, and tried to lift myself up, to escape your pull.
“You caused two wars,” you said through bared teeth, pinning me back down. I could have broken free, but there was something in your eyes that kept me where I was. “You murdered people. People I loved.”
“I only murdered my father,” the words escaped me as, unbidden, my body pushed against yours. You recoiled, pushed back, buried your wand deep into my chest.
“I’m going to find it,” you said, and through the fog you had instilled in my mind, I remembered the ring. The diary. In one split second, I had my wand shining a light between your eyes. I saw your scar, and immediately knew what it was, and what I must have become.
“I didn’t do that to you,” I said, but knew it did not matter.
“Yet,” you laughed. You seemed half-mad, your eyes wet with rage.
“Are you here to stop me? To change the future?”
“Yes,” you said, and dug your wand deeper into my chest, into my heart. “I am.”
Something hot fell from your eyes onto my cheek. It burned my skin as it slid down across my face, my neck. A great gulf opened in my chest as you collapsed above me.
“You killed them all,” you screeched into my shoulder, and I trembled underneath you, trembled with feelings I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I couldn’t tell which one of us was crying, yet knew—knew—it couldn’t have been me.
“Why? I just want to know,” you wailed and wailed, drenching my shirt with your desperate tears, stretching the Silencing charm to its limits, “WHY?”
I didn’t know what to tell you. I was being held accountable for crimes I hadn’t committed, yet knew I was a guilty man.
I had dreamed about power. About war. I had built castles in my mind, castles where I hid all that could come between me and what rightfully belonged to me. I had prepared and started on a journey that led me to where there would be no fear and no death. I would get the power, and I would go to war, and I would never die. It was my destiny. And here you were, a victim of my daydream, my judgement day come too soon, and here I was, already one-third dead.
I wanted to cry with you. I wanted to touch you and bite into your flesh and ruin you. Instead, I pushed you aside. The venom spilling from a basilisk fang had stained my bedsheets black. I gathered the ring halves into my hands. You were shaking next to me, like a worm on scorched cement. I could have killed you then, but, you see, even at the very beginning, it was already too late.
* * *
I woke up next to you, my bedsheets steeped in poison, my mind in splinters. It was a Thursday, the end of September. That day, the rumours followed you everywhere you went, and so did I. I trailed after you like a dog.
Lunatic.
Tortured to insanity.
Only Dumbledore would keep him here instead of sending him to St. Mungo’s.
And I had to agree, you did act like a lunatic. You cried in Defence, and again in Potions; you cried at breakfast, lunch and dinner. You cried yourself to sleep.
I waited for nightfall and slipped out of bed. Through the moonlit darkness, I crossed the castle, descended into the Chamber. I found the carcass of my basilisk. Next to it, the sword that belonged to his enemy, a sword I was sure you had brought with you. The expanse of my loss stretched out in front of me, endlessly, aimlessly.
I laughed.
You had actually done it. You had come unstuck in time, had walked through a door you could never walk through again, pointed your finger at me and called me a murderer, and then killed my pet and a part of my soul.
It struck me then, with a clarity I had lacked the night before. You were my enemy, and I would defeat you.
My heels echoed through the empty corridors as I rushed towards you. I threw the door open and walked straight to your bed, pulled open the curtains. I found you waiting for me. I knew then we were both diseased, knew it as I climbed in next to you and felt your body tremble against mine. You pulled me in, your arms tugging at my collar.
“I’m going to kill you,” I breathed into your hair, my hands deserting my wand to search for your skin. By the time I realised I hadn’t set up a Silencing charm, your hands were tight around my neck, making it hard to breathe.
Too soon, we were surrounded by my soldiers. You were hauled off me like a bag of dirt. When I finally stood up, silence fell.
“Enough,” I commanded.
“But, my lord—”
“He’s mine.”
You were bleeding, but you didn’t seem to care. You were looking out the windows, at the great night beyond. I held out my hand and waited for your wand to be delivered to me. I was not surprised to see how well it suited me, the magic already spilling out of it, ready to obey me.
I could have killed you then, too. Instead, I threw the wand at your feet.
* * *
The diary was well hidden. I wasn’t worried. I knew you wouldn’t kill me until you found it, and I knew you would not find it. You had taken me by surprise, had won the first battle, but you didn’t stand a chance before me now that you had my full attention. I would squish you under my thumb like I used to the cockroaches creeping on the walls of the orphanage, play with you until you came begging on your hands and knees.
And I would have done it, had it not been for the disease that had taken hold of me. The disease you had brought upon us both, travelling back in time with a piece of my soul trapped inside of you, a piece that still existed in me too.
It wasn’t clear to me yet, not in those early days, what it was, what it had done to us. I couldn’t think straight. At all times, another me sat in my belly. When you dissolved into sobs over breakfast, I, too, wanted to sob. When you tossed and turned, unable to sleep, I, too, was kept awake. In my chest there was a wound, festering, bleeding, pulsating, a wound that did not belong to me. Had I been lucid, I would have maybe done something about it. But I was not lucid, hadn’t been since the day you threaded through the years, one hour at a time, until you reached me.
You had done something irreversible to me. I didn’t feel longing; I was the longing. The yearning. The want. And you were the answer. One glance in your direction was enough to make my throat constrict with need. To make me lose my mind. And so, every night you kept me awake, I cast a Silencing charm on my soles and, against my will, came into your bed. And every night, against your will, you moved aside and let me slide in under the covers. You cursed me, you hit me, your weak fists making a hollow sound against my chest. You asked me where the diary was, promised you would kill me, tears running down your face, yet threw yourself into my arms and pulled me closer, and closer still. You wept in my arms, and I held you, like I had never been held. My killer, my victim, my enemy. My equal. I had never met anybody like you.
* * *
Your life, your thoughts, your nightmares, they bled into mine until I couldn’t tell which one of us went to sleep and which one of us woke up. There were hours, lost and bitter, where I didn’t know anything but you. I can hardly remember those days, yet tonight, as I pour myself another glass of this infernal wine, in this infernal house, one memory comes back to me clearer than the rest.
For once, I remembered who I was supposed to be, and for once, you weren’t crying. I had come into your bed later than usual, kept away by social obligations that once would have amused me but did not anymore. All through Slughorn’s slurred speeches, through the clinking of glasses and the shaking of hands, I thought about you. Alone in your bed, mourning ghosts from the future.
I excused myself as soon as I could and ran to you, skin itching with need. You breathed a sigh of relief when I drew the curtain behind me, were silent as I climbed on top of you. You pulled at my robes and, drunk as I was, thought maybe you were drunk, too. Your teeth sank into my neck. My hands, starved, found skin.
“Tell me about them,” I whispered.
At the sound of my voice, you looked up with the violence of recognition. The place where your lips had touched my skin hurt.
“Who?”
“The people you’ve lost.”
You pushed me away. Between the half-drawn curtains, moonlight crept through, and I could see the hatred in your eyes, could feel it expanding in my chest.
“The people you’ve killed? They were my friends. They were my family.”
I had never had friends, or a family, yet I had been mourning yours, for weeks.
“What were they like?”
You didn’t answer. Your features hardened, and you pulled further back.
“It won’t work on me,” you said.
“What won’t?”
“This.”
“Do all people in the future speak in riddles? Or is it just you?”
“I know you, Tom. I know what you’re capable of.”
“You certainly do,” I laughed. “It’s rather compelling.”
“You killed my parents,” you said.
I stopped laughing. “No. I didn’t.”
“You will, though.”
“Will your parents try to stop me?” I asked, trying to understand.
You punched me. The pain was sharp, and crisp, and I felt the blood gushing out of my nose. It tasted like the barrel of a gun.
You were looking at me, waiting for me to retaliate. To punch back, maybe. Some other day, some other life, I would have snapped your neck. But in that moment, all I could think of doing, all I could do, was grab you, bury my nails into your nape, pull you closer until your mouth covered mine.
You grabbed my wrist.
“Enough,” you begged, low and tortured, your lips bloodied. You were crying again. “Enough.”
I obeyed.
* * *
I had never seen anybody cry so much. In the rare moments I was sane enough to think, I thought you were pathetic. I thought it, yet I pushed you into the shower every morning. I filled your plate. I walked you to your classes, did your schoolwork, carried tissues that I slid under the table when you burst into tears in the middle of a lesson.
Everything reminded you of what you’d lost, and so everything reminded me of it, too. A Quidditch ball flying by the window in History of Magic. A glimpse of red hair. Somebody mentioning the library. Our life was a funeral for months and months, you and I prisoners of the same unyielding, untreatable disease. Then one day, you smiled.
* * *
It was January. We had spent Christmas in a deserted castle. When everybody came back, rosy-cheeked and fatter, I was suffocating. I did not care about the others, about the secret meetings and the secret clubs, and couldn’t be bothered to pretend to anymore.
We were in the Common Room, by the fire; me, doing the Potions homework twice, you, sprawled on the sofa, staring at the ceiling as you often did those days.
“Will there be a meeting tonight, my lord?”
I looked up at Malfoy. There was something desperately elegant about him, even when he bowed. I despised him, him and all the rest. The idea of spending the evening in their presence repulsed me. The idea of spending the evening far away from you made me nauseous.
“No.”
“But, Tom, it’s been—”
“No.”
He turned around, subdued and flushed. It was then, as my gaze darted over to you out of habit, but mostly out of need, that I noticed you were smiling. My heart stopped.
“What are you smiling at?” I asked, appalled.
“I knew his grandson,” you answered, easily and against all odds, eyes on Malfoy as he slumped into a gilded armchair.
“Please tell me he was one of the people I murdered in your horrible version of the future.”
“Alas, he was not,” you said and, to my great surprise, you looked at me. During those cold winter days, you rarely ever did that. We spent our lives chained to one another, the silence a viscous thing between us. It had been weeks since you last mentioned the diary. Since you last threatened to kill me. Those days, you came into my arms quietly, meekly, like one comes to die.
“That’s a shame. Should I murder this one, just in case?”
“That’s not funny.”
“It would be, if you had a sense of humour,” I said, and dipped my quill into the ink bottle, ready to finish the conclusion of your Potions essay.
“I suppose it would.” You were smiling again, but your eyes weren’t. “This is pretty much the most fucked up thing that’s ever happened, so why not have a bit of fun, right?”
I put the quill down.
“Is that it? Are you finally losing your mind?”
“You know, you’re nothing like how I imagined you would be.”
“I’ve not been myself lately,” I said. It was the truth, for a change.
“This all feels like a fever dream.”
“You’re the one who thought going back fifty years into the past was a good idea.”
“You spend most of your time doing homework.”
“What did you expect? To find me collecting cadavers?” I could see my words had shocked you and that thrilled me, an old reminder of who I used to be, of who I was supposed to be. “Would that make it easier for you to kill me, maybe?” I pressed, hungrily.
“Bloody hell, Tom.”
You rose, as if electrocuted, and stormed off. I followed you into the dormitory. You were taking off your shirt when I came in. Your back was naked, and frayed. You had been through a war, possibly two, so it figured.
“This feels like a fever dream,” I said, watching you get into your bed, the bed I slept in every night.
“What?”
“You.”
You looked at me, and I thought maybe there was pity in your eyes.
“I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” I said, and removed my tie. I usually waited for the others to fall asleep, for the night to turn dark, before I came to you. But there was something terrible stirring in my chest. And that meant there was something terrible stirring in yours too. I started walking towards your bed, unbuttoning my shirt.
“Stop.”
I did, unfazed.
“Stop,” you repeated, as if to reassure yourself you had actually said it.
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
I knew you were lying. Deep in my flesh, in a place I couldn’t reach, I felt what it had cost you to say that.
I schooled my face into a mocking smile. “As you wish.”
* * *
Before I met you, magic held no mysteries for me. I had unearthed spells as old as language, awakened the beast left behind by my ancestor, crushed death into servitude. When I couldn’t fight the sickness spreading in me, I assumed the soul shards linking us together were a magic stronger than any one wizard. I thought you a fool for trying to fight their pull, and waited for you to come crawling back to me, to implore to be received back into my bed, into my arms. And when that happened, I—forever merciful, forever great—would allow you to sleep at my feet, if only you learnt how to properly beg.
But you never did, did you? While I wilted away, hollowed by your grief, you emerged stronger from it. You were alive again. You started moving through the castle by yourself. You met with people—people I despised, people that despised me. You left the castle for hours, then for days.
And I? I lived on the constant edge of hunger, hours and days defined not by the sun but by the growing distance between us, a distance I felt every inch of, as if the further you went, the more of my soul you dragged away with you.
After you’d been gone a while, my thoughts started to clear. The more time I spent away from you, the more I remembered. The more I became myself again. That is when my real sorrows started.
* * *
Anger came first. It hit like a tsunami when, looking in my trunk for a vial of Dreamless Sleep, I found the broken pieces of the ring I had stolen from my grandfather’s hand. At first, I was angry at you. Angry for killing a part of me, or angry for leaving me, I could not tell. But in waves, like the pain of a toothache, another truth, more horrible, washed over me. I was angry at my father. At my mother. At the cursed line of people that had led to me. And so powerful was this anger, so unlike anything I’d ever felt, I thought it would break me in two.
It didn’t.
* * *
Then came the sadness. It pinned me to my flesh, to my bed, to my room. Like a poisonous vine, it wrapped itself around me, pierced my skin and tore through tissue until I couldn’t tell poison from body. It hardened into shackles.
Like I had been chained to you, I was now chained to my bed. Others did my schoolwork for me, like I had done for you. They fed and clothed me. During the fervid nights, I dreamt of the lords and ladies, born to rule and to possess, that I had forced to kneel before me. I dreamt they came to kill me, weak as I was, dying of something that held no name and knew no antidote, doing your dirty work for you.
I dreamt it, for I craved it. Looking back now, drunk and alone, I recognise those were the darkest moments of my life. I had never known sadness before, and I could not bear it, could not stand the weight of it. I wanted it to stop, and was convinced it never would. I wanted to die, yet knew I had, forever the fool, cheated myself out of that option. I had sentenced myself to an eternity of this.
* * *
You were gone, had been gone for weeks, when I descended into the Chamber. I pulled out the sharpest fang and struck it in the middle of the notebook I had abandoned half my soul in.
Black blood stained my hands. Halved, I limped back to my bed. I shuffled through the empty pages, yellowed like bones under the sun, and wept. I was startled to discover that tears burned, and they bruised, and they still do tonight, as I write these words across the venom-soaked pages of my diary, hoping that somehow, someday, I’ll get back a part of what I’ve lost.
* * *
When, a few days later, somebody drew the four poster curtains in the middle of the night, I closed my eyes and waited for the end. I did not care who did it, I just wanted it done.
“Tom,” I heard instead.
With unprecedented sorrow, I opened my eyes. You were breathless, and you were holding the diary I had left on my nightstand. I could not stand to look at you, so I turned away. If you wanted to kill me, I thought, you’d have to do it to my back.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
“Leave,” I managed. I had a fever, or it felt like that, and my body was cold and aching.
“Are you sick?”
“Leave,” I thought I said, but maybe it was only in my head.
“You don’t look well.”
Anger rose up in me, and I turned to face you.
“What else do you want from me? Can’t you see you’ve ruined me?”
“Me?” you breathed, and I wanted to stab you. I wanted to hold you, my disease so fierce, it tore through all the rest.
“Isn’t that what you came here for?”
“I came here to kill you,” you said, letting the curtains fall behind you.
“So do it.”
You didn’t move. You didn’t speak.
“Do you have any idea what you did to me?” I asked, my voice a whimper.
“I do,” you said, and I believed you.
“Did you know?”
“I didn’t,” you said, and I believed you.
“Can you feel it, too?”
“I can,” you said, and I believed you.
“Then stop pretending,” I begged.
You crawled into my bed, held me for once. It was like coming home. The only home I’d ever had.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered in my ear, and I dug my nails into your back, hated you, wanted to tear you to bits. Or was that you?
* * *
“The man from the future,” I mocked, draping you over me in the depths of the night. You had taken to wearing the broken time-turner that had brought you here, and I could feel the cold metal through my thin nightshirt, could feel the magic stuck inside the motionless sand. “Here to kill me. Again and again.”
You laughed, settling next to me. Relief hung heavy in my limbs, for we hadn’t seen each other much that day. You had spent it all plotting with Dumbledore in his office, behind charms I could not see or listen through.
“Did you have a good day?” you asked, your hand slowly moving up my back, driving me insane.
“No,” I answered, not bothering to lie, throbbing with need, with want.
You looked up, searched for my eyes. “No?” you echoed, and I smelt the firewhiskey on your breath. It was my turn to laugh.
“Are you drinking with that old git now, too?”
“Just a bit,” you said, your words drawn out, your body hot.
“You’re a disgrace,” I scoffed, taking off your glasses.
“You’re a disgrace,” you said, one arm reaching under my nightshirt. I grabbed your neck and pulled you towards me until your lips were resting on my cheek.
“What could you possibly be doing with Dumbledore every night?”
“Just talking,” you lied, hand mindlessly leaving my skin to wrap itself around the time-turner.
Only then did I understand what a great threat you really were. How much more damage you could still do to me, after everything.
If I moved an inch, I could have kissed you. I waited, but you didn’t.
* * *
“You know, I could probably fix your horrible eyesight—”
“Tom?” you interrupted, rudely.
“Harry?”
“What is this?”
“What?”
You gestured to the space between us. “Is this the curse?”
“Is that what you call it?” I snickered.
“What do you call it?”
“The disease.”
“Because that’s so much better,” you mocked, but the sting of it was missing.
“It is,” I hummed, pulling you closer. I was scared all this talking about curses and diseases would make you leave. Or was that you?
You didn’t insist, and so I didn’t have to lie.
Neither of us fell asleep that night. The bed was too small, the blankets too hot.
“Why did he do this?” I asked when the morning pried through the cracks in the curtains.
“This?” you asked, bringing a hand to your scar.
I nodded, the pillow shifting under us.
“By mistake.”
I pushed your hand away and dragged my fingers across the rugged skin, then down across your jaw.
“Well. Isn’t that ironic.”
You let out a chuckle, pressed your cheek against my hand.
“It sure is.”
I wanted to kiss you. Or was that you?
* * *
“I want you to kill me,” you said.
I lifted my head from your chest. We had been at war for the better part of the hour, at war with each other and against ourselves. I was exhausted from keeping my lips from searching for yours, exhausted from keeping my fingers from opening your mouth and dragging it over mine. Just as tired as me, distracted by your own words, you gave in, passed your hand through my hair, down my neck.
“You want me to do what?” I managed, so dazed from your touch I could barely think.
“Kill me.”
I laughed, the humour of it all not entirely lost on me, not even in my sorry state.
“Maybe it will die instead,” you explained, needlessly.
“Maybe,” I conceded, rolling on my back and closing my eyes. It was true. I had considered the possibility. I had dreamt of killing you, once, dreamt of a world where I was not chained to you. But my chains ran long and they ran deep, so deep they had grown roots in my mind, and I could no longer imagine that world. Could no longer bear the thought of it. Though, you didn’t belong in this world anyway, did you?
If you wanted to leave me, then so be it. The bed jounced as I stood up.
“Don’t be like this,” you said, dragging me back to bed. “Don’t you want this gone as well?”
“Of course I do,” I lied. Or was that you?
* * *
We were in the Chamber. Had been for hours. Back then, you never spoke about the future, as if you were scared that, by speaking about it, you’d summon it back. But that day you wouldn’t stop talking. You spoke of people and places I had only ever glimpsed in your nightmares. You told me about your friends. You told me about the girl you had left behind, and your eyes glistened, and my heart clenched like a fist ready to strike.
“I think it’s time,” I said, each word a punishment.
There were no windows in the Chamber, but we both knew night had long fallen outside. You nodded.
You were afraid, and I was afraid too, and that fear—I took it, and I smothered it, and I became its master. Or was that you?
* * *
You didn’t die. I could see your chest heaving and there was something settling in my chest, something wide and mysterious, something solely mine.
* * *
I crouched down next to you. You opened your eyes slowly, painfully. Around us, lights reflecting in stagnant water flickered and danced. I waited for my freedom. With a terrible jolt, I realised it was not coming.
“Thank you,” you said, and wiped one solitary tear, a tear I had not felt. How strange that was to me then, that you could feel things I did not feel. You weren’t looking at me. You seemed far away, further than you’d ever been. I wished you had died instead.
You did not comment when I walked away. That night, you never came into the dormitory. I barely slept, your empty bed an infected wound in my mind, and prayed that my agony would soon be over, that I would soon be cured.
* * *
No longer diseased, no longer compelled to crawl into my bed, you stopped searching for me. Why, then, was I still sick? Why did it still howl inside of me, this anguish, this irrepressible yearning? Why couldn’t I look at you without crumbling, without trembling?
Around me, the world blurred as if I was underwater. I became a shell, flesh and what was left of my soul devoured by a disease that had proven stronger than me, a disease I dared not name, for I was not strong enough. Not then, and not today.
Others tried to console me, but I was inconsolable. Bodies came in and out of my bed. I didn’t bother trying to tell them apart, for none of them could fill the void you had left between my arms. When, from across the crowded Great Hall, I’d catch a glimpse of you, the void would stretch and stretch, and I’d be pinned to my seat by a magic hitherto unguessed, stronger than any Darkness, wider and more terrifying than anything I had ever known before.
Oh, how I hated you in those days. You had come unstuck in time, wearing strange clothes and speaking of strange times, and you had taken everything from me. And now there you stood, by Dumbledore’s side at the long teacher’s table, whispering into his ear, conspiring against me, sharing bread and wine like brothers while I withered away, discarded. You no longer came to classes, no longer slept in your bed. There were no more pretences. You had accomplished your mission, time traveller, you had defeated me. The day you walked into my room, you had me at your feet. I never stood a chance. Not in front of you, Harry Potter.
* * *
It had been weeks since I last touched you. Muggle bombs had fallen in Glasgow, and during the long nights I was haunted by dreams of walls shattering around me, of sirens screeching through the night, reverberating down the underground tunnels, down my brain, like bullets, the sour smell of fear still there when I woke up, drenched in sweat.
I saw them in the day too, the bodies lined up outside the orphanage, their muggle blood pooled in the gutters, like mud. And amongst them I saw my father, lean and handsome and dead, and I could smell him too, and so bad was the smell my stomach turned over, and I had to find the nearest toilet and vomit. The nausea stayed with me all day long, up in my throat, my father’s face tugging at the corner of my mind like a great, pitiless claw.
* * *
I had just been sick when you walked in the bathroom of the third floor. I was washing my face, a mess of half actions, of half thoughts. Our eyes met in the mirror.
“Get out!” I shouted, defenceless, your eyes an unbearable sight, a reminder of everything I’d lost, of everything I never had.
“Tom, I’m worried—”
“Get out of here before I hex you, Harry,” I said, and meant it too.
“Can I—”
I sent unnamed spells towards you, drove you out of my bathroom and out of my life, you who had forgotten me, abandoned me like my father and mother before you, who had never wanted me, your kindness but a farce, your arms around me nothing but lies, the curse that had chained us together no different, no better than the cheapest, most rudimentary love potion.
* * *
That night, I let Malfoy into my bed. He had been the favourite, a long time ago, when I still had the luxury of having favourites, before he’d bored me with his desperation. I’d despised him for it before, and I still despised him for it then, for now he reminded me of myself, of what I had been reduced to.
“Tom,” he moaned into my ear, eager to please me, all mine. “My lord.”
I pushed him away, heart beating faster.
“Don’t call me that,” I said. I had meant to command it, but my voice quivered.
Malfoy looked at me with drowning eyes. I wanted him to go away, for I hated him, hated everything he stood for, everything he thought I stood for, but I was too scared of the darkness that lay ahead. When I finally fell asleep, his skinny body foreign next to mine, I dreamt of my father, dead at my feet, dead by my hand.
* * *
Dumbledore knew. He had known for months, because you had told him. Had laid all my crimes, past and future, in front of him, so he could have his pick. Why had he not come yet? I had killed my father, and his father and mother. I was a murderer, and I had to be punished. Why had I not been punished yet?
“Tom, what’s going on?” Black asked when I broke into a sweat in the middle of dinner, my plate untouched.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, abandoning all pretence, all dignity. The castles in my mind, they had fallen, they had crumbled to the ground, and all that was left behind was this constant, irrepressible nausea. “I must be sick.”
“Come,” I heard Malfoy whisper. I let him pull me up, let him drag me out of the Great Hall while you looked away, looked everywhere but at me.
Once we were out of your sight, I broke free of his grip.
* * *
I Apparated from Hogsmeade into the thick, wet night. My father’s house stood tall against the storm. I left it behind me and started towards the cemetery, the cemetery I had only ever seen in your nightmares.
My robes were steeped in mud and rain, and each step was heavier than the last. Too soon, I arrived before my father’s tombstone. That I had not even waited to hear his voice, that I had struck him in the back, without looking into his eyes, all of this came back to me at once and sent me to my knees, quicker than any curse, than any bullet.
“Why?” I screamed into the night, into the rain, into the darkness of my soul. “WHY?”
Suddenly, you were there, holding me. I didn’t see you coming, didn’t feel you behind me. I don’t know for how long we stayed there, me, weeping on my knees before the grave of my father, and you, speaking words into my ears, words I did not want to hear, words I did not deserve. I didn’t feel the sharp rain cutting through our clothes, didn’t feel the coldness of the ground below me. After a while—a minute, maybe, or an hour—you stood.
“C’mon,” you said, pulling me up and wiping my tears with your hands, “we’ll freeze here.”
The pub down in the village was full and warm and you came back to the table with two pints filled to the brim. Your warming charm made me drowsy. Everything felt like a dream. I watched you as you slid onto the chair across from me, hiding me from the curious onlookers.
“Maybe not the best idea, coming here,” you said, following my gaze.
I took a sip of beer.
“I don’t appreciate you following me,” I said, for I had nothing else to say, but needed to fill the silence, somehow, so I wouldn’t think about what just happened.
“You’re not allowed to leave Hogwarts, Tom. As you well know.”
“Why didn’t you stop me, then?” I asked, and took another sip.
Registering both what I said and what I hadn’t, you removed your fogged up glasses and took your time wiping them with the hem of your robes. You regarded your work, then put your glasses back on.
“Dumbledore told me your grades are falling.”
I choked on my drink. “Because that’s what you and Dumbledore do? Discuss my academic career?”
“We’re just worried about you.”
“Are you, now? More or less worried than when I was planning to take over Britain?”
You looked at me sternly. As if I was a child. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I did feel like a child.
“What about your grades?” I retaliated. “I haven’t seen you in class lately.”
“Tom, I’m twenty. And you need to finish your education.”
I chanced a laugh. It did not turn into a cry, which was good.
“I can’t believe you and that stupid old git waste your time talking about my education.”
You waved your hand in the air, startling the man at the next table.
“He feels responsible.”
“Because he let a twenty year old from the future into my dorm to kill me?”
“Something like that,” you muttered.
Everybody in the pub was looking at me. I finished my beer.
“Did you tell him you used to come to sleep with me, too?”
I thought you wouldn’t answer but after a beat, you said, “I did. I was quite worried about that.”
Outside, the storm had settled. The night was black, impenetrable. I leaned back against the wall and forced my mouth into a smile.
“Guess who took your place.”
“I’d rather not,” you said, and looked away. It wasn’t, but it felt like a victory, back then.
* * *
You often came to me after that. We took to walking around the grounds in the long afternoons. Sometimes, you tried to talk to me about the orphanage, which you had seen in my nightmares. I hexed you the first time you tried, and every single time afterwards. Sometimes, you talked about a cupboard.
“And you grew up there because I killed your parents?”
You slowed almost to a stop. I did the same.
“You didn’t kill my parents.”
“Yet,” I said, an inside joke of sorts.
You didn’t laugh.
“You won’t kill them anymore,” you said, staring me down. The shadows lengthened on the grass while we made our way back to the castle. We parted soon after that, falling apart from each other in the opposite direction. The moment your footsteps disappeared behind the corner, I burst into tears. I wept all the way to the dungeons, wept for the monster I would have become had you not travelled fifty years back in time to kill it. The monster I saw in your nightmares, the monster I still see in mine, every night.
* * *
“Did you ever cast a Patronus?”
We were by the lake, in the blazing midday sun. Those days, you insisted on bringing some revision checklists you had stolen from some other student, and pestering me with them. I looked up from my book, annoyed. You were playing with the time-turner, eyes on the cursed papers.
“No,” I said curtly, then turned back to my book.
“It’s a must in Defence. I can teach you, if you want.”
“As a parting gift?”
I had not expected to say it, and you had not expected to hear it. We were silent for a while. I lifted my wand, and cast a Patronus.
“Show off,” you said, but smiled as you watched the snake glide across the surface of the water. “What did you think about?”
“Killing you.”
You laughed.
“I’m glad to see you have acquired a sense of humour since you started spending time with me,” I said, the words easy in my mouth, my chest light, for I had betrayed nothing.
“C’mon, tell me,” you said, your arm an afterthought against my shoulder.
I could have told you, then. I could have told you that I didn't need to think of anything, that being next to you was enough to keep away the darkness, the sorrow, the sadness. I could have let you see the true form my Patronus would have taken, before I forced it into the one I wanted it to take.
I didn’t. And now, as I write these words on the last pages of the diary that once held half my soul, it is too late.
* * *
“What are you going to do after Hogwarts?”
We were in your private chambers, next to the teacher’s sleeping quarters. The sun was high in the sky. Two lone thestrals were racing above the Forest, going in circles, higher, always higher.
I was not in the mood to play games.
“I don’t know.”
“You have to think of something soon. You’ll need to fend for yourself.”
You were sprawled on your bed, that cursed time-turner wrapped around your neck like a noose.
“Stop patronising me,” I said while one of the thestrals plunged into the canopy.
“You need to understand—”
I stood up. All the way to the dungeons, I hoped you’d follow me, and all the way there, I felt a wrathful disappointment.
* * *
“I might be going soon,” you said the week before exams, leaving it up to me to infer the meaning of your oblique remark. I inferred it alright.
“Very well,” I said, and covered my eyes with my arm to hide them from the blinding light.
“The time-turner’s almost working again,” you added. I hated to hear the guilt in your voice. I hated to think you knew how much you were hurting me, then.
“And it only took Dumbledore ten months to fix it.”
“Well. Almost. I’ll need to go somewhere else to fix it.”
“So go.”
We were silent for a long time.
“Do you want to revise for the Transfiguration exam?”
“I’d rather die.”
“OK.”
Another moment, so long it felt like all my life could fit in it, passed.
“Tom, I—”
I removed my arm from my face and turned to you.
“I want to sleep with you,” I said, and only after realised my heart was galloping.
You looked at me as if you had just come out of a dream. “What?”
“I want to sleep with you,” I repeated. “You’re leaving, anyway. So why not?”
* * *
“A glass of … something?” you asked. We were in your chambers. You looked nervous, but didn’t try to hide it, so you must have been less nervous than I was.
“A glass of whatever you’re having, thank you. You don’t have to be awkward about it.”
“I don’t?” you asked, annoyed, but relaxed into a smile nonetheless.
I accepted the glass, then grabbed your arm and pulled you into my arms. In the months I hadn’t touched you, I had forgotten how to.
“You don’t,” I said, solely to cover the sound of my heart. “It doesn’t mean anything, anyway.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” you echoed.
* * *
Before you left, you asked me if I wanted you to stay. I laughed. Laughing seemed easy enough, in your borrowed bed, in your borrowed arms. You didn’t insist. You didn’t know it was all it would have taken.
* * *
You crossed the ocean, and for six months I had no news of you. I did not know whether you were still here or whether you had gone back to your time. Then last night you showed up on the doorstep of this filthy house I can barely afford. You kissed me on the threshold, pushed me into my own bed, undressed me like a precious gift. You slept with me, and held me, and in the morning, you asked me,
“Were you in love with me, Tom?”
If I had told you the truth, would you have stayed?
Tom Riddle
London, 1 January 1944
The rain is piercing. On my way to King’s Cross, I walk by men dressed in suits hiding under dripping awnings, soldiers hailing taxis, people queuing around the corner for bread. I did not bring a suitcase. There is nothing that I own that I wish to take with me.
Waiting at a junction, my gaze falls upon my own reflection in a shop window. I am young and lean and alive. I will never forgive myself for my crimes, but the fact that Harry has forgiven me is—maybe—enough. In whatever future he is in now, I hope the memories of the one he came from have long faded. I hope they feel like nothing but a bad dream. Maybe one day, so will these moments that I am living now.
The train station is crowded. I can see the queues for the ticket office from the other side of the hall. People around me are complaining, but I am in no hurry. I shall buy a ticket for the first train out of here, and never return. In whatever future Harry is in now, I don’t want him to ever see me again. I don’t want him to see me grow old, or mean, or mad.
As I step into the queue, I notice from the corner of my eye a familiar sight. Between Platforms 9 and 10 there is a wall, a wall like all the others. I have not thought about the first time I took the train to Hogwarts in many years, but for some reason it all comes back to me now. For some reason, I cannot help myself but want to say goodbye. I step out of the queue and walk onto Platform 9¾.
It’s empty, save for one solitary figure in the distance. I look around but, without the smoke from the train and the sound of laughter and conversation, it doesn’t feel quite the same. It doesn’t feel quite real.
“Tom.”
A cry escapes me. When I turn around, and see Harry, I am convinced I’ve gone mad. It’s only when I feel his arms around me, and smell the familiar scent of pine, and hear the familiar sobs, that I let myself believe it.
“Tom,” he moans into my chest. He’s crying. Why is he always crying?
“I don’t understand,” I say, and take a step back. “I thought you’d left.”
He covers his face with his hands and shakes his head. I bite my lip. Why then, I want to scream, did you tell me you would?
“I just came back.”
“You what?”
He takes off his glasses and wipes his tears.
“Sorry. I’m still a bit confused.”
I don’t say anything. I just now see that he’s wearing strange clothes. His hair is shorter. There are new lines around his mouth, lines that weren’t there yesterday morning.
“I would have come back sooner, but the time turner broke again,” he laughs, as if there’s anything funny about that. “So I spent a year fixing it. Again.”
A terrible thought occurs to me.
“Did you see me? Did I—”
He shakes his head.
“I didn’t. I looked everywhere. You left London today and nobody heard from you after that.”
Relief spreads through me. I want to cry, and swallow so that I won’t. Harry’s looking for something in his pockets.
“I only found this,” he says, and hands me a notebook, the notebook I left behind that morning.
With shaky hands, I open it at the end, see the time-eaten paper that had crumbled away at the edges, the last words almost faded.
If I had told you the truth, would you have stayed?
My chest is heaving, full of something it has never felt before. I burst into tears. He grabs me into his arms.
“Don’t cry,” he says, kissing my eyes, my nose, my lips. “Don’t cry, Tom,” he echoes, and only then I hear in his voice that he’s crying too, the hypocrite.
“You’re a disgrace,” I say between sobs, looking up at his wet eyes.
“I know,” he says, holding me tight, “I am a disgrace.”
“You are,” I say, and I wrap my arms around him, hold on to him so that he can never slip away again.
“I’m your disgrace,” he says, and I kiss him.
We take the first train out of London. He falls asleep on my shoulder while the countryside flows past the window. Nobody will hear about us again. History will forget us. Our life will be filled with love.
