I Know You

by piratamaia

Summary:

Harry has had a few rough years after the Battle of Hogwarts and the defeat of Voldemort, with relationship problems, and not settling in the Auror Corps. That was until he began working for the Department of Mysteries. He sets up a scheme to return in time to understand the Dark Lord better... but he finds a Dark Lady instead.

Notes:

• Inspired by Unseen Perspective by Tendrael

So, this is very much a prompt. I was very much inspired to write a fem!Voldemort story but didn't know where to start. Things have changed. I'd love to hear you guys's thoughts on this chapter, to see where I should take this next. Maybe there will be slash, maybe there won't. But regardless I hope you enjoyed this first chapter, be sure to comment, still not fully set on the course, so feel free to do suggestions or simply say if you liked this approach! That's pretty much it, enjoy.

Chapter 1: Nothing Worse than Seeing You

The cold wind almost swept the hood from her head. Hogsmeade at this time of year was unforgivingly icy.

And Lady Voldemort's mood was as icy as the weather itself.

Her anger towards Albus Dumbledore had always been present, ever since she grew up just enough to question why he needed to be at that orphanage. And Dumbledore never trusted her, especially after the Chamber of Secrets incident.

Tam had known Dumbledore was aware of her part in the incident, though she had no good proof. The Transfiguration professor also knew that Tam knew the extent of her knowledge. But again, there was nothing she could do to prove it, especially after setting Hagrid up. In hindsight, she had to thank fate for that. To find out that the half-giant was raising an Acromantula underneath his bed? That oaf was a danger to society! But it had coincided with the attacks on muggleborns, so she could not complain.

Voldemort took a heavy breath as she walked through the snowy ground in the direction of the Hog's Head. To see that Dumbledore was just as insufferable as he had been decades ago was disheartening. Dismissing her completely from the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had been surprising. Voldemort at least expected a postponement. Something that would – in theory – give her hope. But a straight no? That wasn't what she had foreseen for the night.

But while her pride was damaged, it was nothing compared to the real prize of the night. Making the Diadem into a Horcrux... it had been so demanding of her being. But it had been accomplished. And she wouldn't let such efforts go in vain. The Room of Requirement was just the perfect place to store his newest Horcrux.

In truth, Lady Voldemort was tired. She was aware that Horcruxes could wither your humanity away, even more so than mere killing...

But never before had she longed so much for a glass of firewhiskey. Never before had she felt as tired as a normal human would be.

Finally, she arrived at the pub owned by the ever-watching brother of the headmaster. Aberforth didn't care about who came to his place if they didn't cause problems, so it was a place they could gather without much issue, even if the owner sang like a sparrow in the rain the moment he saw something suspicious.

What she failed to understand was why on EARTH were his Knights of Walpurgis shouting like drunken fools at the table where they had been seated since sunset?

"Tam!" Mulciber called when he spotted him. "How did it go?"

Voldemort tried as hard as she could to ignore the looks from the pub's other customers. "What do you think you are doing?!" She shouted-whispered.

"We were simply celebrating your new job, wanker." Avery said. Why did she let them still speak to her like that? Sure, all of them – apart from Dolohov – had been schoolmates, but they had shown more respect in Hogwarts than now.

"I didn't get it." She announced, and the mood at the table subsided immediately.

"Oh." Rosier voiced. Voldemort almost wanted to facepalm.

"Did the Headmaster not trust you?" Dolohov asked. He was the only one who seemed sober, and coincidentally, the one who most respected her. Perhaps because he was a few years younger, perhaps because he was foreign and only met Voldemort at the peak of her abilities, or simply because of true devotion to the cause. Something along those lines. "It does not surprise me, my lady."

"No, it is indeed not a shock, Antonin." The last thing she wanted was to refer to the other morons by their given names. "I hope you owled Lestrange as I requested, Avery?"

"Huh?" It was clear that the man was daydreaming. Voldemort didn't know if she wanted to either hex or punch the soberness back into their bodies. "Yes. Yes, I did. The fool took some time to answer. He's afraid of you."

"Afraid that you'll convert his kids." Nott was the one closest to sobriety after Dolohov. "You know how kids are, after all..."

"Far easier to convince idealistic teenagers to fight rather than fully grown wizards and witches." Voldemort mused, inspecting her holly wand. "I have heard much about his two sons. And the Black girl."

"She is already betrothed to the older Lestrange boy," Mulciber said, some semblance of balance returning to his body. "They are seen everywhere together already. Mostly terrorizing students."

"Even some that aren't mudbloods," Nott added.

"I will keep an eye on them," Voldemort assured them. "For now... who will be the kind soul that will bring me a glass of firewhiskey? I ask as a friend, not as your mistress."

Though she was sure she would murder them if none brought the alcohol her body craved. Thankfully, Dolohov made headway for her.

And Lady Voldemort let herself get intoxicated for the night.

...

Lestrange Manor was acceptable.

Voldemort had visited many wizarding homes, some more prestigious than others. It wasn't her first time here, having visited in her seventh year during winter break. Reginald Lestrange was someone she had trusted as much as he could trust one of his servants. He wouldn't go as far as to call them her friends when reflecting on his mind... only in public, and even then...

Lestrange was clearly sceptical of her and her motives. He was the only one who had inquired Tam about the Gaunt ring when Tam had appeared with it on her finger after the murder of her family and the imprisonment of Morfin, seemingly because of the Peverell crest engraved in the ring itself. But Tam knew it went deeper than that. Tam had rarely mentioned her lineage to her followers in school, only that she was a half-blood. But Lestrange soon realized she was a Gaunt or at least part Gaunt.

But the time of Lestrange senior had passed. Voldemort was much more interested in the young Lestranges. Brothers. Rodolphus, the most undesirable student in Hogwarts. Sorted into Slytherin, he constantly went after members of all houses, especially muggleborns. At this rate, he spent more time in detention than in classes.

Then there was Rabastan. Less prone to being caught, though just as brutal, a bit more subtle if anything. Also being a snake, they both seemed decent for being the bedrock of her new Knights of Walpurgis.

But that wasn't all. The one that caught his eye was the Black girl, the daughter of Cygnus and Druella. Cygnus had been a known quantity, after all. How can one not notice a Black when they're only two years below you in Hogwarts?

She was the oldest of three sisters. Bellatrix was her name. She was the firebrand pure-blood revolutionary he desperately needed in his ranks. One thing was smooth talking to a bunch of bigoted aristocrats about how they needed to convince the entire Wizengamot to pass legislation against muggleborns. One interesting thing about these British purebloods was how differently they thought from Grindelwald. Where the Dark Lord had proclaimed the right of mages to rule over the muggles, British purebloods only wanted to keep the outsiders out. No grand conquest, no revolution.

And Tam couldn't do with that.

Neither could Lady Voldemort now. No, in her pursuit of immortality and ultimate power, the only things these rich families could offer her were, unsurprisingly, funds. Yes, many had personal libraries that contained useful information, but Tam had spent two decades travelling the world in search of the oldest scripts and texts on magic. She knew more than all but two wizards in the world, and perhaps just one. One she had seen the other day, and the other was locked up in a prison of his creation. Not a concern to her.

Her knowledge of magic went far beyond simple spells and curses. What she was more interested in was rituals, oaths, everything beyond the flashing lights. That line of thought led her to acquire her Horcruxes. And in her pursuit of power, she didn't want to deal with some stuck-up wannabe nobles who'd only screech about muggleborns but also not do anything about it.

After some time, the gates to the Manor opened, and Voldemort stepped inside, already spotting a figure approaching her from a distance. Undoubtedly Lestrange. He was just as she remembered. Not too tall, growing fatter each day, and dirty blonde hair that was inching closer and closer to grey.

"Tamsin! How are you?" Lestrange called, extending a hand. Voldemort raised an eyebrow.

"I am fine, Reginald. Am I just a business associate to you?"

Lestrange seemed to hesitate. "No, I... I simply wanted to be cordial-"

"Skip the pleasantries." Voldemort pretty much commanded. "We must talk."

"Of course, my lady..." They strolled together towards the mansion, heading to the main living room. Voldemort could feel the pureblood was fuming. Typical. As much as they respected someone more powerful than them, they did so reluctantly. Especially because Tam wasn't a pureblood herself. But that was the nature of these bigots, especially those who went to Slytherin house, nurtured from a young age to look over themselves above all.

Voldemort sat on the immense couch present in the living room. Lestrange fetched his wand and cast something almost silently, if not for the movement of his lips. An ethereal blue light exited his wand and made its way through the wall. She shouldn't be surprised he was capable of performing a Patronus, but no animal form could be seen. That was magic Tam had chosen not to indulge herself in... considering the risks of performing a Patronus out of a moment of ecstasy instead of pure happiness like the spell demanded.

And Lady Voldemort had barely felt true happiness like one would normally. She certainly didn't have a single memory to choose from that wasn't things like discovering the Chamber, creating the Horcruxes... and she wouldn't dare to harm her integrity by choosing these memories.

Not long after, three young people walked into the room, taking a seat on the opposite couch to where Lestrange Sr. and she were sitting. The two Lestrange brothers were both similar, with the youngest, Rabastan, sporting a paler face and longer hair. The one that really stood out was the curly-haired witch who looked at Voldemort with intensity. Something told the Dark Lady that not even the Cruciatus could make her cower.

"Children," Lestrange started. "This... is the associate of mine I told you about. Her name is Lady Voldemort." The older man paused awkwardly, trying hard to suppress the discomfort that came with the name. Voldemort herself loved the effect her name had on her oldest friends. "You will treat her with the utmost respect and obedience."

"Why, Mr. Lestrange?" The girl, Bellatrix, questioned rather insubordinately.

It really seemed like Lestrange Sr. wanted to apparate away, if only to not deal with the repercussions of an angry Dark Lady. "Just do it, Bella. Now... my lady, what is it that you wanted to talk about?"

"Well, Reg..." She dared to use the same nickname she had called him up until the sixth year. "I was hoping to talk with your enlightened children and daughter-in-law about the contributions to our cause since you've been rather cryptic about it all."

"Well..." Lestrange was clearing paling. "I just haven't been too... enthusiastic... I suppose you could describe it like that... but this can be rectified..."

Voldemort tilted her head. "Oh, is that so? Perhaps your children might be more committed." She turned to the two boys, who both looked very much nervous. "I hear about your endeavours in Hogwarts. How you made a habit of torturing muggleborns with acts that can only be classified as pranks due to you being legally minors. Really, I have heard what you did to a Ravenclaw girl... Such cruelty in a young mind..."

"We were only defending ourselves from the filth." Rodolphus blurted. "We have that right."

"Yes, of course..." Voldemort eyed Lestrange Sr., who seemed incapable of speaking. "You will soon finish your education. When that happens, I would love to have you three attending a meeting of my Knights of Walpurgis."

"What is that?" Rabastan quietly asked. Voldemort curled her lips upwards.

"The best hope for a purer society. We strive to keep everything Muggle out of wizarding society. If this fight cannot be fought on legal terms," She chuckled. "We will use any means necessary to further our influence and power."

"And what then?" Bellatrix asked, arms folded and legs crossed. The girl had such a sceptical look, it was almost cute if it wasn't also terrifying.

"Then we will have a society free of the filth and degenerates that currently infest our education, government, and culture." Voldemort made an effort to look directly into Bellatrix's eyes. Like all trained purebloods, she had some barriers, but her legilimency breached through them easily. She only dived into Bellatrix's surface thoughts to see what was puzzling the teenager. "I suppose you're wondering who I truly am, aren't you, Ms. Black?"

"Yes." Bellatrix seemed surprised she got that right, so it meant her legilimency had been undetected.

"I am the Heiress of Slytherin. I am the herald of Death, Ms. Black. I will be the one to bring the filth to their knees. And the blood traitors, especially... they will suffer. Let it be known ." The last bit was spoken in Parseltongue, if only to reinforce her claim. Bellatrix seemed not entirely convinced, but she nodded.

"And what do you expect of us in that organization of yours?" Rodolphus asked.

"First and foremost... your submission." Voldemort could see that the concept made the three teenagers uncomfortable. "Your complete devotion to me, above everything... but your marriages, of course." In truth, Voldemort would adore to have her being a follower's priority even above their own spouses... but alas, she knew how much these pureblooded aristocrats valued marriages. And she needed to convince the already-betrothed couple in front of her. "To worship me as your mistress, and to do my bidding. And in return, as a merciful lady should do, I will extend my protection to you and share my knowledge on the deepest and most interesting forms of magic."

The brothers seemed to be contemplating the offer, but Bellatrix was quick to speak again. "You say you're acting in defence of us purebloods, right?"

"Of course." Voldemort thought she had an idea of where the Black girl was trying to get.

"You said you're the Heiress of Slytherin. Are you a Gaunt? I thought the last alive member was Morfin."

"Don't mind her too much, my lady." Lestrange Sr. was quick to drawl. "She is infatuated with researching old family trees."

"It is not a problem, I assure you. So, Bellatrix... I am a Gaunt... though I have renounced that part of me, I'd much prefer not to be associated with a family of inbreds and low-lifes, even if pureblooded. My life only matters beyond the point where I became what I am." For the first time, she let her eyes shift from the original brown that she was born with to what they truly were now. Crimson orbs that made both brothers widen their own eyes in amazement. And Bellatrix herself was staring vividly at her, almost entranced by her gaze.

"What you said was very convincing, Lady Voldemort," Bellatrix spoke the name with the respect Lestrange had demanded of her. "We'd all be very interested to talk more in the future."

Voldemort allowed herself to smile. "Good. Then I'll believe our conversation here is over." She turned to Lestrange Sr. "Thanks for your cooperation, Reginald. We will be seeing each other soon... won't we?"

Lestrange Sr. swallowed. "Yes, of course."

Her grin could only ever grow.

...

She was tired.

It had been a very busy two days, after all. Returning to England like they did, then her rejection by Dumbledore... after that, it was the Horcrux and all that came with it, and finally her visit to Lestrange Manor. She had retired to a room she had rented after converting some galleons to pounds, much to the annoyance of the goblins at Gringotts. Of course, she could stay in any manor she wanted from her followers, but right now... all she wanted was to be alone.

Lady Voldemort was tired.

She allowed herself to take her upper robes off, sliding them down until they reached the ground. Despite approaching her fifties, Voldemort allowed herself to wear clothing that really wouldn't match well with the extremely conservative British witches like Walburga or Druella Black. Beneath her black robes, she wore a sleeveless black shirt along with black slacks. Sighing, she removed her shoes and faced herself in the mirror, examining her pale face, brown hair so dark it was almost black, and piercing red eyes.

Sometimes, she would do that to see if what she was doing was worth it.

Voldemort never regretted her kills... she never regretted pursuing immortality. Death was her ultimate foe, the one she had now vanquished, even if it had cost her soul.

But maybe it left a sour taste in her mouth to put up with the purebloods she at best tolerated. At worst, she despised them.

She found their bigotry incessant. Muggles were... are... always an unknown quantity. Always volatile. Always coming to prejudice. Not so different from the purebloods, in fact. No, Voldemort admired some Muggle creations and inventions. Plus, the music always got to her.

But she knew quite well what the fear of what was different did to Muggles. And to purebloods as well, as it seemed. No matter. It was her best bet to get support. She had aspirations of having the British Isles as her fiefdom, but she would never want to be at the helm. Publicly, at least. Having a puppet minister to put up with the ICW was enough as she continued her pursuit of power.

Much of her necessity of starting a war didn't actually come from a threat posed by the ministry. In fact, considering how connected she was with the pureblooded elite made the Ministry a gateway to even more knowledge and power.

No... it was Dumbledore. It was always Dumbledore. He would never let another dark lord, or in her case, dark lady, rise. Especially not her. No, the old fool would always stand in direct opposition, if only for his personal reasons.

No matter. Wizards could live much more than Muggles, of course, but Dumbledore was still a mortal man. She was not a mortal woman. Perhaps she needed to be patient, wither down his assets, loyal followers, which he had, just as much as she had her Knights of Walpurgis, and spirit. It was weird to have time on her side, but that was the case. Her next step was to meet the Malfoys. Abraxas was an interesting figure, but like most pureblooded families, she was interested in the young heirs, filled with the fire of youth, and the desire to rule the world... and she wanted to humble them just enough for them to become loyal servants. Next Thursday, the Malfoys would be visiting Athens, and Voldemort would be there.

All was well, wasn't it?

It seemed as such.

Was it?

Looking at the mirror again, she narrowed her eyes at her reflection for a moment, but soon her eyes drifted to where the mattress was located.

Turning on her heels, she drew her wand and cast a silent Diffindo, but was shocked to see that no spells exited her holly wand. How could this be? She hadn't had the time to think. Her target, undoubtedly under an invisibility cloak, tackled her to the ground. Voldemort tried wandless magic, something she always used as a last resort, as much skill as she had, it burned through her magical core like wildfire. But nothing happened. Her attacker kept holding her by the shoulders, only his hands visible as they kept her pinned to the ground.

"What is this?! Who dares?" She yelled, trying to keep the intimidating position she always held. But in truth, her heart was beating faster at the thought of getting killed. Not only because of her progress being destroyed, but... this was something she could never really find out, but what would happen when something like a killing curse hit her body? Would her soul detach from it? What will she become?

She did not want to find out the hard way. No. There must be something at play here. There were anti-apparition wards, of course, but anti-spell wards? Was this person following her? Was he a past enemy? Dumbledore would never do a sneak attack like that, much less have the physical strength to hold her so firmly. Her shoulders were starting to bend under the pressure, and she bit her tongue hard not to whimper in pain.

"I dare." The person said with a masculine voice, and Voldemort looked to where its face probably was located beneath the cloak. "And always will. But this is just too funny."

With that, the person retreated, making Voldemort sigh in relief, but the pain remained after being compressed to the floor like that.

Her attacker removed his cloak, revealing a face that wasn't too unfamiliar, for some reason. He had dishevelled raven hair, white skin that wasn't as pale as hers, and striking emerald eyes. The man smiled, and at that, she knew exactly who this person was. Well, at least the family he belonged to.

"You're a Potter." She spat, getting up from the ground. "Fleamont will pay dearly for this, you insolent fool. You have no idea what you're playing at!" She searched for her wand but found it to be safely swirling in the supposed Potter's fingers.

"Nah, that's not happening." The man stated. "You're not leaving here, Tam."

Voldemort's eyes flashed dangerously at the mention of her given name. "You dare-"

"You always say this, even here." He chuckled, inexplicably throwing her wand back to her. "Yes, I dare. To me, you're nothing but... Tamsin, right? I'll have to get used to it."

The man's behaviour seemed abnormal. Half of what he was saying and doing didn't make any sense to the Dark Lady. It seemed like the only option would be to negotiate since there were seemingly extremely powerful wards that kept her from using her magic at all.

"Look, Potter..." She started. "I demand to know what game you're playing. Who are you anyway? I have never seen you at the Wizengamot... I'm told that Fleamont's child hasn't even entered Hogwarts, so you can't be him-"

"You're right, I'm no one you know. But I am a Potter, just one from..." The green-eyed man paused, trying to find better words. "Beyond time."

Voldemort tilted her head, her murderous intent subdued on the face of his words. "You mean... You are not from this time?"

The man smiled, sitting on the bed. "You're a scumbag, Tamsin, but you're not dumb."

"That should be impossible. Time-turners-"

"Time-turners are imperfect, and where I come from, they have been destroyed anyway."

"So how? How can someone go back to a time they aren't known?" Voldemort hated to be in the dark, but that's where she was, forced to beg for answers from this insolent boy. He looked just like he could be a bit over twenty. Unless this was another dark lord in the making... no one could be this powerful, surely? To come back in time and ward the hotel room to prevent her from casting spells ...

"Well, that's classified." The man smiled. "But let's just say I've done unspeakable things to be here."

Ah... There it was. Voldemort had heard much about the Department of Mysteries. She had a contact in there, someone who was aligned with the ideology she was promoting... But even then, her informant – whom Avery didn't even have the decency to reveal the name of – only really spilled information about the ministry itself, and not much more than that. Nothing about the job he actually did, which was annoying. Perhaps if he took the Dark Mark, she could make him tell.

"So, what do you demand of me, Potter?"

"That, Tam, is a complicated question. And the name's Harry, by the way." He said, bringing his hands together. Voldemort noticed a weird scar on his right hand. "I am going to be very blunt. I'm here to either stop you or study you."

"You think you can stop me?" Voldemort asked, half offended, half curious. What was this Harry Potter capable of?

"Well, of course. I am your vanquisher." Harry smiled, bringing the utmost confusion to the Dark Lady.

"My... vanquisher..." She repeated the words almost foreign to her.

"Oh, yeah, bet you'd never thought you'd meet your nemesis." The way Potter was so confident was infuriating. "Yeah, I beat you. However, there is more nuance to that. I came back to see what went wrong since the headmaster thought showing your family issues wasn't quite cutting it." Harry rolled his eyes, and Voldemort could only imagine the 'headmaster' he was referring to was Dumbledore. "So, first, why are you a woman?"

Now the Dark Lady found herself completely lost, like she had been when she was a first year and an older boy had asked her what a bludger was. Tam had been so happy to hex him three years later while he was snogging someone.

"I beg your pardon? Why wouldn't I be a woman?"

"Well..." Harry looked a tad bit uncomfortable. "Where I'm from... you're very much not a woman."

"You cannot be serious." She groaned. Voldemort was aware Merope had expected a son, so much so that she had a name in mind. But when a girl had come out of her womb instead, she was even lost on what name she should give her. Settling for the female version of Thomas was so uncreative that she came up with her dark lady name in her third year, trying as hard as possible to flee from any traces of her past.

"Dead serious," Harry stated seriously. "You look significantly better, too. Even when you applied to become DADA teacher, you seemed like a human snake. I dare to say you're looking socially acceptable."

Voldemort looked down at her figure and briefly eyed herself in the mirror. Apart from her red eyes and paler face, she looked as she had her whole life. A female version of her father. Even now, mere weeks after her 44th birthday, she looked stunning; she knew that much. As much as she could without caring too much.

"Then what?" Voldemort wore her upper robes again, not feeling comfortable with Harry intently staring at her. "Will you kill me?"

"First, if I wanted to do that, I would have done that already." His cheek was unbearable. "Second, I couldn't be bothered to gather your Horcruxes now." At that, Voldemort froze. "What? I mean, I've told you I'm your vanquisher. What would I've done against you if I didn't take care of your soul pieces?"

How could she come up with an answer for that? This boy not only proclaimed to be her vanquisher but backed his words with the declaration that he knew about her most private secret by rendering her useless. Right now, she was at the complete mercy of this unknown quantity.

"What do you really want, Harry Potter?" The name exited her tongue with weight. "You say you're my vanquisher... perhaps we can forge a better path together..."

"Not happening," Harry stated, his previous amusement vanishing. "I'd say it's nothing personal, but it is personal, Tam." He got up, approaching her menacingly. And Voldemort felt the menace. Without performing magic, she was hopeless to overpower a much taller and stronger man. If the rumours of the Unspeakable's training were correct, this was a force to be reckoned with. "You've been a problem, Tam. One that I think should be dealt with."

"You can't kill me," Voldemort whispered, more to herself as a reassurance.

"And neither can you." Harry smiled cruelly. "So, get comfy. You're not going to Greece any time soon."

"You can't stop me!" She raised her voice. "No matter who you are, Harry Potter!"

"Again, I already did. And consider your plans halted until I dissect you fully, Riddle."

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" Voldemort resorted to brute force, lunging at Potter. But he was unfortunately prepared, holding her by the wrists.

"You're embarrassing yourself." He stated, and he threw him onto the bed with force. "Thank me that I didn't throw you to the ground. Settle down, would you?"

"Settle d- do you have any idea of what you're doing?"

"I do." Harry once more grinned. "I will admit it's my first time dealing with you again since I saw your body, or I guess I should say Tom's body, collapse in the middle of the Great Hall." His words shook Voldemort more than she would like to admit. "But I know how to get under your skin. So... buckle up. I don't plan to return until I have what I need."

"And that is?" Voldemort found herself quietly asking. Harry's grin only grew, much to her dismay.

"We'll find out."

Chapter 2: Closer to Reality

Before, but technically after.  

Harry’s life after the 2nd of May, 1998, wasn’t exactly stellar. Of course, he had vanquished his mortal enemy as it was prophesied of him, and he worked tirelessly for three months in testifying against all sorts of people. Life in prison for Greyback, Dolohov, Rookwood, the Carrows, and who knew how many more. Thirty-seven years in Azkaban for Lucius Malfoy. One and a half years in Azkaban for Draco Malfoy. Amnesty for Narcissa Malfoy on his behalf. The reinstatement of Severus Snape’s image in the public’s eyes. A heavy fine for all Wizengamot members who had supported Voldemort. 

It had been too busy. The next years would be quiet in comparison. Auror training was harsh, but no harsher than the tribulations he and Ron had gone through their year hunting Horcruxes with Hermione or their average school years. He and his best friend had also decided not to go back to Hogwarts, despite Professor McGonagall inviting the entire 7th year for an “8th year” alongside Luna and Ginny’s class. 

Oh, Ginny... 

Things between the two had become weird after a while. Harry didn’t know if it was their busy schedules, after all, he became a full-time wizard-cop, and Ginny began her Quidditch career. Both of them had concluded maybe they didn’t have much time for one another... at least not now. Regardless, they remained friends like they had in the past, even if sometimes they remembered their times together in a way friends didn’t normally do. 

Eventually, however, it seemed like things were going back to normal... something he had never been used to ever since the Dursleys. And normal was terrible for his brain. Ginny was still too busy, perhaps even more so now, and unlike him, Ron was enjoying his job as an auror. 

And it all culminated in a Floo call he received at three in the morning and one at night at Grimmauld Place. Harry didn’t exactly like it, but he didn’t fancy buying another place for himself. As long as Kreacher was happy, he was content. 

The aforementioned Floo call had changed everything for him. At first, he thought it was a trap from Death Eater remnants to get him. But eventually, he realized it was the Department of Mysteries with a job offer. 

The training was Herculean, more demanding than anything he’d done in life. Harry could understand how Rookwood had been so tough in the past. Spells that he had no idea existed, other spells modified in creative and sometimes horrifying ways... But it all worked out. He became Unspeakable Potter. Ron and Hermione had known even before he told them, just by listening to ministry gossip. 

But at first, the job wasn’t too interesting, despite the training. Eventually, though, he understood why the DOM was called that. Dealing with conspiracies all over the world, working with similar departments from other magical governments... Harry, despite being on the receiving end of these missions, was finally happy. If the Auror Corps were the Muggle police, then the Department of Mysteries was MI6. 

So, when the head of the department, whom Harry and his colleagues knew as ‘Cole’, called him for a private meeting, Harry couldn’t believe it. Again, maybe this was a Death Eater conspiracy. His three years in the DOM had made him more paranoid than Moody, it turned out. But again, his worries had proven incorrect, as it was Cole who called him. 

The man in front of Harry had been shorter than him, not too much older, and chose not to wear any wizard attire. Overall, he looked more like a lawyer than the head of the wizard version of Mossad. 

“So, Mr. Potter,” Cole had said, drinking from the tea he had offered Harry. The younger man had refused, not because he thought it was poisoned or anything, but simply because he didn’t fancy tea right now. “You’ve been a very pleasant surprise.” 

“Have I?” Harry allowed himself to smile. “Well, I’ve just been trying to do my job.” 

“And you have. That night with the Lethifold infestation... To see your Patronus expelling them off was... a sight to see.” 

Harry had widened his eyes at that. “Wait, you were there?” 

“No. Of course not.” Cole smiled. “One of your colleagues leased the memory to me.” 

“Ah, that makes sense.” He had been at ease when he discovered his boss wasn’t watching him work. Because the way Harry operated as an Unspeakable was very different from that of an Auror. 

“But anyway.” Cole brought his hands together. “I’m here to bring you a proposition. You must have realized we were not quite... present, you could say, during the two wars against the Dark Lord.” 

“Yeah.” Harry had crossed his arms. When he first got into the DOM and saw how much they had their fingerprints in every aspect of magical society, he immediately wanted to know why they hadn’t stood up against Voldemort. Turns out, that was simpler said than done, and Harry had realized that eventually, even if begrudgingly. 

“We weren’t completely absent, however.” The chief of the DOM leaned back against his chair. “Since you and your friends destroyed the time-turners in ‘96, we’ve been researching ways of messing with time, if only to make the world a better place.” 

“Mhm. And I imagine you found out something.” Harry assumed that was the case, considering that the chief of the department wouldn't leak something like this without a reason. 

“We have a lead... but we want you to finish the research.” 

“Why?” The Man-Who-Conquered asked. “You know I am very much better on the field than in the research department.” 

“True, but you are very much multifunctional, Mr. Potter,” Cole smirked. “And for this research alone, we’ve authorized your close friend Hermione Granger to assist, considering her own experience with time-turners and her competency.” 

Harry had been surprised, but not too much. After all, 60% of Hermione’s file was information he had put there. “Right. So, what am I supposed to do? Reconstruct a time-turner?” 

“If that’s the way, perhaps.” Cole had said. “But we want a way for you, Mr Potter, to go back and study Tom Riddle closely. If anything, we want to test Ms. Simmons's theories on the multiverse and how time travel affects the present. And considering how insightful you were when adding information on Riddle’s file,” And that had been true. All he had gathered, from the Gaunts to Slughorn, to Dumbledore, to the orphanage, to him, Harry had documented. “We ask of you to engage in this mission. We trust in you to not lose to the one you already vanquished when you were younger and less prepared, and if you do win... well,” Cole smiled. “You’d be doing everyone a favour.” 

“So, should I just go back in time and kill Voldemort?” Harry questioned. “Because if that’s the case, what’s stopping me from just killing a pregnant Merope Gaunt? As immoral as that thought is, it’s the most efficient.” 

“True.” Harry liked that Cole didn’t disagree with him. “But don’t you agree that’s too easy?” 

Harry chuckled at the absurdity of the situation. “Alright, fine. But I want a pay raise. And that vacation Morris promised me after that dark wizard in Estonia.” 

“It will be granted.” 

And so, Harry and Hermione, the latter being convinced by the prospect of preventing Voldemort entirely, jumped on board to achieve a way of turning back time. Hermione needed to reassure Ron of what they were doing without spilling too many details, but thankfully, this was a mature man instead of the same boy who had been jealous of the Triwizard Tournament.  

Eventually, they got somewhere, using research of the Veil, documents about time turners, and just their ingenuity. It was a lot of effort and time, but after one year, seven months, and thirteen days, an explosion rocked Grimmauld Place, knocking both of them unconscious for hours. They were eventually woken up by Kreacher, who asked them right after about the weird portal standing in the middle of the living room. 

Harry immediately jumped and punched the air in celebration, while a dishevelled Hermione smiled widely, analysing their creation. The portal was very controllable, changing its shape and colour depending on which date you set it to go to. Using his Gryffindor courage – or perhaps just his lack of self-preservation – Harry jumped into the portal, seeing only darkness for a moment. He had chosen to go back to forty minutes before they woke up, and was amazed when he stepped out to find him and Hermione in the ground. Noticing he created a paradox, Harry smiled dumbly.  

But there were more pressing matters at hand. Could he go back? The portal he had come through had closed immediately as he fell through it, but he had chosen such a recent hour so that the risks wouldn’t be too huge. But clearly, he couldn’t travel through his body, which meant for a brief moment two Harry Potters coexisted. But he tried to cast the spell that opened the portal, and to his amazement, it worked. He looked to his hand, where he had scrambled the exact hour he had jumped through, hoping to return one second after. 

And to his utter amazement, it had worked. Harry was sure he saw the shadow of his earlier portal as his feet landed in front of a bewildered Hermione. 

“No way,” The bushy-haired woman had her mouth agape. “Unless you were an actual buffoon and set the portal to the exact moment you went-” 

“No, no.” Harry smiled. “Went back to when we were passed out. And it checks out.” 

Hermione jumped at him, embracing him tightly. “Finally! I mean, so much effort, if this didn’t go through, what would we do?” 

“I’d probably jump into the Veil and vent to my parents.” Harry fell to the couch, completely exhausted. After all, it was four in the morning. 

“So, what do we do now?” Hermione inquired, sitting beside him. “Should we tell your higher-ups?” 

Harry was thoughtful for a moment. Maybe he should... but then again, who else could be trusted with the knowledge that time travel was possible again, but on scales never again conceived to be possible? 

Alright, maybe Cole should be aware. 

“Look, maybe I should go back, and you tell my boss about it. He knows you’re involved, so you just need to go to the department and call for the mother ship.” 

“The mother ship?” Hermione echoed, threatening to crack into laughter. 

“Just do it, alright?” Harry felt ecstatic, like truly nothing could stop him. It was like he had drunk from Felix Felicis again. “I think we should begin gathering provisions. Then I can go whenever we want.” 

“Are you sure? It’s very late.” The dark bags under her eyes just proved how tired Hermione was. But Harry had too much adrenaline coursing through him to sleep right now. 

“I am.” He stated, and quickly fetched a bag, his invisibility cloak, and his secondary wand – previously owned by Draco Malfoy, probably necessary if he ever faced Tom, he didn’t want to find out what Priore Incantatem would do with his time travel spell in question after – and some other items like clothes and galleons he held at all times, and put it all in the bag. He then shrank the bag and stored it in his pocket. 

“When do you want to go?” Hermione asked, looking to where the portal had been previously, “Maybe when he was a kid? Maybe try and fix his problems before they arise?” 

“The bloke was killing pets when he was a toddler, Hermione. His problems began before he was even conceived.” 

“Yeah, yeah...” She thought for a while, pondering which time would be best. Harry wasn’t completely taken away from the idea of preventing Merope Gaunt from giving birth. Perhaps killing her was extreme, but maybe knocking some sense into the poor girl before she did something she’d regret. 

But then they wouldn’t have their answers. Harry knew exactly what got under Tom’s skin... but... by using the knowledge he gathered at the DOM... maybe he could play with fire a little bit. 

“I should confront an older Voldemort,” Harry suggested, causing Hermione to widen her eyes. “Before the war... but after he’s kinda established...” 

At first, it seemed like she would just flat-out label the idea as ludicrous, but it seemed like something crossed her mind. “When did he apply to become a professor? You said you saw Dumbledore’s memory of it, so...” 

“That’s it!” Harry smiled, but that soon faded. “But... well, I don’t actually know when that was.” 

“Maybe we could ask Dumbledore’s portrait?” She suggested. 

“I doubt we could do that without giving some explanations, something that we shouldn’t do. Here’s, let’s try something.” Harry cast the spell that summoned the portal, and sure enough, it worked. He then manipulated the portal to go to when Voldemort applied for the second time to become Hogwarts’s professor. To his amazement, the portal shifted even more than last time, taking the shape of a triangle and a deep crimson shade. 

“There’s just no way.” Hermione swallowed audibly. “So, is this it?” 

“Pretty much.” Harry took his invisibility cloak and covered everything but his head. If he could travel through time, he couldn’t let himself be seen, at least not in places like 12 Grimmauld Place, which was not owned by him but instead by the Black family. “Oh, what time is it?” 

Hermione looked at her wristwatch. “Four forty-three.” 

“Wait for me at four-forty-five.” Harry gave her a last smile. 

“Be careful out there, Harry!” 

“Always.” Then he covered the rest of his body with the cloak and dived into the weirdly triangular portal. What followed was a much longer wait, covered in the still bright red environment. When Harry began panicking that he might have found himself in a pickle, his feet met the ground abruptly. He was indeed at 12 Grimmauld Place, but immediately, he knew something was off. This wasn’t his home, noticing the house-elf heads suspended across the roof. From the direction of the bedrooms, he heard alarmed voices, so he chose to simply disapparate. Thankfully, there were no wards against apparition; otherwise, he would have some explaining to do. He chose to appear on the London street where the Leaky Cauldron’s entrance was located.  

Without knowing what year he was in, it would get problematic fast. So, imagine Harry’s shock when a few hours later, sitting at the Leaky Cauldron, he asked another client to read the Daily Prophet, checking the right after. 

1971 wasn’t right. It was January too, so while his parents weren’t even still at school, they’d soon be receiving their Hogwarts invitations. But it just didn’t make sense. In Dumbledore’s memory, he had been younger, and while his hair and beard were still long, they were also very much not grey. Of course, ten years was a long time, especially with war... but Dumbledore looked closer to when he had defeated Grindelwald than to when he fought Voldemort. 

In the Prophet’s later pages, he found some information about continued attacks and strange creature behaviour all across Europe. So, Voldemort was clearly at work here. But there were no mentions of Dark Lords or anything like it. 

He needed to go to the Department of Mysteries. 

And he did just that. Entering his real name at the Ministry wasn’t an issue, and he was soon headed to the DOM. To his complete shock, when he got there, he found none other than a younger version of Cole just leaving the main office.  

“Excuse me!” Harry called. Cole turned to him with a sceptical look. 

“Yes, may I help you, Mr...” 

“Potter.” Harry clarified. “White marble.” 

The way the DOM operated with codes and names to symbolize real meanings reminded Harry too much of Dumbledore’s passwords to the headmaster’s office, all candy names and such. But the way Cole widened his eyes was unlike what Harry had ever seen from the future head of the department. The other Unspeakable quickly composed himself and guided Harry inside. 

There, he explained everything. The other Unspeakables were amazed but agreed to be Obliviated by Cole, who wasn’t the head of the department yet, but he was the deputy. Harry questioned Cole about a Tom Riddle descended from the Gaunt line, but he frowned deeply at that. 

“I’ve heard of a similar name. A prodigy some years ago, when I attended Hogwarts. But it wasn’t a Tom at all.” 

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, confused. 

“Well... it seems like you messed up a part of the spell, Agent Potter.” Cole looked at him seriously. “We keep records of all British magical citizens, you know that much. There was never a Tom Riddle, apart from the one that was murdered by a certain Morfin Gaunt almost thirty years ago, who was, incidentally, a Muggle.” 

“Okay... but... You said there was someone you remember that matched my description.” 

Cole’s eyes flashed. “But there is. A certain Tamsin Riddle, current whereabouts unknown, but last seen in Birmingham."

In his head, it felt like hours trying to comprehend what he heard. Tamsin... Voldemort was a woman? No... this wasn’t right. He had fought Tom Riddle. He had seen the memories that showed Tom Riddle. This wasn’t right... unless. ..

“Oh, fuck.” Harry facepalmed. “I know what went wrong.” 

“Enlighten me,” Cole told him, crossing his arms. 

“I wanted to go back to when Tom, I mean, Tamsin, applied to become Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for the second time. But I didn’t have an exact date. So, I just willed the portal to figure it out for me. But...” 

“It seems like you didn’t simply discover a more efficient way of time travel... but also interdimensional travel.” Cole chuckled. “Oh, Mr. Potter, you amuse me heavily.” 

“Thanks.” Harry knew Cole wasn’t mocking him, which was good. “So, like I told you. Tom- Tamsin, damn it, she is responsible for the attacks, and will cause complete mayhem to the world for the next thirty years.” 

“We figured that much.” The not-so-older man told him. “But since you’re here now, why not lend us a hand? The reports we heard are very disturbing, and we wouldn’t want a catastrophic war to ravage Britain now.” 

“Yeah, I get it... it’s just...” Harry thought of making something up to excuse himself for fighting a completely different Voldemort, but when he thought about it, he wouldn’t be losing any time from his life. And he guessed it would be interesting to imagine Voldemort as a woman. Considering what he heard in the Prophet, it was safe to assume a war was brewing, so it couldn’t be too different. “Alright. I’ll help. Any leads that I should follow? 

“We have heard about someone applying for a Hogwarts position recently.” Cole smiled. “I believe they have an interview with the headmaster arranged for... 8 PM.” 

That was all Harry needed to hear. He got to the Hog’s Head at seven and found it easy to blend in. He noticed some familiar faces nearby. Especially those of Avery and Dolohov, though much younger. It wasn’t until eight thirty-six that someone else joined. Someone who made Harry’s heart skip a beat. 

This wasn’t Tom Riddle, that much was certain. The woman who strolled into the Hog’s Head was, however, eerily similar to the Dark Lord. It was her. Tamsin... was she still called Voldemort here? Probably, even without the mashing of the letters of his original name to create the one that most wizards of his age feared. 

She was still hooded, so Harry never got a good look at her face. But her voice seemed... oddly normal, as she scolded the Death Eaters for being completely hammered. Dolohov had fetched her a drink, but they went away at ten. But not before Harry put her under one of the DOM’s special tracking spells, almost completely untraceable. Voldemort had extensive magical knowledge, but Harry doubted that she would know a spell so classified under piles of deception and misdirection. 

And she didn’t. Harry kept following her under his cloak, renting a room right next to the place she was staying. It was surreal to see Voldemort renting a place in the Muggle world, but when he thought about it, it wasn’t always that he, or in this case, she could stay in Manors. Especially not when he was so early into her reign.  

It made Harry think that this Voldemort hadn’t done anything yet. He didn’t understand the flow of time completely if this dimension – or universe – had advanced to 2003 as his world had, but even with a female Voldemort, it didn’t seem like much had changed. Perhaps things could be worse. Maybe he would be fated to die, maybe she-Voldemort had won in this future. Maybe Neville was the boy-who-lived. Maybe his parents got tortured by the Lestranges and Crouch Jr. He didn’t know. And he held no regrets in trying to stop her. 

The next day, Harry noticed Voldemort went to, eerily, Lestrange Manor. He took the opportunity to ward the entire block with a very powerful anti-magic ward. He called it that, but it wasn’t anti-magical when it was built upon magic. It prevented anyone but its caster from performing spells of any kind. If anything, it was simply an anti-apparition ward enhanced to eleven. When he noticed Voldemort was coming back to the hotel room, a simple Alohomora unlocked her door, and she was soon in, with Harry standing near her bed, hidden thanks to the cloak. It wasn't long until the door was unlocked again, and a figure walked through it.

Her hood was off, so Harry could finally take a look at Tamsin Riddle. And she wasn’t too different from the Tom he had seen talking to Hepzibah Smith. Brown wavy hair, pale skin, a curvy figure that made Harry feel a bit... unnerved. The only unnatural feature in her was her red eyes, instead of the brown ones Tom had been born with. 

When she removed her upper robes to reveal that she was wearing a black sleeveless shirt, Harry held back a shudder. Surely the woman didn’t like to be undressed when she was alone, right? She didn’t remove the rest of her attire, so he breathed a sigh of relief. Instead, she-Voldemort seemed to be contemplating something while staring at her reflection. Harry was puzzled by that, imagining if Tom did that often. Most probably not, considering how insane the man became in his later years. 

It was a matter of time before she noticed him, so he tried his best to keep his heart rate under control when she turned on her heels and drew her wands at a speed that shouldn’t be physically possible, pointing exactly to where he was. But the satisfaction he felt from her look of panic when nothing was left of her wand was enough for him to tackle her to the ground, his hands in direct contact with her shoulders. He wondered if she would burn like Quirrell had, but that wasn’t the case. Perhaps his mother’s protection didn’t apply here? 

It wasn’t a problem, since Harry quickly overpowered she-Voldemort and disarmed her much like he had done with Draco in Malfoy Manor – with brute force. He didn’t care about explaining who he was; spilling the truth would get her under his thumb, and it did. Harry had no plans of letting her leave, even taunting her about how she wouldn’t get to meet the Malfoys, who would soon be headed to Athens. 

Up close, Harry could really notice that this Riddle could make people kneel for her with a smile. It was like Narcissa Malfoy was a full-on Dark Lady, with all of Bellatrix’s cruelty but none of her insanity – yet. Perhaps she kept the side of Tom that was persuasive and cunning. The side that enchanted Hepzibah Smith, Slughorn, Armando Dippet, and most certainly not Albus Dumbledore. 

But here he was, with the devil encaged by him. Harry needed to be a good warden, or things would get ugly fast. 

Chapter 3: Inches Deep Into My Brain

“You are bluffing.” Lady Voldemort tried to argue, but inside, it was almost like she could sense the truth. But no, this couldn’t be. Time turners weren’t this powerful; they just weren’t. And for this man to be supposed vanquisher of a male version of her? 

Perhaps he escaped St. Mungus’s psychiatric wing and chose her to torment. 

“How so?” He asked, looking from above. She hadn’t dared to get up from the bed since he had thrown her onto it, especially when her magic was rendered useless. 

“Prove it.” Her red eyes met his green. “Just knowing I have Horcruxes isn’t enough. You could have squeezed the information out of... a lot of people.” She almost said Slughorn. Curse her troubled mind. "People that I should have killed long ago.” 

“Funnily enough, I did find out about it through someone like that.” Potter smiled. “But no, Tamsin. It’s not that simple. I know everything about you. I’ve been in your head. And I’ve studied you since you died.” 

“Secret admirer or stalker?” She snapped at him. Harry was a bit taken aback by the comment, but quickly composed himself. 

“Neither. Let me think... oh, yeah, how am I supposed to know you almost attacked Dumbledore after he seemingly set your wardrobe on fire?” 

Voldemort froze completely at that. This was... very private information. One that she imagined not even the now headmaster would go around sharing. However... 

“Do you think that proves anything? You’re just in line with the old fool, thinking you can skip his mind games and deception-” 

“You’re a knucklehead.” Harry cut her. “Alright, let me be more specific. I know where every single Horcrux is located when the headmaster has absolutely no idea you even created a single one.” 

“You do not.” Voldemort was quite confident in saying that. This man was an Unspeakable, and perhaps the Department was after her for reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on. But even then, there wasn’t a way he could know she had placed the Diadem in the Room of Requirement. And she made sure not to stare into his eyes so he couldn’t probe into her mind. No, she was safe, she would be safe-” 

“The ring,” Potter leaned back against the wall, wand still in hand. “Safely stored in the last Gaunt shack, under a billion protective spells. The diary was most likely there too, but you probably moved it to a safer spot.” 

“That’s not-” Voldemort had begun speaking, perplexed about his knowledge of her diary, longside the awareness of the ring's exact location. How could he be so accurate about that?!

“The locket, in that creepy lake of Inferi on that weird island you lured your orphanage mates into visiting.” Harry continued. “Inaccessible to all but you, unless the person drinks a horrid potion that makes you relive your deepest mistakes, making you vulnerable to the undead horde below by causing the drinker to be extremely thirsty for water. Also, wards against water spells, so the only liquid available is the water from the lake.” 

“You do not-” This was insane. She hadn’t told any of her followers about the place. Nor the purpose of it. 

“And as of now, you’re keeping the diadem in the Room of Requirement,” Potter cut him, and that quieted up the Dark Lady for good. There was no way... she made sure she wasn’t being tracked... there’s just no way anyone could have been following her... 

“I love the way you start hyperventilating.” Harry smiled, if anything, a bit cruelly. “And I’d bet fifteen hundred Galleons you’re storing Hufflepuff’s Cup somewhere in the gardens of Riddle Manor, Gaunt Shack, perhaps even your Gringotts vault, just waiting for you to split your abomination of a soul yet again if you haven’t already.” 

The Dark Lady was truly speechless. This was information no one but her should be aware of. There wasn’t even the possibility of a traitor in her ranks, since all Potter told her were things her Knights of Walpurgis were blatantly unaware of. There was no feasible way for someone to be aware of all this information... unless... 

“You... you’ve proved your point.” Lady Voldemort finally conceded, though begrudgingly. The explanation still seemed so... absurd. And what could this person want from her? “I have nothing to give you. I can’t bargain my soul away, Harry Potter.” 

“Tam, really, I beat you once. If I wanted to do that, I'd do it with much less effort than the first time.” 

“Your overconfidence is unbearable.” She commented, a look of disgust on her face. 

“Aren’t you projecting yourself, Tam?” Harry asked. “In the Chamber, your Horcrux always liked to brag with a self-satisfied face about how he was the greatest wizard to ever live. Even then, I doubted that. Much more now.” 

Voldemort tried to ignore the fact that her horcrux had created a full-on conscience, able to manifest a physical form. The diary was special, after all, but that was a terrifying thought; the horcruxes were only supposed to be soul containers, not other versions of herself. Besides, he had faced her horcrux? How had it been destroyed? The basilisk was an option, but it was unlikely the snake would obey someone who wasn’t from the Slytherin line. This man stank of Gryffindor.“And who is it, then? Dumbledore? What exactly is he better at?” 

Voldemort wanted to strangle him with the way he rolled his eyes. “Come on. For someone with your power, you have an unnerving tendency to use only the unforgivables. Especially the killing curse. Does that qualify as great magic?” 

“I’d show you what I can do if you weren’t a coward .” She snarled. 

“Me, a coward?” Harry laughed audibly. “When you made so much effort to run from the inevitable embrace of death we all are fated to receive? Only for it to reach you nonetheless?” 

“What do you want?” Voldemort asked again, tired of his word plays. “I’m not... a lab rat... You can’t run tests on me... I have things to accomplish.” 

“Like persuading the Malfoys into giving you money? Or grooming the Slytherin students into doing your bidding? No, I think you’re better off here. It’s also so funny, you know what a lab rat is. You know, for a wizard supremacist, you’re not quite afraid to live among muggles, are you?” 

Voldemort narrowed her crimson eyes. “You don’t understand. Muggles aren’t useless. I’ve seen firsthand what they’re capable of. It was what motivated me to become the witch I am. You don’t understand what I saw, Harry Potter. What I had to go through.” 

Much to her surprise, in a split second, he had his wand positioned between her eyes. “What did you go through that would justify the horrific things you did?” 

“You can’t prove anything.” She muttered, thinking frantically of what she could do. Tackle him again? Use of brute force made her feel inferior, being reduced to the level of a Muggle. But right now, all her magic was cut off. Nothing worked. She had her wand in her hand, sure, but trying to apparate away was useless. 

“I’m not here to bring you to justice, Tam.” How she hated him for insisting on using her name... even more so than Dumbledore. “Half the things you’ve done in my world haven’t happened. But I know about the Riddle family. About Morfin. About Hepzibah Smith. About Myrtle Warren.” 

“So? Nothing can be pinned on me, Potter.” She spat his name, trying not to shrink or fall back against the wall with his wand so close to her nose bridge. 

“Let’s make a recap then.” He smiled at her. “Do you think your shields work? I’d doubt it, but there’s only one way to find out.” 

“St-” 

“ Legilimens.”   

Her occlumency shields didn’t work, it seemed. And so, her world turned to darkness when the spell immediately hit her as it left his holly wand. 

...

This was hell.  

The orphanage hadn’t been quite safe anymore ever since the fall of France. While the new government vowed never to surrender, it didn’t make things easier for all Britons.  

And especially not Tamsin.  

She had just finished her second year at Hogwarts, and she had begged both Professor Dippet and Professor Dumbledore to stay at the school for the summer. Something she had already done last year, but this time she thought she would have more justification with the war going on.  

But no, they didn’t allow it, despite the girl almost falling to her knees, willing to even help the house elves in cleaning the place. The Ministry was also useless, unwilling to spare attention to a lone orphan when Grindelwald was lurking in Ireland at the time. Tamsin didn’t care for that bloody war. For all it was worth, it would free her of the torment of having to act so miserably.  

All was in vain at the end of the day. After leaving King’s Cross and arriving back at the orphanage, it only took two days for the sirens to sound. For the bombs to fall. For the windows to shatter. This was a terror Tamsin wasn’t prepared to deal with. She was the brightest witch of her class, she could cast defensive spells, she could go toe to toe with fifth years, she could-  

No... she wouldn’t dive too deep into what happened last autumn with that Hufflepuff boy. How she had to practice her memory spells under pressure-

She wouldn’t.

Despite all she could do, Tam was hopeless as she watched the Messerschmitts fly above the city, leaving space for the Heinkels to bring chaos and death from above. Tam cared little about the wizarding war, but she needed to care about the Muggle one. This was what Muggles were capable of. Most wizards lived in the Stone Age, thinking Muggles still fought with swords and pistols, when they were actively wiping cities off the map. She had heard about Krakow, Warsaw, Rotterdam. And now not only London, but Birmingham, Liverpool, Coventry...  

She was shaken from her thoughts as the air-raid shelter rumbled. Above, the engines could be heard, since the shelter wasn’t too deep underground. Tam held onto her sheet and even more to her wand. The girl was aware that magic was completely forbidden outside Hogwarts’ grounds, but if the shelter began to crumble, she would be required to save herself.  

“You look too young to be alone.” An older woman remarked, staring at Tam from above. “Where are your parents, miss?”  

“I’m an orphan.” In the past, Tamsin would have been more apprehensive about answering such a question. But now, she didn’t think she cared too much. “My people are... around, somewhere here. I just wanted to be alone.”  

It irked Tam to refer to the orphanage folk as ‘her people’, since that couldn’t be farther from the truth, but it wasn’t a complete lie, and the woman accepted it. “I see... I’m sorry for being so blunt. What’s your name?”  

“Tamsin Riddle.” Her surname invoked a negative image in her mind. For all she knew, her father could have been a beggar outside a church or some business from America. But for all it was worth, it meant she needed to create a reputation in Hogwarts. Her name was, at worst, taken with caution at the boarding school.  

But it meant nothing here.  

“That’s a beautiful name.” The woman smiled warmly. “My name is Claire. I wish we could talk more, but my husband is waiting for me. Would you like to come?”  

Tamsin reflected on the thought for a few seconds. “No... I... I can’t stay far from my group. I’m sorry.”  

“I understand.” Claire seemed compassionate enough. Tam noticed for the first time that she was carrying a large bag. From there, she removed a large piece of cloth. “But I can’t leave you with nothing.”  

She extended a sleeping bag to Tam, who looked at it with bewilderment. Before, all she had was a thin sheet she had practically stolen from the orphanage. Tam took it almost hungrily and spread it. It would fit her just fine and provide much-needed warmth.  

“Thank you...” Tamsin looked with skepticism, her brown eyes meeting the woman’s blue for the briefest of seconds, since Claire turned away, walking among the masses of people gathered at the shelter. Tam entered her sleeping bag and felt like she was in the clouds. It was much nicer than the concrete.  

And, as it had seemed, it also warmed her up. Even if it was summer, the rain outside prevented the sun from warming up the Earth, and being underground also didn’t help. Before, Tam was shaking heavily from the cold and fear, but now she felt a bit safer, much warmer...  

And questioning herself. On one hand, the Muggle woman had gone out of her way to give Tam something to help going through this tough time. At the same time, Muggle bombers flattened the English capital.  

At least she was now warm.  

...

Both Harry and Voldemort were thrown away from each other when the memory ended. Voldemort was panting heavily in her bed, her brown curls falling onto her face, while Harry had his eyes widened, a few steps away from the bed. 

“Are you content?” Tamsin questioned, doing her best to compose herself, but reliving the memories of the Blitz did not help in the slightest. “Is my suffering satisfactory, Harry Potter?” 

“Kind of,” Harry spoke with his provocative tone from before; however, it had a level of hesitancy that didn’t go unnoticed by the Dark Lady. “Unless you’re telling me some Muggle bombings were what made you like this?” 

“Made me like what?!” Voldemort raised her voice once more, getting up from the bed and confronting him directly. Her eyes met his, defiant, challenging, and most importantly, loathing his sight. “What have I done to earn a demon like you tormenting me? Is this Hell? Have I died?” She laughed hysterically, her robes swirling. “What could justify your violation of my memories? Of my most intimate moments?” 

Harry’s stare grew cold, his previous smirk long gone. “You’ve done a lot of bad stuff until now. Maybe you’ve already killed hundreds. But what you don’t understand is that you’re a monster. Not yet, maybe... physically, that is. But I’ve seen you from the beginning. You were fated to be... this. You’re worse than Morfin, Marvolo, Tom Riddle, all of them.” 

“Don’t compare me to that muggle cretin!” Voldemort’s eyes blazed in fury. “How could you possibly claim to know me like this? And I don’t care about Marvolo or Morfin. They were both just dirty-poor loners pretending to be pure and powerful. That’s why they ended up like they did.” 

“Yeah. But do you think you end up better?” Harry questioned, closing their distance. “I’ve seen your lifeless body. The way your chest didn’t move. I’d say your face lacks colour, but that’s how you were even when living. No hair, a nose replaced by reptile nostrils, a marble-white face, fangs ... you were horrendous. And those red eyes, that apparently, you’ve gone out of your way to create already. You were an abomination. An affront against nature. Killing you was not just justice. It was bringing the world back to normal.” 

When he finished his rant, Voldemort’s hands were shaking heavily. She didn’t know what to think of this revelation. Was that all her life’s work, her efforts to defeat death, to find the ultimate power in the world, were all in vain? That she would be defeated by this wizard? A man who barely had a stubble emerging beneath his chin and around his cheeks. Someone who only bested her because he had complete knowledge of the future. Unspeakable training. And someone who had to use such training and knowledge in a way that was meant to contain her. Undoubtedly, he didn’t match her power. 

She had the choice to dismiss her words... but they shook her more than she expected. Perhaps she was surrounding herself with lackeys, too afraid to point out her mistakes, that when an enemy – because that was what Harry Potter was – said it to her face, it hurt. And not only did it hurt, it infuriated Voldemort. 

“You-” She started, but once more Potter brought his wand to her nose bridge. 

“I was almost sympathizing with you, Tam,” Harry said, inching even closer. “And that makes me sick. Let’s try again. Leglimens”  

...

This couldn’t be happening.  

Not now, not today, not like this-  

Tamsin stared at the cold body in front of her, while the basilisk looked at her back, undoubtedly confused at her hesitation. But she knew she shouldn’t show weaknesses. The King of the Serpents only answered to her because of her power and Slytherin blood. If it found her weak...  

"Return to the chamber," Tamsin said to the Basilisk, her parseltongue words escaping her mouth like silk, but inside, she was panicking. The massive serpent obliged, sliding down the tunnels into the Chamber of Secrets, leaving Tam alone with the body.  

This girl... Myrtle Warren, Tam was sure of it. A Ravenclaw with bullying problems. Tam hadn’t heard her entering the bathroom, since she was coming back from the Chamber, and this kill was completely by accident. She... she wasn’t ready for this. All year, she had been placing the Basilisk in situations to petrify muggleborns. Never kill. Because she needed leverage with the purebloods, while also not having Hogwarts closed like people were saying.  

Her steps to becoming something greater took effort and sacrifice. Having to buddy up to these stuck-up purebloods who did nothing all day but beg Grindelwald to march on Britain while complaining about the war. Not the Muggle war, of course. Sure, the Battle of Britain had passed long ago, but there were still bombings. Rationing. People were being conscripted. And news of the Eastern Front was grim as it always tended to be, especially since the wizarding world was content on burying its head in the sand to the carnage in not only Europe but Asia too.  

This was ridiculous, and finding the Chamber had provided some way to rationalize everything. To attack Muggleborns in ways that wouldn’t die or be permanently injured. But this wasn’t planned. Especially because she needed to perform the ritual-  

No, she would need to do it now, Tam realized. All she researched about Horcruxes culminated in this. What better chance would she have than this? When would she kill another person? This was crazy; it sickened her to her core, but it had to be done now or never if she wanted to be immortal. Tam’s breath was shallow, her heartbeat skyrocketing. She ran outside the bathroom, locking it magically with a spell that a simple Alohomora wouldn’t bypass. Tam reached the Slytherin common room and quickly went to her dorm, storing the necessary books in her bag along with the diary. She ran back to the bathroom, finding it untouched. She ran inside, locking the door again.  

The ritual began with candles placed around the sink where the Chamber’s entrance was located. Tam dignified herself by using a Mobilicorpus on Warren’s body, instead of carrying it around. In the process, her glasses fell to the ground, one of her lenses cracking as it impacted the stone floor. The sight made Tam grimace, since it gave Tam a good view of Myrtle’s unmoving and cold hazel eyes. She placed her victim’s body on top of the sink, and then used a Wingardium Leviosa to move the diary just above the body.  

Pointing her wand upwards, she began the incantation, casting the spells she had never heard before until stumbling upon these dark books. Both in the bathroom and inside of her, she realized things were happening. Her heartbeat was speeding up and not just because of adrenaline. The candles she lit shifted, the fire changing from orange to black flames. Unnatural wind, cold as the night’s air, made Tamsin shiver heavily.  

And then, pain. Unbearable pain. Tamsin hadn’t ever been close to a Dementor, but she had heard of the effects. And it felt like it... Like something was sucking off a part of her away. And she knew what it was. Both Warren’s body and the diary began moving, inching closer to one another. And to Tam’s shock, she realized her feet were moving without her knowledge. She moved enough that she could gaze briefly at her reflection in the mirror, and it shocked her. Tamsin saw death; she saw a horrifying vision. Her eyes flashed red; her skin was pale as marble. Looking down, she realized it was how she was now. It felt like she was being compressed and then stretched out again by a force out of her control.  

But despite all that, Tamsin did not stop. Her body begged for an end to it; her knees trembled, threatening to betray her balance, and she almost couldn’t breathe. The sunlight didn’t reach the bathroom anymore, covered by darkness. It was only her and her ritual. Tamsin kept casting the spells, her voice becoming shallower as she felt it happening. She couldn’t see it, but it almost felt like she wasn’t alone anymore. The basilisk wouldn’t have returned without her consent, so...  

It meant...  

That’s when her world briefly went completely dark. She saw flashes of light, an ache in her head, the sound of her body falling to the ground... but it was over, she knew it.  

Tamsin opened her eyes, jumping into action, her breath erratic. Outside, it was still sunny, so if she was knocked for long, it wasn’t too long. Myrtle Warren’s body remained on the sink, her head falling to the side, directly facing Tam. She wanted to puke at the sight. The basilisk’s kill was as stealthy as a killing curse. She had practised the unforgivable on test subjects – not human – and indeed, they dropped dead without any signs of wrongdoing... except for the magical stench that such dark magic left. But the basilisk was inconspicuous. But it didn’t matter now, since this bathroom was fouled with magic so horrendous it made the Chamber of Secrets pale in comparison.  

The diary. It had fallen near her. The words in the front, her name, stared back at her with almost defiance. Tamsin Gormlaith Riddle. The name of a murderer. The name of a dark witch. She opened the diary, only for it to be empty. It almost panicked her... until she had the idea to write in it. Scrambling for a feather inside her bag, she wrote:  

“Hello? ” 

It was a childish attempt to communicate with an inanimate object. But was it really inanimate? Tam felt herself drawn to the diary, not simply because it was a private object of hers. And a few seconds later... to her audible gasp... words appeared without the need of her writing.  

“ Hi.” The words matched her calligraphy perfectly. It was her writing. “ You did it.” 

A soft laugh escaped her throat. She kept laughing until it almost sounded like she was hysterical. And eventually, the laughter morphed into a cry. Tears dropped from her eyes, burning tears that she wasn’t sure were out of sadness, happiness, anger... it didn’t matter now. She was immortal. As long as this diary stood, her soul would live forever.  

Tam cleared the tears, trying to compose herself. She grabbed Myrtle’s glasses and repaired them, and moved the body back to the toilet. It pained her to see someone die by her hand like this... but the pain was subsiding. Tam gave Myrtle a last look before her mind began scheming again. Such an accident would close the school for good.  

As she exited the bathroom, making sure not to lock the door behind her, she smiled, remembering what she had heard about a spider being raised under a bed.  

All the while, her heart ached with the memory of Warren’s ghostly stare in her mind.  

...

This time, Harry wasn’t violently cast away from Voldemort. The memory ended, and they were still in the previous position, bodies close, his wand pointed at her. Potter retreated, gazing at her with an uncertainty that wasn’t present there before. 

“I suppose I wasn’t as sadistic as you imagine I could be?” 

For a moment, it seemed like the young man didn’t have a good response to it. “You still framed an innocent person, I assume.” 

“As innocent as someone who was raising an Acromantula in a school can be.” Voldemort pointed, her lips twitching upwards. “If you think I killed Myrtle with malice in mind... I did not.” 

“Yet you still benefited from it.” 

“I did. Because I wanted to escape my fear.” Voldemort wasn’t afraid of talking about this, not to this person. Perhaps she wouldn’t admit she feared anything to anyone else... but this Harry Potter seemed to know her too well. “And I did.” 

“You didn’t.” Potter pointed. “Death still claimed your soul. You can’t escape from it.” 

“Then what would you have me do, Potter?” She hissed, getting up from the bed again. “Repent for my sins? Beg God for forgiveness?” 

The green-eyed man narrowed his eyes, undoubtedly thinking about his next step. Voldemort instantly could tell he was a Potter from his messy hair and facial structure, but those eyes... they didn’t belong to any pureblood family she knew. 

Startling her, Potter fetched his hand and pointed towards her again. “ Accio .” Without knowing what he was summoning, she was helpless to stop him from slipping her wand away from her grasp. Potter inspected her wand, pursing his lips. And then he snapped it in half. 

“ You-” Voldemort wasn’t prepared to deal with this. Her wand... the wand she bought when she was eleven... her first possession... broken by this demon. 

“Sod off. I can repair it easily.” 

“Then why break it?!” She found herself losing control again, livid at this insolent boy. 

“Because staying here won’t do. You’re going to see exactly what you will become soon. I’ll show you, since while you’re powerful, you can’t cast a killing curse without a wand. Not yet, at least.” 

Voldemort gritted her teeth, seething in fury. “And why would I want to see your wretched memories?” 

“Because I’m giving you a chance to accept your destiny before you cause the same pain he caused.” He once more pointed his wand towards her. “Why not get moving? I know just the place we can get a Pensieve.” 

And she complied. Not out of her own will, but because she wasn’t thrilled at the idea of being tortured or killed without even having a chance to redeem herself. 

Notes:

Realize that this is not a 1:1 version of Tom Riddle but female. Experiences are different, thoughts may differ, yet cruelty remains the same, if not higher. Such differences will become more pronounced eventually. Harry will be realizing she isn't a mad woman yearning for blood but also not someone that can be dealt easily. Expect more updates to come now that I'm finishing some other stories!

Chapter 4: Whirlwind of Lost Thoughts

Harry didn’t know what to think as he walked in Muggle London alongside the most dangerous person in the magical world. 

He knew Tom Riddle; He had seen Tom for what he was, a murderer. From the beginning. And not simply a murderer, but the worst kind of vermin. He took pleasure in killing. Not just from killing but from torturing as well. The Cruciatus Curse was his signature move, as much as the Killing Curse was. From the way Myrtle described her death to him during the second year, it seemed like Riddle had set the basilisk on her out of pure malice. 

But Tam... Tam seemed genuinely desperate when Myrtle was killed. Dare to say, a glint of remorse had passed through her face. Seeing the Horcrux ritual was also surreal. It was all very sudden, it seemed. Harry started to have some doubts about Tamsin Riddle. Not because he thought she was a misunderstood figure, but because with Voldemort, it had always been simple. Deadly, but simple. Tom had succumbed to his sadistic nature, far removed from the allegedly charming boy he had been in the past. There was no way to talk with the man. Even in their final battle, when Harry gave Tom a last chance to just give up, telling him exactly why he would never win now, the crazy man didn’t get it. And paid the price for it. 

Was Tom ever like this during his Dark Lord years? That is, a complicated figure? In Dumbledore’s memory of the interview, it didn’t seem likely. Harry was eerily reminded of the battle at the Ministry between the former headmaster and the Dark Lord. How Tom had spoken in a soft voice to him while Bellatrix had been screaming on the floor. But Tam seemed different. In many ways. 

First, she seemed to care about herself. In a human way. The more Tom split his soul, the less human he became. Not just figuratively or in a metaphorical way. His skin grew paler, his nose morphed into horrendous snake holes, and his eyes became crimson instead of brown. Tamsin only had red eyes, but apart from that, Harry was shocked. For a woman in her forties, she could say she was in her late twenties, and it would be believable. Wizards aged slowly and also lived longer, and while traces of adolescent youth had vanished, she certainly looked attractive. 

Which was a nightmare to think about. Wasn’t Voldemort convincing and charming enough without also stealing hearts? Harry could only imagine the purebloods forgetting about their wives while pledging themselves to a woman with dark curls who fell graciously around her neck. 

“Why would you need a Pensieve again, Potter?” Her voice brought her from his thoughts. Even the sound of it was normal. His Voldemort’s voice was sibilant. The man had been almost as much of a snake as Nagini. 

“First... I want to investigate your memories.” 

“What? Raping my mind doesn’t feel good enough?” 

Harry found himself scandalized as they took a turn from where the Leaky Cauldron was located. “That is a horrendous analogy.” 

“Is it? That’s pretty much what you did.” 

“I got trained on Occlumency like that. Deal with it.” 

“Your teacher was horrible then. That’s not how one should learn the mind arts.” 

“Tell me about it.” Harry had forgiven Snape for a lot of things, but certainly not the Occlumency lessons. “I also want to show you exactly what you’re gonna be.” 

“Why?” She stopped walking, making Harry’s steps come to a halt too. “If you hate me so much... if I’m your nemesis... why bother going through this? Even if you can’t kill me-” 

“That’s right, I can’t kill you.” Going Horcrux hunting again would be a pain in the ass, especially with the Basilisk still very much alive. No, that was not what he would be doing. Even more so because even if her body was destroyed, it was only a matter of time before it got restored through that ritual or one similar to it. “Maybe that’s why I want to torture you. Showing how you fail and why you fail. And... I don’t know, you just feel different.” 

“How so?” 

Harry chuckled as they finally picked up their pace again and reached the Leaky Cauldron. He opened the door and quickly made his way to the brick wall that separated the pub from Diagon Alley. As Harry pointed his wand towards the right brick, he began answering. “Tom would never be remorseful, like you were killing Myrtle. Tell me, did you kill a rabbit when you were a kid?” 

“Almost. Accidental magic.” 

The walls began to open, revealing the Alley in all its glory. It was different, yet similar. Magical Society wasn’t known for deep changes, so it was no wonder it looked almost like a copy of 90s Diagon Alley. “Funny. You hanged it to death in my world.” 

Harry could see she had faltered a bit. “That seems... almost unnecessarily cruel.” 

“That’s your middle name. Unnecessarily cruel. Or maybe it’s Tom’s. Though I can imagine how many people you’ve killed in the last twenty years.” 

“I haven’t murdered for kicks, Harry Potter.” Tam hissed. “I kill to advance my plans. Not because I take pleasure in it.” 

“Funny, I recall you very much doing so,” Harry answered. “Or is it just torture?” 

Tam huffed, looking around at the busy street. For a Wednesday morning, people seemed very busy. “Your impression of me is a false one. I may be considered malicious by the likes of you and Dumbledore, but I am not a lunatic!” 

“Are you not?” Harry was growing tired of this argument. “Would you not strike me down with a Killing Curse if you could? 

“I-” 

“Ms. Riddle!” The last person Harry had been expecting to see approached them, practically blocking their way forward. Horace Slughorn had a wide smile beneath his walrus moustache. “Hard to see you these days!” 

Tamsin seemed like she wanted to bury herself under a rock. “Hello, Professor... It’s good to see you...” 

“As it is seeing you, my dear girl!” Slughorn’s eyes drifted towards you. “And you are, mister...” 

Before Voldemort could ruin things and present him as a Potter – and Harry had noticed her mouth opening in the corner of his eyes – he struck first. “Harry Evans, sir. Good to meet you.” 

They shook hands briefly, the Potions Master analysing his entire being as he tended to do when meeting someone new. “Weird, you strike familiar to someone I know.” 

“That’d be a coincidence, sir. I am Muggleborn.” 

There wasn’t an outright negative reaction towards Harry’s lie, but Slughorn’s attention seemed to drift away from him. “And what do you happen to be doing here today, Tam?” 

Harry could see the way Voldemort’s eye twitched as another person used her given name. “I needed to check on some... new artifacts. Mr... Evans is helping me with research.” 

“I studied abroad,” Harry said. “On Livermorny.” It was a convenient lie to throw back at anyone who happened to be asking questions. He had used that lie many times when on a mission, so it rolled off his tongue without difficulty. 

“Oh, I see. Do you happen to know a certain Emma Harrison?” 

“I don’t believe so, sir. Livermony is bigger than even Hogwarts; it’d be a big coincidence.” In other words, Harry didn’t know who the hell Emma Harrison was. 

“Fair enough. Well, I’ll leave you be. I have my own schedule to follow.” With that, the professor left the two mortal enemies alone, both staring at each other with their previous anger replaced by confusion. 

“I trust you had to deal with him,” Tam commented, much to Harry’s surprise. 

“Yeah. He was a pain in the arse in my sixth year. But he’s a good fellow, even if a bit prejudiced.” 

“I don’t see the problem.” The Dark Lady crossed her arms. “Where are you bringing me, again?” 

“Knockturn Alley.” Harry smiled. “I know a place.” 

“And then... You will show me your memories...” Voldemort’s voice was filled with uncertainty and annoyance. 

“I’m giving you a chance to peek into the future. Know what your crusade against death will bring. I tried to give you a chance before you did something stupid, even before the end. When you, or more accurately, Tom, were already mad and defenceless.” 

“Why do you bother, Harry Potter?" The question took him off guard. “You... you claim to have travelled through time and reality. You could have... done so much. Killed me as a baby. Slaughtered my ancestors. If you wanted to be cruel, you could have squashed my dreams by killing me on my first day at Hogwarts. You could have destroyed any chances to create my artifacts.” She wasn’t dumb enough to mention Horcruxes in such a public setting. “But yet you care about showing me my mistakes, if I couldn’t take what I see and simply not do it that way. Is this an attempt to... what, redeem me?” 

“First of all, you forget I’m on a mission.” Harry lowered his voice as much as he could. “I am not supposed to just get rid of you. Or Tom. I don’t know what would happen if I did that. Would it create another reality? Would it change the one I’m from? It’s good that I came to your world, but you don’t understand, do you? Of course, you were terrible at understanding anything more complex than a school essay-” 

“I am going to rip your eyes out of your sockets with my bare hands.” She hissed, closing the distance between the two. From afar, they probably looked like a bickering couple, which made Harry want to throw up in his mouth. 

“I wasn’t even sure what I was meant to do with you. But like I said, I’m giving you a chance before you do something really dumb. And maybe I do want to make sure my mortal enemy is irredeemable or not. If there’s even a spark of humanity left.” 

“To be human is to be imperfect.” 

“The lack of compassion turns you into a monster.” Harry retorted. “I once had the urge to help a part of you... I felt like I needed to... but I couldn’t. It repulsed me. For many reasons. I don’t feel that now.” 

Her red eyes seemed to be analysing, grasping the words that exited his mouth. “You cannot know me that much... not without us being close first. Was I a mentor before? A friend? A lover? This is ridiculous-” 

Harry didn’t know what disgusted him more. Imagining his Voldemort as any of those three would be laughable if it weren’t so nauseating. “That’s a bunch of rubbish. I had a deeper connection. I would tell you if we weren’t...” He subtly waved his arm around, signaling to the very public setting they were in. 

“Then what? Is showing memories going to help?” 

“I thought you wanted to see where you failed so you wouldn’t do it again.” Harry relished in her light frown. “This is very unprofessional, and I’m still horrified to be so close to you. But I do want to show you everything, to tell you everything, so you can grasp how deep the hole you dug.” 

After their eyes remained locked for a few more seconds, she finally sighed. “Show us the way, Harry Potter.” 

...

The pensieve was placed in the middle of the shack. They had come here because, well, where else could they go? After Harry cleared the house of both the protective curses – with the verbal help of the Dark Lady to identify said curses and how to deactivate them - and its filth, they had made themselves... not home. Harry couldn’t even joke about that. Harry was, at the very least, not disgusted by the shack. 

Somehow, the place looked better now than it did in Marvolo’s time as the patriarch. 

“I am still incredulous.” Harry heard Tam say. 

“We were lucky we found one. And extra lucky, I earn enough to pay for it.” Finding a shop on Knockturn Alley that coincidentally had a Pensieve wasn’t really a coincidence. But it also wasn’t systematically planned. Good thing Harry had brought spare galleons for the purchase, and nobody else in this universe had thought of acquiring the artifact. 

“What now, Potter?” Voldemort said. “What were you supposed to show me?” 

Using his wand, he extracted the memories from his temple. He didn’t select anything special... he knew when Dumbledore had used the Pensieve with him, those memories had been very specific... but Harry intended to use them like Snape had... and like Snape, he did want to dump a bunch of information onto an unsuspecting victim. 

“Everything.” He dropped the blueish liquid into the Pensieve, which began swirling. “Would you mind?” 

The Dark Lady got closer and dove her head into the Pensieve, and Harry followed the gesture. His entire world vanished, but he could still see Tam by his side. 

Colour returned to the world, but it was foggier than how Harry remembered. 

But not too much colour. 

Little Hangleton. 

They weren’t far from there even now. 

He saw himself bound by magical ropes to the gravestone of Tom Riddle, the father. Wormtail scrambled around, muttering to the being in his arms while he continued the ritual. A twitch of pain struck Harry’s heart when he saw Cedric’s unmoving eyes. Tam seemed intrigued by the memory. 

“What is this ritual, Potter?” 

“Your resurrection,” Harry stated plainly. “That...” He winced as Wormtail slashed his hand into the cauldron. “That’s you.” Somehow, the discomfort of seeing the remnant of Tom being dropped into the cauldron. “You died... or should have died. But you had your Horcruxes, and you became less than a spirit. Your words.” 

“This-” Her words were cut off by the sight of something vaguely human rising from the waters. The image of the man who terrorized Harry for almost two decades of his life... 

It still made him uncomfortable when Tom widened his red eyes open and ordered Wormtail to robe him. The way Tom strolled around smugly, but not like a teenager Draco Malfoy would... no, Tom was far worse than a bully. He walked around like an apex predator, circling his prey without a single worry in his heart. They watched as he toyed with Peter, pressing the Dark Mark and summoning his Death Eaters. It warmed Harry’s heart to know all of them paid for their deeds. 

“This is me.” Tam had a horrified look on her face, which amused Harry heavily. “You mean to tell me that I become... this?!” 

“You do.” Harry nodded as Tom was finally sparing his memory-self some attention. He remembered how much his scar ached even when Tom simply looked in his direction. “What, I thought you didn’t care for anything, Tam.” 

“You misunderstand me deeply, Potter.” Tam hissed. “Stop basing myself on this ghoul. Why do you think I wanted to live forever?” 
“I don’t know.” Harry had his eyes set on Tom, not focused too much on the Dark Lady. He had finally released memory-Harry from the restraints on the grave and handed him back his wand. 

“You have been taught how to duel, Harry Potter?” Tom had asked his past self. If only, present-Harry thought. People thought the Lockhart-approved duelling club was enough... “We bow to each other, Harry,” Tom continued, his bending of his back almost mocking. “Come, the niceties must be observed... Dumbledore would like you to show manners. Bow to death, Harry...”  

The words brought fury to Harry. Of course, the man had always thought of himself as death... how could he be so foolish...? Even when Harry had gathered the Hallows, he didn’t think it made him the Master of Death. One didn’t master death. There was one certainty in life, even for magical folk. In the memory, Tom forced him to bow with his wand before beginning to torture him. Besides present-him, Tam was looking at the scene with distaste. 

“I don’t see the point.” She told him, “You were a child.” 

“Teenager.” Harry felt like he needed to correct her. 

“What’s the point of inflicting such pain for... what on Earth could you have done to him that would justify this?” 

As memory-Harry freed himself from the control of the Imperius Curse, present-Harry decided it was time to go. There was no reason to show Tamsin the Priori Incantatem. Waving his wand, the graveyard vanished, and Harry emerged from the Pensieve, adjusting his glasses. Tam had also come with him, as was expected, and was just staring with unbelieving eyes. 

“You claim that is what I become.” She stated. 

“That’s who you are,” Harry answered. “Or have you not murdered Hepzibah Smith? Have you not tricked the Grey Lady? Have you not freed the basilisk from the Chamber? Have you not killed enough people to create several pieces of your soul?” 

“I believed them to be sacrifices!” Tam loudly proclaimed. “Call me cruel, Potter. I did everything to... have a chance.’ 

“A chance to...?” 

“A chance to live.” She met his eyes with defiance. “You saw my memory.” 

“Is trauma enough to justify being a monster? Harry questioned. “I’ve been through a lot of shit. Mostly because of you. Yet I’m no Dark Lord.” 

“I... I... I needed to live, Potter. Going to Hogwarts was the best thing that happened to me. But cruel as fate was, it meant I was also subjected to hell for two months of my life. Up until I finished my graduation. I made so many sacrifices... my soul is barely held together... but I wouldn’t let go of that, Potter. I just can’t.” 

“Death is-” 

“You know me too well to know I fear death, Potter.” The admission was accompanied by a flinch. “Death’s embrace shan’t touch me... I can let it...” 

“Tamsin, it’s not that horrible.” Having been there, Harry thought he could at least talk some sense into her. Whatever rid the world of Voldemort. 

“How can you say that, Potter? Apparently, you fought so hard not to receive a death by his hand.” 

“I fought to stop him because it was the right thing.” Harry corrected. “You don’t understand... but I get it. You weren’t there. Although Tom also didn’t get it, and he was present-” 

“Quit blabbering.” She demanded. “Open my bloody eyes, then. Why were you my foe?” 

“A prophecy. The details aren’t important.” He added to stop her from even asking about the contents of the prophecy. “It said one person who met some requisites would have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. A power you knew not. It was nailed down to two people.” 

“I will assume one was you.” 

“It was. But I was barely out of my mum’s womb when the prophecy was told.” Harry said. “The other boy was a pureblood... it was said that you’d mark the one you chose as an equal. I have a theory you chose me because I was also a half-blood.” 

“How come he didn’t destroy you as a baby, then? Your parents couldn’t have protected you forever.” 

“Yeah, they couldn’t.” Harry sighed. “You came knocking, and you killed them both. But thanks to my mum, who put herself in front of your killing curse, she cast a spell fuelled by the power you knew not. Love.” 

“Love.” Tamsin echoed him, uttering the word like it were in a foreign language. “Love protected you?” 

“It ricocheted the killing curse you sent me back at you. That’s why you were believed to be dead. For thirteen years, you became nothing.” 

“Until the ritual.” 

“Yes. But there was another problem. You were planning to split your soul again. Seven pieces, as you well know.” 

“Did it fail?” 

“It didn’t.” Harry felt like he needed to sit down. “A piece of you latched onto me.” 

Tamsin widened her red eyes. “A living Horcrux?” She uttered. “But... I didn’t think it to be possible.” 

“Yeah.” While parseltongue had been a useful skill in the past, Harry was more than happy to have abdicated it in favour of not having Tom’s slimy soul piece inside of his scar. “It meant I had to die for you to also die.” 

“But you’re here.” Tamsin narrowed her eyes. “Unless you haven’t beaten him.” 

“Oh, no, I did. I wouldn’t call myself your vanquisher because of what I did as a toddler. You made a serious mistake at the ritual we saw earlier. My mum’s protection worked through my blood. My blood was in your veins. That meant I was bound to Earth as long as you lived. I survived the killing curse twice.” 

The shock on her face was palpable. “Potter... I... did you destroy my Horcruxes?” 

“Yeah, and soon after you died. From your killing curse, since the wand you had borrowed had me as its master.” 

“What?” Now, the shock was replaced with confusion. “How does a wand change allegiance like that?” 

“Not any wand.” Finally, they were getting to where Harry wanted. Telling Tamsin the entire manner in which he defeated Tom was risky, but at last, he could get to the point. “The Elder Wand.” 

“Dumbledore has it, doesn’t he?” Tamsin questioned. 

“Dumbledore died.” Harry thought he saw a flick of hesitation in those red eyes. “You thought the person who killed him was the owner of the Elder Wand. You thought you needed it to beat me because our wands had the same core, and we couldn’t kill each other with it. But another person had disarmed Dumbledore moments before his death. Months later, I disarmed the person.” 

“So, the wand he was using to try and kill you was yours... part of the reason he couldn’t defeat you at the end.” 

“Pretty much, yeah. I had the wand... and this cloak.” From his pocket, he unwrapped his invisibility cloak. “It passed down from generation to generation...” 

“And? What does that have to do with anything?” 

“Where’s the ring now, Tam?” Harry questioned. 

“Since all the curses and protections have been disabled... It’s simply lying on the shack’s basement... or the poor attempt at one.” 

“Can I summon it?” 

“Potter...” 

“I can’t destroy it,” Harry assured her. “I can’t control Fiendfyre well enough. Can I?” 

“Yes... The anti-summoning wards are down, as you already know.” 

“ Accio Gaunt Ring !” Harry said, extending his wand downwards. The ring got to him by breaking a hole in the already rotten wooden planks below their feet. Harry grasped the ring, feeling the compulsion curse it had on it thanks to the Horcrux. But it did not affect him. Perhaps he would have been just as affected as Dumbledore was if he hadn’t come into contact with the onyx stone the ring was circling. 

“Do you know what this is?” Harry handed her the ring. “What’s carved in the stone?” 

Tamsin examined it. “I never gave it much thought. I know that above all things, it was taken as Grindelwald’s symbol.” The name was spat with a certain amount of disdain. “But I am also aware it’s the Peverell family symbol... What does it have to do with the other objects?” 

“A children’s tale. The Tale of the Three Brothers.”  

Tamsin’s eyes widened in realization. “I... I heard of it when I was scrambling through some books when I was a child... I was curious about the wizarding world...” 

“As any kid would be.” Harry had to concede that even Voldemort could have been genuinely interested in something. “Do you remember that tale?” 

“Three objects... the objects you have right now, barring the wand...” 

“The Elder Wand from my world is safely locked away in Hogwarts. The cloak is right here. Your world’s cloak must be in the possession of my family. And the stone... the Resurrection Stone...” 

“Is this.” Tamsin came to the right conclusion. “How... how does it work...? I... the tale said that it didn’t work well for the brother who had it...” 

“I’m gonna be honest, Tam... despite the name, that’s not what the stone does. It’s not meant to bring people back to life. It’d be as unnatural as Inferi are.” 

“Then again, I ask you...” Her eyes met his. “What’s the point of this?” 

“I didn’t say the stone was useless. How hard would it be to separate it from the ring?” 

“Not much...” Tam mused. “The Horcrux can defend itself, but a severing charm is laughable against it.” 

“I don’t need to destroy it if that’s what you’re worried about.” Harry half-heartedly assured her. He’d love to destroy the Horcrux here and then. Maybe he should have brought a Basilisk fang before all this. He pointed his holly wand at the ring, still in Tam’s hand. “ Diffindo!”  

The spell cracked against the object, and the Resurrection Stone fell to the ground, while the ring remained on Tam’s hand. Harry quickly grabbed it, and it was like the hallow was magnetic towards his fingers. But he knew that once he held it, nothing would happen. It wasn’t the same one he had possessed, but it probably knew he had come to terms with death long ago. And as he expected, there was no sight of familiar faces. 

“There’s one hope for you, Tamsin Riddle.” Harry extended the hand that was holding the stone. “It’s not simply that you’re an evil person. But that you tamper with the basic laws of life. It’s in my job description to make things orderly, but I would be lying if I said it also wasn’t personal. I shouldn’t extend too many olive branches to you, but most of the misery you caused is yet to happen in this world. There’s one last chance for you to get it. Bad acts are one thing. But even Grindelwald was said to show remorse at the end of his life in my world. Something you couldn’t even show, even as you were seconds away from death. Will you take it?” 

...

“Will you take it?” 

The more Harry Potter talked, the more confused she was. Yesterday, her world made sense. She was about to start her plans to topple those who would resist. She didn't want to rule directly; Tam had no use for bureaucracy. Tam simply needed a puppet minister, someone to put up with whatever the ICW had to say and let the purebloods run the show while she focused on becoming what she was meant to be. 

But everything changed because of Harry Potter. His self-proclaimed vanquisher, who started to spill out more truths than Tamsin was comfortable hearing. Who was so much less cryptic than Dumbledore, yet still so infuriating... who showed her exactly what she would become. 

Not even a monster. 

She became something irreparable. Tam cared about herself... yet Tom Riddle, also known to the world as Voldemort, didn’t mind living as a human-snake freak. He didn’t care for anything. Instead of simply dealing with his prophesied nemesis, he played with his food. He tortured, tried to control, taunted... And that was only one memory. 

Tam was both curious and horrified to see the death Potter described. That they faced off in the end, with the boy telling Tom Riddle everything... almost begging to see some remorse... to think twice before the man made another mistake... and at the end of the day, who was the one standing in front of her? Harry Potter won. 

And he won because of love. Love was what powered him to triumph against a horrifying dark lord. Her. Even if different genders, the stories were similar enough. Tam didn’t need to see a female aberration to see herself in it. The way Tom Riddle moved, acted... it was her at her worst... but in his case, he was consumed by. And there was no trace of real humanity left. 

Once more, crimson eyes met emerald ones. Tam wasn’t lost on the irony that Potter’s irises were the colour of the Killing Curse, while hers, originally deep chocolate, had turned into red not too different from the disarming spell that ended Tom Riddle. 

And that was the talk of the Deathly Hallows. A children’s tale Tam hadn’t read or heard since she was eleven years old. The elder wand seemed tantalizing, but she had no use to hide herself with a cloak. She could charm herself to be disillusioned if need be. And the stone... the stone that had been carved into the ring that was now just as a part of her as any limb from her body. What use did Tam have in bringing the dead back? 

“What am I supposed to do?” Tam asked carefully, gazing down at the object in Potter’s hand. 

“Simply take it and hold it.” He spoke. “I will wait outside.” 

“What if nothing happens?” 

“Something will.” His tone was confident. “Maybe not before. But I see a flicker of doubt.” 

Tam tried to assume a more neutral expression. It was all just too much, but she didn’t need to let her feelings be so easily read. “And will anything you told me make any sense?” 

“It will.” Nothing could have made his voice shake. “Like I said, it’s your last chance to understand. To prevent an endless road of terrible mistakes and ill intentions.” 

For another minute, she contemplated it. But what could she do? If she refused... would he kill her? Or at least try to? He knew what she would become if her body was destroyed, so what prevented him from tracking her Horcruxes down? It’d take him three days at most, especially if he spilled everything to Dumbledore. Tam was vulnerable, as vulnerable as she had been when German engines flew above the British capital thirty years ago... her wand broken... her wandless magic, while powerful, not as precise and certainly not as harmless... 

It couldn’t hurt, could it? 

“Fine.” Tam grabbed the stone, their hands briefly exchanging contact. “Leave.” 

“I will be in the backyard. Funny, this hole has one.” That last bit was barely audible, and yet Tam had to agree. It was like it was trying to emulate a respectable house but failing miserably at it. 

For a few seconds after Potter was gone, she held the stone, examining the symbol imprinted into it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what it meant. The triangle, of course, was the cloak. The vertical line, the wand. And the circle was the stone she was holding. 

The world felt colder as she held the object. It was heavily magical, but even if she didn’t have her wand, it was so foreign to her. Not like anything she had stumbled upon. It wasn’t dark magic either... But something different. 

Her patience was short; she knew that, but she couldn’t help herself from feeling irritated at nothing happening. But also panicking slightly, her heartbeat speeding up. What was she supposed to do? She never wanted this. Now, the man who had already killed a version of her would slaughter her as he did... destroy her soul slowly... and then rid the world of what he claimed to be the worst Dark Wizard that Britain had seen. 

The possibility of death... of not existing... it never felt so real. Harry Potter’s presence unnerved her as much as a German bomber did... he was the one who ultimately killed her. That might still be born in her world and destroy her. 

“It just needed more belief.” A voice completely foreign to her spoke from the hallway Potter had walked to get to the backyard. But it was a female voice. When Tam turned to face her, she was struck with confusion... 

It was an incredibly pale woman, so much so that her skin was grey. Her entire being was dull, but at the same time, some glint of happiness was present in her eyes. Before, it looked like her hair had been brown or black... Tam wasn’t too certain. 

“What are you?” She felt herself clenching her fists, inadvertently holding the stone closer to her. “Are you a ghost?” 

“Not quite.” The woman said, strolling towards her. Tam felt like she needed to retreat, but her feet didn’t obey her. “I am... a shade. But not like ghosts or paintings, dear.” 

The Dark Lady was struck by how she called her. “Let me rephrase it... who are you?” 

“You know who I am, Tam.” The name rolled off the woman’s tongue with familiarity. “Even if you never heard my voice... if you never saw my face... You know exactly who I am to you.” 

Tamsin Riddle’s heart pumped out blood at incredible speeds now. Her eyes couldn’t believe what they were witnessing. “You’re Merope Gaunt.” 

“Your mother, yes.” There weren’t too many physical similarities between mother and daughter. It seemed that Tamsin truly got her looks from her father. Maybe in another time, Merope could have been beautiful, but she wasn’t. Despite this, Tam found herself mesmerized by her appearance. While they didn’t share many features, Tamsin knew very well that look on the dead woman’s face... she had seen it so many times in the mirror. 

“I... you aren’t real, you can’t be...” 

“I am real to you, daughter. That’s what matters.” Her mother stepped closer, stopping only a few feet away. “You have grown so much.” 

“I... what do you want?” 

Merope frowned. “I don’t want anything. You do. I know that.” 

“What could I want then?” She met her mother’s eyes with defiance. “What do the dead have to offer me?” 

“I am not in the position to offer you anything but my apologies, my daughter.” Merope was visibly younger, even in death, but her tone was that of a wiser person than that of one who’d abandoned a child to a Muggle orphanage. “I was foolish... so foolish. I brought so much pain to you when all I wanted was your well-being.” 

“Whatever your intentions were... they were nothing. They meant nothing in the end. You still died.” 

“I did. But not because I didn’t want to raise you... I wasn’t killed by a broken heart, daughter.” Merope looked to the windows outside. “But I was a coward. And despicable. I apologize for that, as I would have done for your father.” 

“My father was a horrible man.” Even after all those years, Tam still loathed the face of Tom Riddle. The man who, upon seeing her, cursed loudly and didn’t even try to comprehend who she was. For a moment, she felt like she wanted to know him, to have someone who cared... but those hopes were dashed away on a whim. Death followed. 

“He wasn’t ideal,” Merope admitted. “But he was a victim. I drugged him... sired his child without his consent. I was horrible. But it was only after I was hit with the truth that I realized... that I did the only thing I had to do.” 

“That being...?” 

“I felt remorse.” Merope’s voice was distant, as if it were being carried by the wind. “Nothing else was left for me to do. I should have raised you, but I couldn’t. I became sick. It complicated your birth. Only you survived.” 

“What did that change?” Tam asked. 

“For him? Nothing. I never could have told him. But that didn’t matter. One doesn’t need to live for forgiveness. Understanding my mistake hurt me, but it also made me live for a little bit longer. Enough to have you.” 

“Then... what is the point of showing remorse? What will it change?” 

Merope’s image flickered for a moment. “Death is not my story to tell. But it isn’t a definitive end. Death is unavoidable, my daughter.” 

“But my Horcruxes-” 

“They delay the moment, sure.” Her face became stern, as if Merope were lecturing her on why she shouldn’t steal cookies out of a kitchen jar. “But you’ve seen the truth. What will become of you? Do you think your fate will be any different? I can see why you never showed love towards another person or being... You were never given love by anyone. But I know there was a chance.” 

“A chance?” Tamsin repeated, finding herself lost. 

“A chance you knew what it was. Not because of anyone. But simply because of yourself. You care about yourself. But it can mean it’s not simply self-preservation, dear. One must love oneself first and foremost; otherwise, how can one show love to anyone else?” 

“Then-” 

“But severing your soul is the opposite of that.” Once more, Merope had a severe expression as she interrupted Tamsin. “That meant you didn’t love yourself enough... that you were willing to hurt yourself in the deepest way there is.” 

“It’s done now; what can I do about it?” As far as Tamsin had heard, the creation of Horcruxes wasn’t something that could be reversed. 

“You will have to think about that, daughter. But I believe you know I am not lying to you in any way.” 

“I... simply wanted to live...” Tam’s voice cracked. “I wanted to not be bound by the shackles of falling to a single spell... becoming sick with a terminal disease... erased by a single bombing run...” 

“And I don’t judge you for that, dear.” Merope’s voice finally softened. It somehow brought comfort to Tam. “But fearing death doesn’t justify all you have done to yourself. You would have lost yourself on the way to your plans of grandeur... You would start believing your words. Become like the purebloods you always despised. Is that vision not enough?” 

“Then should I just abandon everything? Let myself be caught, judged for my crimes? Is that what you’re saying, Mother ?” 

Merope was shaken by Tam’s outburst as Tam spat out the last word. Instead, her gaze was steadier than ever. “Daughter... what worth is a life that doesn’t have a purpose? If there is no end to it, then how is anything you’re doing meaningful? Even if you live forever, even if you charm yourself younger... your mind will never escape the march of time. Will there be anything left in a few centuries?” 

“There are people who lived for that amount of time.” 

“But those people either understood what they were doing or became shells of themselves. Again... think of what you saw... what will become of you.” 

There was a brief moment of silence. “If I die... what would happen to me?” 

“I cannot say, dear.” Now, Merope’s voice was enlaced with pity. “Not with your soul so wounded... it isn’t over for you... But it will require everything you hold dear now.” 

“Will it hurt?” The question sounded childish even to her ears. “Dying?” 

“It will be a relief,” Merope assured her, smiling sadly. “When one suffers for too long, death is the release. And if you don’t suffer, it’s even better. You won’t die now, I’m sure of it. But don’t fear it.” 

“Will... will you be there?” 

Merope looked around. “That is a question I cannot answer. Maybe one day you will find out if I will be with you again, dear. Not that I’m not with you now.” She smiled again. “Even when you release that stone, I will be with you to the end.” 

Tamsin investigated Merope Gaunt’s eyes for a longer moment. More than ever, she could see why she was her mother. What made them similar when looks didn’t? “Everything I've done until now-” 

“Wouldn’t matter,” Merope stated. “But you should hope so. Only when it does will you be free of the torment brought upon by you.” 

The Dark Lady slowly nodded. “I... I think I understand.” 

“You will soon if you already don’t.” 

As if against her wishes, her hand let loose of the stone, which fell to the wooden ground below. Merope’s image vanished from existence, leaving her alone once more... but not quite as before. Her existence felt different. The world felt warmer... maybe it was all in her head... but she felt like a weight had been lifted briefly from her. It was still there, just giving her enough room to take a breath. 

Never before was she this lost. Never was there so much uncertainty. But her mother’s words echoed through her head like they had been said inside an empty room.  

Tamsin couldn’t think alone now... 

A feeling came to her, one that her male counterpart probably never thought of unless he had malicious intentions. 

She needed Harry Potter. 

Chapter 5: More of the Same, Despite Myself

There was a soft breeze as Lady Voldemort walked outside the shack to the back garden, brushing her hair around her face. Nothing grew here apart from grass. No flowers, trees... the place barely had space for one tree, after all. It had a small fence that was broken in some places. Perhaps the act of an animal. The place was surrounded by a lot of wilderness, after all. 

Harry Potter stood with his back turned and hands on top of the fence. But he heard her approaching and turned to face the Dark Lady. His green eyes cast down upon her with... less discomfort. She didn’t know how much he had heard, if he had heard at all... but his expression was calmer. His features didn’t harden as much just by the sight of her. There was less hatred to be detected. 

“Hello.” She felt awkward, not knowing quite what to say. He had been right. In many points. To imagine the Resurrection Stone could have worked like that... what could she think? What was she supposed to take from that? 

The shade of Merope had told her that if she didn’t understand it already, she would soon. The Dark Lady wasn’t sure she completely got it. Maybe at least she wasn’t out of the loop. 

“I won’t ask who you saw.” Potter started, looking at her weirdly. “But I can only imagine, judging by your face, that it wasn’t for nothing.” 

“No, it was not.” Voldemort stepped closer. He didn’t move an inch. “I... I think I understand.... maybe...” 

“Do you understand that it isn’t something you should run away from?” 

She shrugged. “I suppose. I can... accept it. I don’t like it-” 

“No one does, Tam.” The way he talked to her was a lot less hostile now. “It’s not that we worship death. But the world is made up like that. You can prolong life, sure. Take the Philosopher’s Stone, for example.” 

“I’ve heard of it.” She had, after a study in alchemy that Voldemort had dismissed... what, seven or eight years ago? That crimson piece of jewellery that allegedly produced a liquid that could extend one’s life indefinitely and be used to extract pure gold from it. Life and riches. 

“It doesn’t make Flamel immortal,” Harry said. “It can’t prevent him from being killed by even the smallest things. He can still be hurt, maimed, or whatever. He’s not invincible. In my world, the stone was destroyed.” 

She eyed him curiously. “I imagine you had something to do with it?” 

“It was your fault.” He answered, a bit of the previous bitterness returning. “You were trying to get the stone so you could be resurrected. The whole ordeal was weird. I think Dumbledore set me up to... be a hero, I guess. He returned the cloak. It had been with him for a few years since my dad gave it to him... and I faced off against you for the first time. You told me how you were even less than a ghost. After I dealt with you, the stone was gone. And Flamel died just last year in my world, along with his wife.” 

The Dark Lady pondered his words for a few more seconds, though her attention was turned towards what he said about how he confronted Tom Riddle... 

“How did you face me if I was reduced to so little? More importantly, how did you beat me?” 

“I didn’t beat you, not really. I was eleven.” Potter smirked at her shock. “You possessed our Defence teacher that year. He wasn’t a Death Eater, funnily enough-” 

“Death Eater?” Voldemort had to interrupt him again. “You mean a Knight of Walpurgis?” 

“Your lackeys went through a rebrand just before the war really took off,” Potter explained. She couldn’t find herself at the present moment choosing a name like Death Eater for her followers. It seemed so... too much. Gaudy, even. “Anyway, since my mum sacrificed herself and created a protection with blood magic, you couldn’t physically touch me. Not even in that form.” 

“Oh. I've never heard of such magic.” That much was true. For all her years of research around the globe, she hadn't ever heard of even a tale of protective blood magic, able to prevent even physical contact from threats. It sounded extremely powerful. 

“Neither did Dumbledore, funnily enough. I imagine all he found out about it was from after it happened.” Potter chuckled. “When I touched your vessel, his skin burned. I passed out from the pain of being close to you that was always present because of the Horcrux... but I know he died. All this made you commit your greatest blunder a few years after when you returned. I was bound to Earth as long as you lived because of you using my blood, just so you could nullify the protection.” 

“I see.” That was truly disheartening information, Voldemort thought. It was just so overwhelming. To know she tampered with magic barely known, just to be defeated by even more obscure forms of witchcraft. “That pain you felt... is it gone now?” 

“After you destroyed the Horcrux, yeah. It is. As is my Parseltongue. I've spoken it ever since I was a kid. That was because of your soul piece.” 

“You mean that you inherited abilities?” 

“That’s almost how Dumbledore said it the first time I asked him that. The night you killed my parents, you transferred some powers. I think he suspected it to be Horcruxes, but he couldn’t have known. And you can imagine how it would mess up a child to know that. Though I wish he had grown out of it.” 

“What do you mean?” Voldemort had to ask, seeing as his tone turned just slightly bitter at the end. This supposed hero, who vanquished her, having issues with Dumbledore? That was not what she expected. Maybe this wasn’t a yes-man of the headmaster, after all. 

“Nothing,” Harry answered quite quickly. “My mum’s protection doesn’t extend to you, it seems. Maybe it expired when he died or something. But I already touched your skin and nothing happened.” 

She didn’t need to be reminded of the previous night. Having been completely taken by surprise was shameful enough for the Dark Lady. “You were saying?” 

“Yeah, sorry.” Potter forced an apologetic smile. “Horcruxes aren’t like the stone. They make you go against nature itself. Beings shouldn’t exist in that state you were in.” 

“But wouldn’t Horcruxes existing make it natural?” Voldemort didn’t want to start an academic debate, but she felt like the question was necessary. “I wasn’t the one to first create a Horcrux, and I will certainly not be the last.” 

Potter diverted his eyes away from her, instead staring at the wilderness in front of them. It was a cloudy day, but Voldemort could spot the sight of a few birds in trees. Eventually, he spoke again. “When you destroyed the Horcrux in my body... You did so thinking you were killing me.” 

“Yes.” 

“That meant you used the Killing Curse. But something weird happened.” 

“What is it?” She couldn’t help but find herself getting curious simply from the way he was talking now. 

“This is not something I’ve told anyone,” Potter said. “Not even my closest friends. But I guess there’s no better person. I woke up in a different place. It was all blindingly white, and it looked like King’s Cross.” 

“That’s... why?” 

“I’ll get there,” Harry promised. “Then, Dumbledore showed up.” 

It took her a few moments to realise why that would be important. “He... he was already dead, I assume.” 

The Unspeakable nodded. “We had a weird talk. But we weren’t exactly alone. There was... hell, I don’t even know what it was. I wanted to help it... But I couldn’t even look at it without my stomach swirling. It looked like a baby... but it was all maimed. The face was identical to that of Tom.” 

Lady Voldemort was a smart woman. She could quickly put the pieces together on what it meant, and the realisation made her face go pale. “You believe that was the Horcrux?” 

“What else could it be?” Harry finally looked back at her. His green eyes were in a foggy state. “I don’t even know if that happened... I asked Dumbledore if it was happening inside my head, and he said it was, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.” 

She found the strength to chuckle incredulously. “I don’t think an illusion or even hallucination would replicate a saying like that. I am inclined to believe you were... at a crossroad, most likely.” 

Potter nodded. “He told me that if I boarded a train, it would take me on. I had the choice. And I chose to go back.” 

“Just because you felt like you needed to stop him?” 

“I wouldn’t ever be selfish like that,” Harry said. “I couldn’t move on without bringing justice. After so many people died... it was the bare minimum. But I don’t think your soul was able to move on. I don’t know if there’s a Heaven or Hell, but I think it was just stuck.” 

“Because of the Horcruxes?” Tam asked, dreading his answer. 

“Maybe. I don’t know how symbolic showing remorse really is. Dumbledore said killing maims the soul. Perhaps it was because of how cruel you were until the last moment.” 

“Then what do I do?” She couldn’t even tell if the question was directed at him or herself. She was so confused... her world had turned upside down. Now, she was tempted to believe things she never conceived to be true. “If severing my soul can cause it to simply remain in a limbo, then what hope is there for me?” 

“It’s... I don’t have a clear answer, Tam.” Harry sighed. “Honestly, this is as fucked up to me as it is to you.” 

“What do you mean?” Voldemort asked, puzzled. 

“You were the worst human being I've ever met.” He spoke. “There are a few people who are close to your level. Fenrir Greyback, but he is barely human, Bellatrix Lestrange-” 

“I beg your pardon. Bellatrix... You mean Bellatrix Black?” 

“Oh, yeah, you visited her yesterday.” Harry shook his head. “Well, yeah, she is insane. Or will become. I don’t know for certain. But there aren’t many people as bad as you were. I should have just killed you like you said. It would spare the world a lot of pain. But that’s not what I went back to do.” 

“Because of your mission.” Voldemort guessed, crossing her arms. 

“Because I gave you a chance even after you killed so many.” Harry fidgeted with the fence. “I looked you in the eye and told you that you should show remorse. In a way, that was your last chance, and you didn’t take it. We were meant to fight before I was even born, but I at least wanted a simple end. To be back with you, who hasn’t committed half the atrocities he did... and who, against all my expectations, is listening to what I’m saying... I don’t know what to think, to be honest.” 

That was... enlightening. Was enlightening the right word to use here? The Dark Lady was simply lost. This was so, so much... Harry Potter’s retellings spoke of the loss of purpose. She was halfway into becoming something that barely resembled a human. Her horcruxes were already made, but this Tom Riddle... he went a step further. Harry Potter spoke like he had killed thousands. Maybe he did. And fate tied this Unspeakable to her male counterpart in ways that she wasn’t even aware were possible. 

“So, what am I to do?” It almost felt like her knees would buckle under the pressure of having to say those words. She felt so weak... with all her power, knowledge of magic, intellect... what fate had reserved for her were decades fighting a teenager. She had planned to begin more aggressive operations soon if Dumbledore refused to hire her. That had been his thought process until returning to her hotel room in London. But everything was now flipped. “I do not want to commit acts of cruelty for the sake of it, Harry Potter. If I developed sadism later, I have yet to harness that aspect of me. What is the point?” 

“I wish Tom had thought like that in the later years.” Potter chuckled humourlessly. “People say dark magic can corrupt you. And not just the Killing Curse. You saw how much you like to splatter the Cruciatus around, cursing anyone who ever wronged you, and above all, those who didn’t. Yeah, sure, it probably didn’t happen in one night, but it kept getting worse. I’ll ask you if I don’t know who you are or have become. Is this what you want?” 

No... it probably wasn’t what she wanted. Especially because it would destroy everything she tried to accomplish. More than ten years would be wasted as a meaningless spirit, while the rest of Tom Riddle’s life would be spent on an ultimately unsuccessful conflict where he was bested by a teenager. The proof was standing in front of her. 

Fate wouldn’t allow her to win like that. 

But was there another way to win? 

“I repeat my question, Harry Potter. What can I do? Repenting for my sins? I can’t imagine you are a religious man.” 

“I’m not.” Potter proclaimed. “But I learned that people are more complicated than they seem. This has been like thermal shock. Do you think I expected you to be even remotely human? I definitely expected you to hex me first, ask questions later, but not what came after. I thought I’d have to extract the answers from you by force.” 

“Would you be willing to do that?” 

“Yes.” He didn’t miss a beat in answering. “Not now, since you’ve been so kind as to avoid violence. But fine, answering your question... I don’t know. Not really. I never thought you’d see reason. Maybe it’s being a woman or something. Maybe your ego isn’t as big as Tom’s. But don’t blame I never thought I’d get to this part.” 

From everything he told her, Voldemort couldn’t blame the man as much as she wanted to. Her mixed feelings were a shock even to her. Because she didn’t want to fail. As much as she believed in magical superiority, her conflict had been planned to get rid of Dumbledore, especially, along with any potential allies of his. Ruling was not something she wanted. She’d leave the government to the families, to do as they pleased. They could call her Lady; they could serve her... but what was the point of sitting behind a desk and rubber-stamping legislation? 

No, she desired to hold true power. The secrets to life itself. Voldemort wanted to understand the fabric of reality. Why was the world built like this? If it could be done, she wanted to manipulate the world itself. Change it to what her heart desired. Stretch the limits of the impossible with magic. Her immortality helped because then she would have infinite time to achieve such goals. 

But finding out in a matter of hours that she’d instead start believing the pureblood idiocy she had always despised? Her existence was proof that blood didn’t matter. She was the greatest witch of her time, with a very Muggle father. She had more than one reason not to associate herself with the name of that man. Not only that, but she would abdicate care for herself and fall victim to the whims of fate. 

What good was her immortality if it could be stripped so easily by an adolescent boy? 

“Are you certain about what you said about souls? How you saw his soul so mangled it couldn’t move on?” Voldemort finally asked after some time. 

“Of course not. Merlin, it might not even have happened. Maybe that second killing curse sent my brain into a delirious state.” Potter clenched the fence. “It’s a theory. The best I could come up with to explain what I saw.” 

“You really destroyed my Horcruxes?” 

The man shifted uncomfortably. “Most, no. I destroyed the diary. Dumbledore destroyed the ring, some friends of mine destroyed the cup and the locket... the diadem was destroyed in a Fiendfyre cast in the final battle of the war... You destroyed the one in me, of course.” He smiled at that. “And there was another, too. Another friend of mine destroyed it.” 

“Eight pieces?” Her plan had always been to create six Horcruxes. In total, seven pieces of her soul, the most powerful magical number. “Why did I create another?” 

Potter answered with a shrug. “Maybe you didn’t want to consider the one in my body to be a proper one. Maybe you didn’t quite realise it yet when you made the seventh Horcrux. In the end, you chose a snake to harbour your soul piece.” 

“A snake?” Voldemort echoed, dumbfounded. One living being possessing her soul was one thing, but two? “How could I-” 

“It wasn’t a normal snake.” Potter clarified whether it would make things easier to understand. “I’m pretty sure it was sentient. It was comparable to an anaconda in size, but still venomous. It was the last one needed to make you mortal again.” 

This was simply too much. It almost felt like her head would explode from such throbbing. She’d need a yearly dose of pain-killer potions. “I have no reason or strength to doubt what you have said to me.” 

“I have no reason to lie.” He answered. “Everything I said couldn’t be closer to the truth. No point in changing anything. What do you intend to do now?” 

An awfully painful thought crossed her mind at that moment. “At the present moment... I’d like you to know that I don’t plan on conquering the world.” 

Harry tilted his head. “Okay?” 

“That means,” Voldemort said impatiently. “That you told me how much my actual goals are meaningless if that is my destiny. Sure, your world is different from mine. But prophecies could be repeated. And if I continue this path... what will be left of me apart from that husk?” The Dark Lady took a deep breath and let out the air through a sigh. “My horcruxes. They were meant to prolong my life. Make it possible for me to learn the secrets I wanted to unravel. Against anything that should kill me. I did not take it too seriously when I read there were consequences for the creation of these artefacts-” 

“Because you didn’t think you’d die to face them.” Harry completed, forcing her to nod. 

“Yes. But if they are to arrive despite my desires... I wish not to be on the worst end of a punishment...” 

“Fear isn’t ideal as a way to improve...” Potter said. “But it’s a start. Hell, there might be hope for you.” 

“Forfeiting my horcruxes...” Even the words made Voldemort wince in discomfort. That would sever her immortality for good, making her just as mortal as the man standing in front of her. But if that was the fate that awaited her... There could always be the possibility of fighting fate, but that usually ended worse for those who tried. “I do not know how much it would be repenting...” 

“It’s a start.” Potter declared, looking over to her. “But I have to admit I am almost confused that you just believed all you saw.” 

“Would you rather have me doubting you, Harry Potter?” The Dark Lady snarled, regaining some of her strength through anger. Her patience was on the brink, and her fury was aggravated by his refusal to even flinch at her words. He simply wasn’t afraid of her. That was a first.  

Or second, to be more precise. 

“I didn’t say that.” Potter pointed out. “But I’m just confused. I would have expected you to think I’m fooling you. Or that,” He nodded towards the shack. “The stone was an illusion.” 

“Illusions are usually either flattering or deadly. Sometimes both. What sort of illusion says what you don’t want to hear?” 

For a moment, Potter stared at her, seemingly dumbfounded, which warranted a raised eyebrow, confused as to why he suddenly stopped. “Sorry. I suppose I just never imagined wisdom coming out of the mouth of a Riddle.” 

“I became Head Girl for a reason, Potter.” She knew how much Dumbledore didn’t want her to take her position, but every other professor voted so she would. After all, being such a magical prodigy and the one who seemingly revealed the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets, she became very popular among the staff of Hogwarts. 

“I almost forgot you were supposed to be smart.” He answered. “For all the time I fought you, it was just irrational decisions coupled with insanity and sadism. Yet I kept hearing how much you charmed and persuaded the Death Eaters to join you. At the end, the only reason you even had followers was because they were too afraid of you.” 

“I am smart.” Voldemort eyed him with contempt. Really, what had her male self done? The entire purpose of their mission was to enlarge themselves and their abilities. Not use her followers as spell practice dummies. “And I am wise enough to recognise true words. Perhaps with less evidence, I would have been more sceptical if you hadn’t been... convincing. Bringing us here, knowing about the true nature of the stone-” 

“I wouldn’t have come unprepared.” Despite his words of reassurance, there was a flicker of mischief that briefly crossed his eyes. “But I didn’t plan on convincing you to do anything. I’d probably just blackmail you into giving any information I asked.” 

“Cunning. What house were you sorted into again?” 

For some reason, that drew a smile out of Potter. “Like I said, Gryffindor through and through. Though the Sorting Hat did consider your house.” 

Voldemort hummed, briefly indulging in this moment of casual conversation. “I am still not sure of what to do. If I destroy my horcruxes-” 

“I can’t tell if it means salvation,” Potter said. “But... it might be a step towards it. Hell, I don’t know what’s beyond Earth, but there’s something. I’m not religious or anything, but I believe there is a line between what can make a soul suffer for eternity.” 

“I was raised Christian.” The words left her mouth before she even accounted for them. “I stopped believing when I was shown Hogwarts. When I was shown magic. When I was shown, I could evade Hell.” 

“But wasn’t Heaven a preferable option?” 

“At the time, it was not.” Voldemort chuckled. “I would rather... live forever. Find myself thriving on this planet rather than a hypothetical paradise. There was no room for another god, Potter.” 

“That might have been the eeriest thing I have heard.” The Unspeakable said with an unbelieving chuckle. “So, where are your Horcruxes exactly?” 

“You got most of them right,” Voldemort told him, remembering the almost accurate list from the night before. “The diadem is in Hogwarts. The diary is hidden in my Gringotts vault.” 

“Funny that I never realised you ought to have one.” Potter mused. “Go on.” 

What sort of wizard wouldn’t possess a vault? Even if she were a wanted criminal in the future, the goblins would most certainly not care for that. Those beings usually didn’t care about those prosecuted or accused under human magical law. “The cup is also in my vault. The locket is in the cave you somehow know the existence of. And the ring-” 

“Here.” Potter swirled the ring across his fingers. She – with his secondary wand pointed to her head – had disabled the lesser protective curses, but the one that would unleash a deadly curse that would wither whoever put the ring on their finger was very much active. As was the compulsion charm, designed to trick a person into wearing the ring. But Harry Potter seemed to be unaffected by the charm. “We can either destroy them one by one... or we can gather them to put an end to it.” 

“And would you be willing to assist with such a task?” Voldemort inquired. “More than once, you have said all you were required to do while here was... study me. Yet you are adhering to the idea of interfering with another universe?” 

“You wouldn’t know, Tam, but I, with the help of a truly brilliant mind, was the one who invented dimension slash time travel.” The raven-haired man smiled. “So, there aren’t regulations or limits on what I can do. Besides, I’d be doing this world a favour. The department couldn’t find fault in that.” 

Despite herself, that was a compelling argument. That was, of course, if she chose to believe he was the one who created the means to be now tormenting her. But what reason did he have to lie? There was enough evidence at this point that Harry Potter spoke nothing but the truth. And that was exactly why he was so unsufferable. 

“Fine.” Voldemort conceded, sighing heavily. “Where first?” 

“Gringotts, of course.” Potter decided, but then he drew his wand from his pocket and pointed it at the shack. “ Incendio!’ He bellowed, and in a matter of seconds, the last Gaunt residence was set aflame. The Dark Lady almost remarked out loud that the stone was still inside... 

But it almost sounded like the shade of Merope was whispering to her that it would take more than fire to destroy that artefact. She also remembered that the Pensieve was inside the now-burning shack, but Voldemort knew it could also withstand burning. And... to be honest, it wasn’t so bad to see this place turning into ashes. 

“Shall we go?” Potter extended his arm, meaning to side-apparate with her. Humiliation on top of humiliation. Without a word, she took his arm, and the world vanished around them as they travelled to Diagon Alley once more. 

Chapter 6: Wisdom I Have Not

Notes:

So... I had to go back and change a lot of stuff about this story. I realized it won't be as long as I planned, which is okay, I have other ideas for a HP fic that might come to life. Either way, this will hopefully be finished soon-ish. It will be a lot less about the pairing than I might have imagined, but it should be a more enjoyable read now. Do give me your thoughts.

6th of September edit: just one thing cause I think I didn't phrase it right: THERE WILL BE ROMANCE, IT WILL NOT STOP BEING A FOCUS, I just wanted to say that I'll try to give the two of them more depth before pursuing the pairing. Don't worry.

Being in London for the second time in a day was both confusing and infuriating. But here Voldemort stood, walking towards her doom. There were many deeds she had attended to in the past two and a half decades, but walking towards Gringotts in the hopes of retrieving two of her Horcruxes was insanity. All her lifework, all her dedication, pain, shredding her own spirit... and she was now numbly marching on, held at wandpoint by a man beyond time, beyond reason. 

Really, Harry Potter. This man, with a striking resemblance to his ancestors, bore little resemblance to them. The Potters, while not always, tended to be noble. This one, however, was noble in a different sense. Not in a chivalrous manner, but his look signified he had seen a thousand battles. He was a hardened veteran of a different war, in a world shaped by her influence and decisions. Not her, exactly, but it didn’t seem like there was much splitting Tom and Tamsin Riddle apart from gender and minor details. 

Apart from that is, the way he had turned out. Tamsin was horrified by the sight of a man more akin to a reptile than a human. A man who was so drowned in his own ego that it cost him his victory. Who turned out so insane that he only kept his followers through fear. Her Knights of Walpurgis sure did fear her, but they also believed her. She was their mistress, their ruler. She had a silver tongue, a way to persuade. 

But Tom Riddle... 

“Potter.” She broke the silence as they strolled towards Diagon Alley again. They had already apparated in the same small alleyway, which provided them enough privacy to appear out of thin air without being spotted by the Muggles. Now, they were walking calmly towards Tom’s pub, while the afternoon’s sun radiated from above. Despite this, it was a frosty day, with Voldemort’s skin being particularly cold. She missed the comfort of her wand, not safely stored inside Potter’s pocket. 

“Yes?” His voice came after a second. He had been cleaning up his round glasses. 

“Why did you win?” Her question came, albeit hesitantly. “You, although seemingly skilled in magic and strategy, are unlikely to have won out of a simple grand duel. What was it that led you to victory?” 

“Many things.” He answered, boring his striking emerald eyes on her figure. “Luck, timing, ability to evade him... and knowing better. It’s a lot easier when your enemy is barely sane. I developed much of my spell work after being admitted to the D.O.M. I defeated you with Expelliarmus, as you know.” 

“Still not over that.” She commented between gritted teeth. “But what was my failure? Was it simply on how I botched my resurrection?” 

“Not exactly.” Potter tilted his head as they walked. “That played a major role, but the entire method in which you ran the Death Eaters was flawed. I never saw the side of you that was cunning, persuasive, and scheming, in person, at least until I met you. You were just... a husk. Violent, wrathful. You were blind sighted by Dumbledore’s plans to bring you down even beyond the grave.” 

“A hurrah for the headmaster, then.” Voldemort cheered sarcastically. “So is it just... doomed to fail?” 

“Probably not, but the dark magic you performed clearly brought on the worst in you,” Potter answered. “I’m not gonna go out of my way to explain how your masterplan could have succeeded, but hey, it was probably best if you just became a Dark Lord in Bermuda instead.” 

“Believe it or not, such a thought has crossed my mind,” Tamsin admitted with an uncomfortable shrug. Becoming a powerful witch away from the prying eyes of Hogwarts’s headmaster had been a tempting thought, but with him as the head of the ICW... “Alas, I like this shithole of a country I was born in, enough to not want to relocate.” 

“Fair enough.” Potter conceded. “When I was on the run after the Ministry was taken over, I genuinely thought of running off to the continent, America, Brazil... you name it. But I couldn’t leave my friends under your heel.” 

“What was it like?” She found herself aching to know what her initial stages of victory truly looked like. 

Voldemort did not fail to notice Potter’s grimace. “It was a dystopia. Muggleborns were rounded up and taken God knows where. Hogwarts began to teach Dark Arts. And not even in the same way as Durmstrang. Snatchers, as we called them, people who tried to benefit from the situation, were a major problem apart from the obvious elephant in the room, which were the Death Eaters. And...” He paused. “My friends and I were listed as enemies of the state. With a fat ramson for our capture.” 

“It is not far from what I envisioned happening if I were successful in destroying the opposition.” Truthfully, she would leave governance to her underlings. There were more important matters to worry about. Emphasis on the were. “How did you destroy my Horcruxes, if you cannot control Fiendfyre?” 

Now he smiled, that infuriating and sly smirk that he always made when fondly remembering a victory over her male self. “I killed the basilisk. Using Gryffindor’s sword. Can you connect the dots?” 

Apart from the wild thought that he was most likely still a teenager, and yet he was able to slay the king of serpents, Voldemort had to think for a bit to understand what he was saying. “The sword. It’s goblin-made, is it not?” 

“Bingo.” Potter nodded. “Thus, I, among other people, managed to destroy the Horcruxes using either the sword or the fangs from the basilisk.” 

“Clever.” Never would she have thought that wretched serpent would have played such a major part in her downfall. Then again, it was because of it that she split her soul in the first place. “Yet it will be quite hard to replicate it now, won’t it?” 

“Unless we sneak up to the Chamber of Secrets and kill the basilisk-” Potter stopped mid-sentence. “Blimey, it’s brilliant.” 

“What?” Tamsin wasn’t sure she heard him quite right. “That is a fouled plan, if you are set on maintaining discretion.” 

“It’s not as ludicrous as you might imagine. I’ll explain why.” The reason he stopped is that they had finally reached the pub, which gave access to the Alley. Passing by quickly, not intending on greeting anyone, the pair made their way until they reached the brick wall, and that’s when Potter tapped just the right brick with his wand, opening the gates to Diagon Alley. They still had to walk a reasonable distance to get to Gringotts. 

“So?” Voldemort reminded him to talk. “What’s the bright idea?” 

“I have the cloak,” Potter replied quietly enough that others wouldn’t hear it. “And believe me, it’s not that hard breaking into Hogwarts. Nor is it breaking into Gringotts.” 

“Something tells me you speak from experience.” She guessed from his smug tone. The subsequent smirk was confirmation of that even before he answered. 

“There are a lot of secret passages to the school. Most unknown to most people alive. Killing the basilisk... then retrieving the fangs... and also taking the diadem... It works for me.” 

“Or you could just let me cast Fiendfyre instead.” The effort he wanted to go through was beyond what Tamsin considered either reasonable or sane. “Even if you do not trust me-” 

“That’s exactly why I'm not letting you do that,” Potter stated firmly, much to her dismay. “There’d be nothing stopping you from just backing down and burning me to a crisp instead. And if you’re really up to this, you won’t complain.” 

“I am unsure as of now.” How could she even muster a coherent thought after her worldview view so thoroughly shattered? “Everything you showed and told me... It’s a lot to take in. I feel like we should at least gather them... then decide... Because this is not easy. I feel beyond helpless, Harry Potter.” 

“Like I said, even Grindelwald showed remorse. There’s hope for you yet. I don’t know why, but I even told that to you. I asked you to show remorse, and only then you’d understand.” 

That sentence was almost enough to make her halt her steps, even if it wasn’t new information. Either way, it was still ludicrous to even think about. “Why? After everything you suffered, all the carnage... You still believed it?” 

“Not exactly...” Now, Potter did not look half as confident as he had previously. They were almost at the bank. “But I gave you one last chance. But it was obviously too late for that. But it doesn’t seem like you’re fully gone.” 

“And what does ‘fully gone’ entail in this context, Mr. Potter?” She asked with sarcasm dripping in her voice. That earned a wince from him. Maybe something in her tone? 

“I mean... unable to show remorse. Genuine remorse. You’re here now, aren’t you?” They had just entered through the gates of Gringotts, the magnificent bank eye-catching as it always was. Tamsin had always been fond of goblin architecture ever since she set eyes on the bank on her first visit to the Alley. 

“So it seems.” That was the most she managed to splutter as they joined the line to speak to a goblin. It only took thirty seconds, which were spent in awkward silence until one signalled for them to approach. This particular goblin seemed young, with no grey hair around his otherwise still bald hair, and his face also did not contain many wrinkles. 

“Good afternoon.” The goblin said more politely than Voldemort expected. In front of the Goblin, stood a small golden plate with the name Dallik written on it. Undoubtedly, the goblin’s name. “How may I help you?” 

“I wish to access the vault of Tamsin Riddle.” She hated, loathed to refer to herself as that, but the goblins wouldn’t care for her semantics, nor had she changed her legal name to Voldemort. She was still Tamsin. Still a Riddle. 

“Keys?” Dallik asked. Voldemort always brought her keys with her, no matter where she went, usually in her pockets, if she was wearing pants that had any. If not, she didn’t mind walking with a purse or bag. It would extract some looks from other wizards, but again, which wizards really saw her apart from her Knights of Walpurgis? Only those who had seen her and Potter walking through Diagon Alley twice today, and those who had already noticed how different the pair looked, Potter with his Muggle attire, and she with her dark robes. 

Voldemort handed the goblin her keys, which Dallik inspected thoroughly. She almost felt offended, but alas. Her name was listed in high alert lists in at least four magical ministries or governments, but it’s not like the goblins would care. She was still paying her fees, and when she could literally store a soul fragment inside her vault, shady money probably wasn’t too big a concern. As long as it didn’t fool them. 

“All in order.” The goblin announced, handing the keys back to her alongside a small piece of paper that had seemingly appeared out of thin air. Voldemort took them and stored them in her pocket. “Go in that direction, you will find someone to guide you to your vault.” 

“Thank you.” She said curtly and paced towards the direction that the goblin signalled, Potter right on her tracks. The man would not leave her alone. When they reached the location assigned to them, a small gate stood, which gave a view of multiple carts. Some were already occupied; others were just arriving from the depths of the bank. An older-looking goblin approached them. Before he could say anything, she extended her arm and gave the goblin the paper, which she knew would contain the number to her vault. 

“Hop in.” The goblin, who had a voice akin to that of a smoker of thirty years, instructed them while getting into the cart. Tamsin followed suit, Potter not far behind them. The journey to her vault was not a long one, thankfully, because she did get awfully dizzy from this. Another reason she preferred to let her underlings do the dirty work. The bureaucratic type, that was.  

Once they arrived, with the cart abruptly stopping, Voldemort wished she could hex Harry Potter. Not kill him, not even torture him. Just make his eyes turn in his skull, make his hair grow so much that he would resemble an ape, or even just curse his bloodline so he would not have children. Okay, her thoughts escalated quickly, but still. No wand, and all the effort in the world not to puke. 

Potter, however, seemed fine. He waited for her to compose herself with a bored look, and that made Voldermot grit her teeth. She approached the massive door to her vault and unlocked it. The door opened to reveal quite a small fortune, alongside a few other personal items. 

“Oh, I didn’t realise you were wealthy.” Potter mused with a whistle. “I wonder if you just gave away your money to the Death Eaters or if the goblins seized your assets since you obviously made no will, since what’s the point of that without the hopes of dying?” 

It was a good thing the goblin was waiting in the cart. She was sure they had spells and mechanisms to detect dark artefacts, but Tamsin had been almost sure there was no precedent for Horcruxes being stored in the bank. It could certainly cause issues. Ranging from legal ones to simply becoming an outright criminal on British soil. 

“Your words make sense, even if I hope he made something with the money.” It seemed unlikely, however. From what she had seen, Tom Riddle desperately needed Muggle plastic surgery. He also did not seem like he wished to live in the world he clung to, which was absurd to Tamsin. Maybe she would have turned out like this... 

If not for Potter throwing the truth in her face like a bucket of freezing water being splashed over her body. 

“Probably not. Never saw him in anything but those robes he wore when he came back. I doubt it.” Potter looked around the vault. “Where’s the cup?” 

“So attentive,” Voldemort said sarcastically and walked towards a small compartment in the corner. There, she opened it and tried hard not to sneeze from all the dust that flew right onto her nose. Inside were the two items she most valued in this vault. No amount of galleons or sickles could even compare to the beautiful cup of Helga Hufflepuff and her diary. Her first and fourth horcruxes. 

Extensions of her. 

“Tam.” She numbly heard the voice of Harry Potter beside her, no doubt staring at her with that paranoid stance he was always in. Curse him. She had no way to escape. No wandless magic could make her gain an upper hand over a wizard skilled aware of the potential of her revolting against her captivity.  

“Yes, Harry?” Voldemort spoke slowly, her voice a hiss. She almost did not feel like herself as she grasped the cup and the diary with each of her hands. 

“Let me carry them,” Potter said, his voice firm enough for her to realise that was an order. The goblin would definitely hear if she tried to claw his face, right? 

DAMN IT. She could not think like a Muggle. Certainly not one which would resolve issues through physical disputes. There was no way to escape from this. The horcruxes had pieces of her soul, but they did not belong to her. Not currently. 

Her arms moved on their own, like her mind hadn’t commanded them to. As did her legs. She did not bother to close the compartment which stored the Horcruxes. She pressed the Horcruxes against Potter’s hands roughly. 

All the while, his green eyes were still locked on her face, vigilant for any signs of action. He seemed to know her so much, enough that he would always be two steps ahead. Not even just one. Harry Potter read her like an open book. Was she so predictable? 

“You were once a vessel for his soul, were you not?” She asked, without letting go of the Horcruxes. Even if he was also holding them from the opposite side. 

“I was. For most of my life. I was never alone. I had your presence in my head. And not just from the main you. But from... well, the piece of soul stuck to me.” 

“Yes.” Voldemort gripped one of the handles of the cup so tightly that if it were a cheap knockoff, it would most certainly break. “Is that why you know me so much?” 

“It’s more complicated than that, but even when I joined the department, I couldn’t help but be obsessed over you. What you did. The reason you did it. There are far too many parallels. More than I am comfortable with.” Potter admitted. “First thing I did after inventing reliable time travel with my best friend? Try to understand you. Merlin, I didn’t even ask for authorisation. But I’m here.” 

Voldemort had a hard time deciphering this man, but she was starting to understand. This was not simply her enemy, as Dumbledore was. But another side of the coin. Orphans, cast out. Alone. Hunted. His expression and posture weren’t that of a pampered hero. It was of someone scarred with tribulations since his birth. Potter reminded her of the woman in the mirror from twenty or so years ago. Afraid, in pain. 

“Even in victory, he... I... remained in your mind.” It was not entirely accurate to say she was Tom Riddle. But there was nothing that pointed towards her not becoming like her male counterpart. They were still, after all, Voldemort. Lady or Lord. “The scars run deep, do they not?” 

“Obviously.” Potter chuckled, not letting go of the Horcruxes either. “Unfortunately, there’s no spell to fix the mind.” 

“No, there is not.” Finally, she let go, with Potter being struck back a few inches away just because of how tightly he was also holding the Horcruxes. “Where to now? There are two locations we must attend to.” 

“The cave.” He answered quite fast, faster than Tamsin was expecting. “We’ll get the locket. Breaking into Hogwarts is gonna be a challenge either way.” 

“And overcoming the Inferi will not?” Voldemort asked with a raised eyebrow. “You cannot cast Fiendfyre. You told me that. Unless you’re planning to be extra discreet-” 

“We’ll figure it out.” Potter declared. “Together, even.” 

That made Tamsin cross her arms. “Together. That sounds like a bad joke.” 

“It is.” Potter stored the Horcruxes in his own bag. She knew the ring to be there, too, even if the stone had been left in the Gaunt shack. They would not be returning there. Her wand was also there, at least she thought so. There in his pocket. Even if he wasn’t using the Horcruxes, for example, wearing the ring or writing in the diary, Voldemort wondered if there would be side effects from the exposure to the dark artefacts. “Let’s go.” 

“Gladly.” The goblin would be waiting for them, after all. And after this, they would already have a destination in mind. 

Let her worry about the details afterwards. 

...

It turned out that the biggest shock from travelling almost thirty years into the past was not seeing Diagon Alley in a time before the war. It was not seeing Professor Slughorn looking awfully young. It was not even seeing a female Tom Riddle who didn’t want to outright kill him, her sanity barely in place. 

No, the biggest shock was that Harry did not find anything good to eat in Muggle London. 

Processed food certainly wasn’t in its prime in the seventies compared to the late nineties, seeing that there wasn’t even a godforsaken McDonald’s in this city. Harry opted for shepherd’s pie for both him and Tamsin. They then rented a room in the Leaky Cauldron, and at least Tom, the bartender, did not bat an eye. The last thing he wanted people to think was- 

You know what? Better not to keep ruminating about it. 

As Harry ate, he found himself lost in thought. This mission had been created through impulse; he now realised that. Instead of reporting back to Cole, he jumped straight into the past, no planning, barely any equipment, to then hunt down Horcruxes. But then again, that wasn’t the purpose of his presence in the past. He wanted to understand Voldemort. How the Dark Lord’s head operated, or more specifically, how it did not. 

Instead of the unstable Tom Marvolo Riddle, snake-like, red eyes and a bald head with pale skin, he was greeted by Tamsin Riddle. Still Lord... eh, Lady Voldemort, now with her wand under his possession, deep inside his magical bag that had a lock only he could open. Willingly. Really, that had been one of the best gifts he ever received, and that was a high bar when the competition was broomsticks and a Deathly Hallow.

“You think too loudly.” Voldemort suddenly snapped, her fork with a piece of shepherd’s pie. 

“I was never that good in Occlumency,” Harry admitted. Even with his Unspeakable training, it was not his forte. 

“That is now what I meant.” She berated him. “Your face speaks clearly that you are having thoughts. Are you not trained to be discreet?” 

Harry frowned. “I am in a somewhat friendly environment with no immediate danger. Plus, I have less than a year of experience in infiltration missions. Where are you trying to get?” 

Voldemort put her shepherd’s pie to the side. She hadn’t even eaten half her plate. “Tell me something, Potter. You truly were not trained from a young age into becoming my vanquisher, were you?” 

He chuckled. “Obviously not. Dumbledore thought it was better to let me be in the dark. Or I guess he underestimated my relatives. They were as bad as the people from your orphanage.” 

“Somehow, I doubt that.”  

“For one, I did sleep in a cupboard until I was eleven.” Harry did not like to play the victim or self-pity himself, but there was something in her voice that just infuriated him somehow. Thankfully, Voldemort didn’t feel exhale pity in her look. But it was also not contempt. “And they treated me terribly because, well, I was different. To them, a freak.” 

Voldemort’s red eyes darted up when he said the word his aunt always used with him. “It seems no experience is truly individual. No one said it to my face, of course... But I heard... I can hardly find myself not sympathising with you. There is more nuance to you than you let show.” 

“Maybe that’s where my discretion skills excel.” Harry joked, and Voldemort’s lips actually curled up. “But the hat did consider putting me in Slytherin. Badly. I asked him not to put me there.” 

Voldemort’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Was it because of him? Or...?” 

“Funnily enough, it was because of a Malfoy,” Harry remembered that interaction in the train compartment. “Guy was a total prat. Disrespected the guy I was sitting with, a Weasley, who became my best friend. That was what motivated me not to be sorted there. It’s a sort of thing a child will think.” 

“I always had reservations about the houses. And how students are sorted.” She mused. “The drift from childhood to adolescence is wide. Categorising them so early is... foolish.” 

“I remember Tom saying he wanted there to be no other houses other than Slytherin. He was out of line, but maybe he was right on that, judging by how much it seems to influence magical society.” 

“Your average wizard is a superstitious fool, Potter,” Voldemort told him. “We, those with half the perception of a Muggle, come to that realisation quickly. Muggleborns, they can catch up exactly because they are beings of logic. It was a striking realisation. It is how the Muggles can even compete.” 

“For someone who thinks wizards are inherently superior...” Harry knew he was poking a dragon in its eye with that sort of comment. He received a piercing glare in return, which would never not make him sweat cold. 

“Those who are capable of wielding magic should be superior. Do you believe I am happy to deal with the shenanigans of my followers, the purebloods buffoons who have all the cards in their disposal to revert changes in society, but don’t? Ironically, it’s when you have a wizard of both worlds that they can truly excel. Me... you... even Dumbledore, from what I understand of his past.” 

Harry did not know if he should appreciate the comment. “Yeah, Dumbledore lived in Godric’s Hollow close to some Muggles. There’s a lot that went wrong because of that. Enough that he was pretty radical when he was young.” 

“I always wondered how close he was to Grindelwald.” Voldemort’s eyes became unfocused. “Ideologically, there is. There are all sorts of rumours about their friendship.” 

“Yeah.” Harry coughed awkwardly, choosing not to mention the Skeeter’s biography and the gossiping that spawned in his own time. “But it was a Muggleborn who did most of the legwork for me to be here. She is a genius. And even my mother was too.” 

“Your mother, who is the reason you’re here now. The sacrifice she made for you, I reckon the magic was not voluntary, was it?” Voldemort asked. Harry had a lot of time to think about the details of his mother’s sacrifice, especially after he had replicated it in the Forbidden Forest. 

“Not really. But from what I understand, it has to come through genuine sacrifice. You need to be willing to die for someone else. A power you knew not.” 

“Love.” Voldemort guessed. “That was what made his downfall inevitable.” 

“Not inevitable.” As much as there was a prophecy, it didn’t say he needed to win. Clearly, with other universes and realities existing, there was a world where he was ultimately defeated by Voldemort. “But easier. There were a lot of factors. The dependency on the Horcruxes is one of them.” Harry saw Voldemort tensing up, which alarmed him somewhat. It was worse at Gringotts when she was holding the diary and the cup. Harry saw how she went from not looking like a threat to resembling what Tom had become. Waiting like a snake would before attacking. A deep and thoughtful look at how she could gut him in multiple ways. It was bizarrely familiar, and a sight Harry realised he had not missed. 

“We are to go to the cave tomorrow, is that your plan?” She asked. 

“Yes.” Harry nodded. He did not know what to expect. “I am hoping it will be easier to enter the cave with you around.” 

“I imagine the protections I set up were formidable, then.” He did not appreciate the smugness in her voice. “Yes, it will be much easier if you give me my wand.” 

Now Harry felt a chill going down his spine. “I am not giving you my wand.” 

“Then... there is nothing to counter all the obstacles against my protections, Harry.” She spoke with venom, despite her smile. “The fact that we will have to swim through turbulent waters to even arrive at the cave. The blood payment to enter it. I hardly think you will be able to contain the Inferi. And the potion-” 

“I get it.” Harry cut her off, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. “Have you really brewed that damn potion already?” 

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?” 

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Harry did not even think about the fact that the potion could have been discovered earlier, or if it even existed in his timeline as well in 1970. He knew Voldemort had made Kreacher test it out for him, and that was the catalyst for R.A.B., Regulus Black, to steal the locket. Now, either Voldemort had already tested the potion with another poor soul, or she was expecting the potion to blindly protect the locket. “We will leave tomorrow morning. Then I’ll decide whether you can use your wand.” 

“I trust you will make a wise decision, Harry.” Every time she smiled at him, it was like he was thrown back into the past. Not literally, since that had already happened. But it was different too, with those features that did not belong to a woman near her fifties. It was easy to forget this was Riddle. “Will you sleep now?” 

With a start, he realised he had finished his food while talking to her. Harry had honestly not even noticed he had still been eating, leaving his brain on autopilot to do that. Fair enough. “Soon. I’d feel more secure knowing you’re gonna sleep too.” 

“Oh, I will.” As if to prove her point, Voldemort removed her cloak, her robes – which wouldn’t look out of place in the Muggle streets – remaining. Harry made an effort not to look too much. She then lay down on her mattress. “You do not happen to have brought a book with you, potentially?” 

Harry shook his head negatively. “No such luck.” Voldemort hummed in response. 

“Fine. I’m accustomed to my thoughts anyway. Have a good night, Harry.” 

He certainly preferred when she called him by his surname. Maybe that’s how Tom and she felt when he called them by their real names. Maybe. Harry turned the room’s lights off, but at the very least, there was not complete darkness, some outside light letting the two mattresses, which were separated, be seen even in the absence of light.  

“Good night, Tam,” Harry answered, lying down on his mattress, putting his glasses away before doing so.  

He missed his telly so much. Or at least the ambient noises it emanated in the night.