Samsara

Tom Riddle was a fool.

He was dead, that much was clear. The boy and his pesky friends must have discovered his last horcrux, hidden in a place so obviously improbable that he had figured its location would pose no threat to his demise. Who would dare hurt the Boy Who Lived? 

But Dumbledore, that old, meddling beak, had managed to figure it out. Tom gritted his teeth, somehow annoyed even in this blissful state of non-existence. Of course. The wizard had never let anything past him; of course he wouldn’t let Tom try to achieve from beyond the grave. 

All of that no longer mattered, Tom mused, encased in a bright lot of nothingness. He was no longer of that realm. 

He would no longer go by Voldemort, Tom decided, suddenly acutely aware of how different he felt right now. He wasn’t Voldemort, soul split into so many pieces that he had forgotten how anything felt but the bone-chilling sharpness of rebirth, or even the Tom of his youth, never truly able to feel warm after his first kill. 

Now he was whole again. 

Tom flexed a hand, marveling at the warmth emanating from his own body. 

He was in his old body, he realized. His uncorrupted one. 

He ran his hand through his hair, just to be sure it was there, and it was. Thick and fluffy, just as it had been at sixteen. Tom suspected that if he tried his hardest to look for it, he would find that same unruly curl sticking out to his left, forever untamed. Even through the stress of his late teens and early twenties, as his hair and overall appearance had grown sleeker and more polished, face more angular, he had never managed to get that curl to stay flat. 

His hand ran down his neck and chest, feeling his own pulse points. He stopped at his heart, feeling it beat steadily.

Wasn’t he supposed to be dead?

If he wasn’t dead, where was he?

What was happening? 

“Tom Riddle,” a voice from behind him rasped, startling Tom. He spun around rather slowly; the air had a gelatinous quality to it, almost as if he was floating in water. 

At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was a being of some sort, a shroud of darkness with a face that had two white-yellow eyes burning so brightly Tom instinctively backed away. He straightened, patting away non-existent lint from his robes. 

No need to make a bad first impression on whoever— what ever this was. 

“Who are you?” Tom asked cautiously. He made no move to reach for his wand, unsure if he even had one here.

Truthfully, he had no idea where he was or what he was dealing with. In the world of the living, his studies of the afterlife had mostly consisted of harried—not that he would ever admit to it having been harried —scans through old texts from the Restricted Section that mentioned what happened after death. Not many painted a clear picture, and ones that provided any useful or actionable advice were still fewer. Certainly nothing that gave him confidence in the idea of an afterlife.

In light of this lack of general knowledge, a panicked sixteen-year-old Tom had relied upon his memory of Secrets of the Darkest Art to create his first horcrux after accidentally killing Myrtle Warren; a decision that had haunted him for the rest of his life. He hadn’t realized it then, but the creation of his horcruxes had seeped his cognizance and decision making skills and pushed him farther and farther down the path of devastation, to the point where he couldn’t recognize himself after a lifetime of poor decisions. 

Tom Riddle wasn’t stupid. But his horcruxes had made him into a fool, pushing him towards destructive tendencies that he had clamped down on so well before, making him rely on recklessness and violence, not preserving the patience and calculation that had gotten him so far in the first place. Now that he was whole again—and he could feel it, he could feel that all eight pieces of his soul were tightly knit into one piece, he was no longer empty—he realized the true erroneousness of his own actions. 

Turns out, meddling with your soul is quite dangerous. Old Sluggy had been right about that much. 

He had never meant to start a war. He had meant for his rise to power to be a swift and silent one, not one that drew so much attention. Tom was the greatest wizard of his time, of course, but greatness didn’t need to mean overconfidence. He had always meant for Magical Britain to be his—in a takeover of a cleaner, more aristocratic manner, not an overbearing one. What point was there in leadership if none of your subjects wanted you to lead? He had screamed and killed to intimidate; any common muggle could do that. Tom wasn’t a common criminal, and was certainly not a muggle. And yet he had acted like one. 

The being in front of him grinned a bit too wide, revealing a set of inhuman teeth. “I am Everything,” it said, voice metallic and unpleasant, like nails scratching a chalkboard. “I am your past, present, and future.”

A shiver crawled down Tom’s spine. He didn’t like that. Distantly, he was reminded of himself—in the chamber, right before he had set the basilisk loose on the Potter boy. Not too long before the loss of his very first horcrux. 

Those memories were coming to him in the first person. It wasn’t surprising, considering that he was his horcruxes and his horcruxces were him, but it hadn’t been something that had happened before. No, Tom could not remember a time while alive when had been able to transmit memories like that, free-flowing from all parts of his soul. Perhaps it was a side effect of becoming whole again. 

Tom swallowed. “What am I doing here?” 

In lieu of an explanation, the being laughed, a hideous cackle that made Tom instinctively pull his robes towards himself. “Consider this your final chance,” the being hissed, gesticulating to a pitiful-looking creature that had appeared to their left. 

That thing, whatever it was, looked bloody and raw and ugly, closely resembling a small, sickly child’s dead corpse. The creature was obviously uncomfortable, hugging its own knees, eyes tightly shut. What could it be? 

It let out a piercing wail. The being in front of Tom made a motion and the creature was again silent, soundlessly crying. 

“What is it?” Tom asked. The creature stopped crying and let out a heavy heave, paying both the wizard and entity no mind. 

“You know.” 

Tom’s brows furrowed. He knew? Knew what? He knew nothing. He could readily admit to that now; there was no haughty Malfoy or meddling Black or—Merlin forbid—Lestrange looking up to him, expecting him to have learned all the secrets of the universe already. “I don’t.” 

“Don’t test my patience. Do what you must.” With that, the being disappeared, leaving no trace of its existence behind. Tom looked to both sides but could see nothing but endless white space reaching out beyond himself and the creature in front of him. 

Unsure, he took a tentative step towards the creature, which had audibly resumed its crying. Tom crouched down, also putting his hands on his knees. “What happened?” he murmured. “What are you?” 

The creature stopped crying again and blearily opened its eyes. Once focused on Tom, its eyes widened almost comically and it shrieked, louder and more shrill than before. Tom winced. Really, any guidance here would have been helpful, he thought, hesitantly reaching forward to put a hand on the creature’s forehead. 

The moment he touched the creature, he heard a loud CRACK and could feel himself being sucked into a vortex, quite akin to the several times he had been sucked into a horcrux of his own creation. His insides constricted and he felt that familiar and horrifying tug —this time, into the body of a helpless creature. 

Tom wasn’t able to hold on to his own stream of consciousness for very long, feeling himself as he knew it fading away and partially adopting the mind of the creature he was now a part of. He let out an ugly wail, most horrified not by his sudden change in appearance or mind but by the lack of warmth he felt again. 

He was cold.

Oh, so, very cold. 

He didn’t like it, he missed the warmth of being whole again, he hated the cold, he hated this, hated this, hated this, why was this happening, he hated this, hated this—

Strong hands grabbed at him, only slightly easing the pain of the cold he now felt. The white around him became brighter and he squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, trying to ignore the cold and the pain and the wetness and oh how he hated it—

“Congratulations,” a gentle voice said, inadvertently squeezing Tom’s body a little. “It’s a boy.” 

“Oh, wonderful,” another voice said, this one so familiar but he hated that he couldn’t place it. Curiosity got the best of his attention and he stopped crying, if only to be able to pay more attention to what was going on around him. With great difficulty, he opened his eyes. 

A shocked noise left his mouth when he saw where he was headed.

Merope Gaunt. 

What?

“What will you name him?” the other voice asked, depositing Tom into the arms of his mother. 

“Ta’om,” Merope declared, holding a tiny Tom to her chest.