Meet the In-Laws
Tom apparates into Little Hangleton, close to the Gaunt shack where his deranged uncle Morfin had hissed at him about Mudbloods and dirtied bloodlines. Thankfully, crazy Uncle Morfin wasn’t around this morning and so his walk up towards the Riddle House was uninterrupted and he was free to mentally revise his cleaning spells. Tom reaches the front door, finding the wood splintered and the hinges destroyed, he knows he’ll need to reprimand his boy for the sloppy crime scene but all he was really feeling at the moment was fond amusement at how Haddy had obviously been very eager to get justice for Tom. The Slytherin explores the dining room, the parlour and the kitchen before he finally finds the bodies of his father and grandparents in the receiving room. Well, most of their bodies. Tom’s grandparents were sat on either end of a small sofa, Tom’s grandmother was holding her knitting needles and his grandfather had an open newspaper pulled taut between his hands, Tom’s father was perched on the nearby piano stool, hands splayed over the keys ready to play a tune. The perfect picture of domestic bliss, or it would have been if they all still had their heads. Haddy evidently must have used either a mass slicing spell or three in quick succession as none of them looked to have tried to escape their imminent demise.
The most befuddling part of this experience, including the headless relatives curtesy of his semi-sociopathic boyfriend, was the fourth figure in the room, the one dressed in an immaculate, pitch black muggle suit, the one who wasn’t missing a head.
The mysterious figure was stood hunched over inspecting the stump where Tom’s fathers head used to rest, his shabby, tattered cloak that completely juxtaposes the impeccably tailored suit, had ridden up in the back, showing the man’s bemusing lack of shoes, reminding Tom briefly of his footwear-averse boyfriend. Tom takes all this in in less than a second, a startled gasp falling from his lips as he reaches for his wand, intending to Obliviate or kill this stranger who could endanger both Tom’s and Haddy’s freedom.
Unfortunately, the unintentional sound had alerted the stranger to his presence, the mystery man turns to face Tom, allowing the younger to take in the man’s features, causing him to feel even more ill at ease with the situation. Not because the man is ugly, not at all, but rather because the man is just so unremarkable. Whether the intention is to flatter or humiliate, fix or maim, Tom has always been able to pick out peoples features, he has always been able to recognise and exploit people’s differences. This man had none. His eyes were a dark brown, neither dull nor bright, his lips were neither thick nor thin, his hair was dark but not black and although his hair was thin, he was not balding. His most prominent feature was his almost sickly pale skin, the culmination of all these characteristics, made the man seem timeless, otherworldly, undefinable.
The strangers face twists into a scowl, “Tom-motherfucking-Riddle, here to steal something else I love away from me?!”
Tom, who was getting ready to curse the stranger, suddenly stilled at the hostile greeting.
“…Excuse me?”
Tom’s reaction only seemed to vex the man even more, “You heard me you son stealing bastard! Piss of back to Hogwarts where Haddy is probably waiting for you, giving up his Christmas time with his Daddy to be with his little ‘boyfriend’!”
It takes Tom a couple seconds, seconds where the strangers glare became more and more hateful, tentatively, Tom questions, “Mr. Peverell? You’re Haddy’s Father?”
“YoU’rR hAdDy’S fAtHeR?” the stranger puts on a high voice and mockingly responds, scrunching his face and flapping his arms around, evidently insulted by Tom’s perfectly reasonable question.
The newly discovered Lord Peverell returns to his scowling, “Obviously I am you twatting cock, can’t you see the family resemblance!”
… Tom could not. The only similarity between Tom’s beautiful boy and his eerily unremarkable father is that both their skin tones could be described as pale but whilst Haddy’s skin is creamy and easy to blush, this man’s skin is corpse-white and he looks like he has never blushed a day in his life.
At Tom’s lack of reaction, Lord Peverell goes back to inspecting Riddle’s stump before wandlessly and wordlessly summoning the gift box filled with Tom’s fathers head, carelessly throwing away the wrapping and holding up the head by its hair, looking over the rotting face with a critical eye.
Tom clears his throat and wipes his palms on his trousers, surreptitiously straightening his hair and brushing of his robes, making sure no rotting head juices had stained his clothes. The Slytherin confidently strides towards his boyfriend’s father, thrusting out his hand, preparing to woo his future in-law into being more accepting of his and Haddy’s relationship than he obviously currently was.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Sir, even if it is in such unfortunate circumstances.”
Tom gives Lord Peverell his most charming grin, barely letting it falter when the man looks towards Tom only long enough to scoff before going back to his inspection of Tom Riddle Sr’s neck wound.
Not to be deterred, Tom continues with an inquisitive but not forceful tone, “Actually, Lord Peverell, how come you’re here, did Haddy call you?”
Death scoffs again, not even bothering to look in Tom’s direction this time before scornfully mumbling, “You think Haddy would call me to do a body removal and wouldn’t want to come with me? What a fun sponge, I don’t know what my perfect boy sees in him!”
Tom interrupts the man, trying not to allow the muffled threats and insults ignite his fight response, “If Haddy didn’t notify you, how did you know to come here and cover up his crime?”
Lord Peverell carelessly drops the head, turning to face Tom with a manic grin, “Well, well, well, my son hasn’t told you much about me, has he?”
Tom almost bristled at the insinuation that Haddy either doesn’t trust him or Tom is not important enough to Haddy to be entrusted with family secrets, “He’s told me you’re a Health Inspector, a world renowned Mario Kart champion, he always says you’re his favourite person-”, Tom chuckles to himself before saying the next part, hoping that he and Lord Peverell could bond over Haddy’s adorable silliness, “-he also tells everyone that you’re Death, as in the entity Death, like in the tale of the Deathly Hallows, but obviously that’s not… true.”
In the space of time that Tom had been speaking, Lord Peverell’s rather average height of 5’10 shot up to well over seven foot, his skin seemingly sank into his body, only leaving a tiny layer of epidermis clinging to the man’s bones. His plain brown eyes had likewise transformed, the pupil enlarging until it encompassed the whole eye in inky black apart from the bright flickers of light, blinking in and out of existence like the rapid lifecycle of the stars.
However, to Tom, the most terrifying part of this experience, was the magic. Or rather, the lack of it. Instead of the slight tingling sensation against the skin magic-sensitive people feel when others cast spells in their midst, there was nothing.
A spell powerful and specialised enough to change a person’s whole appearance and so drastically too, should have sent goose bumps running up and down his arms, his skin should be so sensitive he’d want to take of his clothes. But he didn’t, he felt nothing.
Well, not nothing exactly, instead of reacting to a presence of magic, Tom felt like he had been placed in a blackhole. He staggered and tripped to the floor, it felt as if the air particles had turned into titanium and Tom barely had the strength to breath under the crushing atmospheric weight. Beyond the physical, this oppressive weight was squashing his magic, squeezing it smaller and smaller until Tom became infused with terror, genuinely believing the oppressiveness of this being’s presences is going to crush the magic right out of him if it carries on any longer.
Without his magic he would surely die.
Maybe that is what this creature wants, the Slytherin knew, intrinsically, that killing and death is as natural to this entity as magic is to Tom.
Haddy was right. This entity is Death. Death is in his family home. Death had seen his boyfriend’s crime scene. Death is his boyfriend’s father.
All of a sudden, the pressure dissipated. Death’s terrifying appearance transforming back into his non-descript (yet still eerie) human suit.
Death huffs a derogatory laugh at Tom who is still gasping for breath and struggling to find his feet
Between wheezing pants, Tom asks, “So you, are, D-Death, Haddy wasn’t joking?”
Death glares viciously at Tom, causing the boy to cringe, “Stupid Haddy-thieving mortal, are you calling my precious child a liar?! He might be a thief, a murderer, an aspiring dictator, but I raised my boy right! A liar, he is not!”
Death takes a deep (unnecessary) breath, closing his eyes in anger and massaging his forehead. “Now, sit your too-old-for-my-baby-boy arse down, I have a list of things I need go over with you.”
Tom feels an invisible force push him down onto the sofa, squished between his grandparents’ decapitated corpses, he watches as Death pulls out a literal scroll from his tattered robes.
“At Number 1, all it says is ‘Spade Talk’?” Death frowns in confusion, re-reading the scroll to make sure he had gotten that right.
“I can’t remember why I wrote about digging implements-”, Deaths confused tone transforms instantaneously into an accusatory one, “- but I swear to God (self-obsessed teenager that he is), if you ever hurt my boy, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually-” Death grits his teeth, glaring even harder, “-sexually, I will obliterate you mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and magically! By the time I am done with you, there won’t be enough left of your body to identify you by, there won’t be enough magic left in your decaying corpse for even the best trained Auror to recognise you as a wizard, there won’t by anything left of your pathetic soul for me to take to the afterlife.”
Similarly to before, the atmosphere had steadily become heavier and heavier throughout Lord Peverell’s speech, although not the crushing weight it was before, it was still heavy enough for Tom to begin sweating and trembling under its weight. Again, similarly to before, after Death had made his point, the pressure released, allowing Tom to relax marginally.
Death waited until Tom had physically recovered before he began reading from his list again, “Whelp, onto Number 2, Sex.” Tom gulps loudly, “I know boys like you, I have collected enough pimply, sweaty, coitus obsessed, pubescent-boy souls, to never, ever, EVER, want my sweet baby boy within 100 meters of one, let alone dating one of you disgusting creatures!” Death takes a deep shuddering breath, trying to get his anger and disgust under control, he carries on in a softer, if no less intimidating tone, “Nevertheless, Haddy has decided he wants you and despite spending multiple holidays trying to warn him away from you, he has his mind set. But! That does not mean you will be defiling my baby boy anytime soon; I don’t trust you! And because I don’t trust you, I have had to take measures I never would have taken otherwise. I didn’t want to, but I have enchanted my UNDERAGE son’s underwear, so that if any hands, other than his own, attempt to remove the garment, the perpetrators will find their hands swiftly decaying until all that remains are two black, mouldy, stumps.”
Death continues his rant, dramatic monologues seem to be a thing him and his future father-in-law have in common. Don’t get it wrong, Tom is terrified of Death, always has been in a sense, and the threats that the entity is espousing are almost scary enough for Tom to question whether he and Haddy could be celibate for the rest of their lives. However, he wasn’t scared enough that he would point out to Death that Tom could simply ask Haddy to remove his own underwear when they decide to have sex. It’s not like that would be an inconvenience for Tom’s boy, Haddy’s been trying to convince Tom he’s ready for a more intimate relationship since pretty much the beginning (Tom is clever enough not to mention this to Death though).
During the time Tom had been contemplating how nothing scares him more than the possibility of never seeing Haddy naked, Death had moved on to the next part of his list, “Third, if you ever, and I mean ever, clean up another one of my son’s crime scenes before you’re married (which is a whole other conversation) I will hunt you to the ends of the universe, I’ve been cleaning up my son’s crime scenes since he was a toddler and no bippity-boppity-boo upstart is going is going to take that bonding time away from me. You learn a lot about a person from their crime scene, you see their soul laid bare, you can tell whether they are cruel or kind, passionate or unfeeling, clever or simple. Never again will you get a sneak peek at my naked baby boy, soul or body, I will eviscerate you! The only reason you’re still breathing after the Myrtle Warren debacle, is because I wouldn’t have been able to make it in time, 1950’s Korea, you know how it is-” As it was only 1947, Tom in fact did not know ‘how it is’. “-So, you got a free pass for that one, but if I see you help my son cover up anything more than a severed limb, I will be talking to my sister Life about renegotiating the terms of your lifespan.”
There had been more threats against Tom’s life in the last half hour, than he had ever heard before in his life. Tom’s instinctive fear of Death is the only thing stopping him from acting on his anger at being threatened, something that hasn’t happened since First Year, when he tortured a Slytherin prefect so viciously the boy developed a permanent stutter, all for the crime of threatening to burn Tom Riddle’s homework. What can he say, Tom takes his education very seriously.
When Tom zones back into the conversation, he finds Lord Peverell looking at him with an impatient, expectant expression. Tom makes a guess at what Death wants him to say, “Yes of course Sir, I’ll follow your rules to the letter”, ‘to the letter exactly, Tom thinks to himself, mind still pervertedly fixed on the thought of Haddy taking of his own undergarments.
Getting his mind out of the gutter, trying not to let his first meeting with his boyfriend’s father be a complete failure, Tom carries on, “I just want you to know Mr, umm, Death, Sir, I want you to know that I’d never hurt Haddy, he’s my favourite person in the world, I’m very…fond of him.”
Death, who had conjured a needle and thread and was manually sewing Tom’s father’s head back onto the neck stump, stopped what he was doing, before looking at Tom with his most scrutinising expression yet, calmly asking, “Do you love him?”
Tom is stunned, his eyes are wide and he can feel his mouth moving up and down but no words escape, he knows he must look like some sort of beached fish. Tom has never loved anyone before. He’s loved his possessions, he’s loved power, he’s loved magic, but never before has he loved another living being. When he was younger and well accustomed to the feeling of loneliness, he saw his lack of love as a loss, when he has been angry, it has been his superpower and when he is with Haddy, it is his tragedy and an endless source of bafflement. Tom didn’t understand how people could go through life, feeling an emotion stronger than what Tom feels for Haddy, sometimes the depth of Tom’s feeling for Haddy debilitates him, sending him into a spiral of needing desperately to see Haddy, seeing him and feeling better, only to part again and the desperation starts anew, stronger than before. Tom knows, at least subconsciously he has to, he knows he has fallen for Haddy, perhaps as early as their first conversation, perhaps as recent as their last, but fallen he has. Tom can’t tell Death any of this, he hasn’t said it out loud, he hasn’t even admitted it to himself yet.
Death’s inquisitive, almost compassionate expression closes off the longer Tom’s silence persists, until eventually he angrily yet resignedly breaks the silence, “That’s what I thought. Until you are able to admit, and are proud of, the love you hold for my son, you will never have my approval. Yours and my son’s fates have always been intertwined, in every timeline, in every possibility, you are each other’s most important person.”
Tom’s attention is wholly fixed on Death and the knowledge of the universe and all its inner workings this mythical entity is seemingly bestowing on him, but mostly Tom was desperate to know more about him and Haddy and all their potentialities.
“In 90% of realities, you are sworn enemies, believing that one of you needs to die for the other to survive. In 5% you are-” here Death tries futilely to hide a grimace, “-fuck buddies, when you aren’t screwing, you revert back to attempted murder. In 4% you are related although, concerningly there are rather a lot of instances of overlap between this section and the next, which brings me to the last possibility, In 1% of realities, you are lovers, partners, together for decades, centuries or millennia, each other’s most precious person.” Death’s expression turns from contemplative and saddened, to infuriated and scandalised in a heartbeat. “But of that 1% of lives spent together, blissfully happy and content, 1% of infinite realities, there have only ever been three universes where you can admit to my son he is loved. Three. Until you can prove you are one of the outliers and not the norm, you will never have my approval.”
Silence reigns for over a minute, a minute in which Tom tries desperately to process all the events since meeting Death, especially their most recent conversation, desperately trying to give Death the answer he wants so that he might finally support his and Haddy’s relationship. But he cannot. Tom has always been able to charm and cheat his way into people’s good graces, but Tom cannot and will not use his feelings for Haddy to manipulate his boy’s father into liking him more, he’s not that much of a dick. The silence is broken by a snap of thread, Death had obviously finished his final stitch, he had seamlessly sewn Tom’s relatives heads back onto their bodies, including his dear Grandparents, who’s heads had appeared after Death had summoned them, packaged in a frilly pink box that was signed, ‘To Tom, Happy Birthday, Love Haddy’, Tom received an incredulous glare from Death when the entity saw that.
Whilst Death analysed his own handwork, Tom looked down towards his hands to find them slightly trembling, his body still reacting to his lingering fear and emotional upheaval. Death sees this action out of the corner of his eye and chuckles, before mumbling to himself, “Ha, suck it Life, told you I could ace doing the Spade Talk.”
Death steps back to observe the scene in its entirety, Tom is shocked to find that as well as sewing the heads back on, during their conversation, Lord Peverell had also adjusted the whole room in slight but meaningful ways, the walls surrounding the fireplace were charred, the bodies were placed slumped over as if they had fallen asleep, the items they were holding strewed on the ground. When the coroner arrives, he will discover that the Riddle’s all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, a faulty chimney the police will conclude, the entire Riddle bloodline wiped out, tragic, but not suspicious.
Death turns to exit the room sending a peace sign over his shoulder, “See ya later bitch face.”
With that short and not so sweet goodbye, Tom is left alone at the sight of the triple homicide, rooted to the spot in shock at what had just occurred. Well, if Tom had any doubts about whether Death truly was Haddy’s father, he doesn’t anymore, Haddy has made Tom very familiar with stunned silences over the years.
Speaking of Haddy, Tom hurriedly checks his pocket watch, cursing when he sees that breakfast ended over an hour ago. His Sweetheart is going to be so pissed he didn’t get to share a blood flavoured candy cane with him.